Jeffery Fox in his book “How to Become CEO” recommends that you think daily for one hour. Not the unfocused, random thinking you might do in the shower or on your way to work (although these unstructured moments of thinking have their value), but focused, committed thinking: planning, brainstorming, writing down ideas, testing hypotheses, considering a work problem, imagining the future, setting goals, etc.

What if, as a project manager, you spent one hour thinking about your project? Evaluating risks, considering issues, challenging the project plan, thinking about bottlenecks, worrying about timelines, planning for contingencies? What if you structured your thinking so that you developed a rigorous, methodical process for thinking clearly about these and other issues? Would you be more productive? More valuable? More enlightened? Better prepared for the unexpected?

Dr. Kenn Sullivan of ASU theorizes that all the information is available to ascertain the future. He uses the example of physical laws: the laws are always the same, and will always be the same, but our ability to interpret and understand the laws may change over time. What we call risk, uncertainty, or probability is only a symptom that we have trouble getting all the information we need or we struggle to interpret correctly the information we have. Risk is a lack of information.

He then makes this remarkable conclusion: the best way to reduce risk is by using logic to deduce the information we need. In other words, logic is more important than experience in managing projects. He doesn’t discount experience. He simply states that we know so little that logic is the only way to fill in the information gap.

If this is true, how much more important is daily thinking? In fact, could a project manager be successful without it?

Think about it.