During the presentation, Dr. Anderson suggested that “1% of us are thinkers, 3% of us think we are thinkers, and 96% wouldn’t be caught dead thinking.”  Now I can’t cite the study that supports his quote but the premise made me think.  What if only 1% of the people in your company are ‘thinkers’.  Perhaps Dr. Andersen is off by a factor of 10!  That still suggests that only 10% of your company are thinkers.

One of the reasons we don’t think is that we don’t create an environment to think.  We are never creative because we wake up to emails, constantly respond to fires throughout the day and spend most of our waking hours running around with our hair on fire.

John Cleese, the famous Monty Python comedian suggests we need to develop a time-space oasis to think and be creative.  Build time into your day to think.  Make it a quite time.  Put it on your calendar and treat it like gold.  If only 1% of you are thinkers, you’d better make the most of it!