Be more Bill.
When he was the head of Microsoft, Bill Gates would take a week twice a year, in which he went alone to a remote cabin in the woods, to read and think.
The first time I read about his Think Week, I was a busy freelance journalist trying to pay a mortgage while juggling caring for my young son. And I was consumed with envy.
A whole week! To do nothing but rest, read, walk, and ponder the meaning of life. With no one’s needs to worry about except your own. It was a luxury I could barely imagine, at the time.
The seductive power of Cabin Porn
Soon after, I found Zach Klein’s Cabin Porn website and his two books, full of glorious pictures of tiny, isolated but perfect cabins.
I dreamed of taking a week or two in a beautiful off-grid setting like this, just to sleep, read, journal and think. Yet it never quite happened.
My son is 29 now, so I can’t use him as an excuse. There just never seemed the time, and it felt indulgent and selfish. When I had a holiday, I wanted to spend it with friends and loved ones, rather than up a mountain in splendid isolation.
Then I had an idea.
What if it didn’t need to be a whole week? What if I took a monthly Think Day instead? That would be 12 days a year – almost as many as Gates. But as it only meant taking a day off and didn’t involve going off-grid in an isolated cabin, it was much easier to justify, and plan.
So I blocked out the first Monday of the month for the rest of 2025 in my calendar, and labelled it Think Day.
The first couple of times, I did what most of us do. I put my own needs last. Paid work came in, clients wanted coaching sessions, so I booked them in for that day and tried to fit my think time in between.
Unsurprisingly, this didn’t work. So on my third attempt, I held firm and kept the whole day clear.
No one died. Much as I like to think of myself as indispensable, no one even complained. My income didn’t plummet. My clients didn’t all leave me.
But I had a wonderful day. And I’ve been doing it ever since.
What worked – and what didn’t.
It was obvious from the start that this would need to be a phone-free day for me. No scrolling, no games, no email, no looking at any other messaging channels.
After a few distracted attempts, I made a rule not to look at my task manager on my Think Day. Or to tick any jobs off my list. It was too easy to see this empty day as a chance to catch up with niggling tasks, and do no real thinking at all.
Instead, I blocked out a few hours on the final Friday of the month for finishing little jobs, closing open loops, dealing with tech issues, editing my task list so I don’t start a new month with a long list of outstanding to-dos.
This clears the following Monday for my Think Day, but also means I finish each month with more of a sense of completion.
What my Think Day looks like.
I don’t set an alarm. I sleep as long as I need, then stay in bed reading until I feel like getting up.
I then go for a long walk, taking my journal with me. If I want to go to a coffee shop, have lunch out, or even get a glass of wine somewhere, I’ll do that. But I choose places where I’m unlikely to bump into anyone I know.
Journalling is a big part of my Think Day. I write about the big questions I’m currently pondering, and about new questions that came up while I was walking.
I consider what drains me, what energises me – and how I can reduce the draining activities and spend more time on what energises and inspires me. I think about what’s working in my business and where the blocks and bottlenecks are.
But mostly, I think about what I’m interested in, what my own opinion is about various issues, what I know about it already – and what I might need to find out.
Returning home, I’ll often read more.
I always have a backlog of newsletters, articles, as well as books. I might do a course I’ve bought, watch an interesting documentary or video, listen to a podcast or talk.
I also take a roam through the notes I’ve taken in the past month: book notes, questions, problems in my own life, problems clients have raised, random quotes, things I’ve learned, things I want to learn about.
Themes tend to emerge from this, new ideas for newsletters and blog posts. By the end of the day I’ve usually got a content plan for the following month, a list of subjects I want to research or investigate further, and some real clarity about what I’m doing in my life, in my work, and with my writing projects.
We all need space to think.
This shouldn’t be a luxury only billionaires can afford. And it wasn’t, until recently.
For most of human existence we lived according to the rhythms of the seasons. There were busy times, but also fallow periods. In winter, the cold and lack of light meant we rested more, we had time to day-dream and think, or we gathered round a fire to sing and tell stories.
But now we buy our food from shops instead of growing or hunting it. We live in warm homes with light and power whenever we need it. And our rhythms are no longer dictated by the seasons.
The internet gives us the world at our fingertips and our phones mean we’re never alone, never disconnected, never bored. Our minds are always occupied, always consuming. There’s less space for thinking, for processing what we’ve seen.
The arrival of AI brings an even bigger challenge.
We are outsourcing our thinking, too.
I’m not against AI as a tool. (Though I do think it uses obscene amounts of energy and water, and that the tech giants should pay us if they’re going to use what we create to ‘train’ these tools.)
But we do need to think for ourselves. Creative work is about making new connections between ideas and imagery that weren’t previously connected. And about filtering these ideas and images through our own unique viewpoints, thoughts and feelings to create something new.
We’ve all seen enough AI-generated slop now to understand that this technology can’t innovate. But you can, if you take time to think.
We all need to make a habit of stepping back to look at the bigger picture sometimes, instead of moving from task to task and losing what’s most important under a mountain of busywork.
A Think Day might seem impossibly indulgent.
II get that. I’m lucky. I have a lot of control over my time. My son has left home now, I have enough money coming in. I can afford to set aside a day a month for this. In fact, it’s saved me time and money. Which makes it feel less indulgent and selfish than it did when I first started taking a regular Think Day.
So get creative about this. Make the time.
If you can’t spare a full day, how about a regular evening without TV, phone or screens? Or a short daily walk when you leave your phone in your pocket, take the headphones out of your ears and just think?
There’s always a way, if you really want this. And you will want it more and more, once you see the difference it makes.
And finally, if you want some questions to ponder..
My Your Next Year workbook is full of questions to help you assess the year just gone, consider where you are right now in all areas of your life, and decide what you want to change in the year to come.
It’s a downloadable PDF, so you can use it again and again. Working through the questions and considering what you want, in your next 12 months, would be a good use of a Think Day! It’s £14.99 and you can buy it here.
What do you think?