Preparation & pre-thinking
We may sometimes leave meetings with a slight niggle that we just didn’t quite get the chance to give our best input or to shape the conversation effectively, and we may kick ourselves for having a fantastically insightful idea that comes together at just the point that everyone else has cleared up their coffee cups.
It may be that you’re the kind of person who does their best thinking when there’s an opportunity to collect your thoughts ahead of time and to think things through before you speak. You may feel more confident once you’ve spent a few minutes making sense of your thoughts rather than responding in the moment. Having a place to swiftly and effectively make sense of your thinking can really help you move from your back to your front foot and get more prepared. This can be the case for introverts and extroverts alike, as it’s something that can help us all build a greater sense of control, or self-awareness, or both.
Thinkfully’s Webapp is founded on the fundamental principles of how the brain works best. With the Thinkfully webapp you can swiftly and effectively make sense of your thinking. It gives you a simple way to pre-think ahead of any encounter, even if you only have a couple of minutes beforehand. It’s designed to help you get clear on what you think by enabling you to empty your head in a bitesize way, so you can easily see what’s in front of you, quickly check for connections between ideas that may otherwise be hidden from view and primes you for the session ahead as your thinking gets warmed up. This means that time with others is more effective and valuable.
Get started
Focus: Identify what you need to prep around. Write this into the canvas title.
Rapid response: Set the timer to 1 minute and empty your head. When the time is up, ask yourself what your initial thinking is based on – what previous experiences are your thoughts based on? If they are based on past relevant experience then you may hold your ideas more assuredly compared to when you have little past relevant experiences, when ideas should be held more lightly. Use the colour feature to colour code these initial thoughts in any colour of your choosing.
Other views: What points of view are missing from your initial thoughts? Think of other points of view. Where may other stakeholders be coming from? What might be the common ground where there will be likely overlap vs more unique points of view that may differ? Where is the focus of the discussion likely to orientate to? Put yourself in their shoes. Use these prompts to quickly help pre-empt and trigger further thoughts and ideas. Assign those ideas a different colour.
What’s missing: Identify the gaps, the questions, the points that need clarifying, and the assumptions and the hypotheses that need checking. Write these down. Then try and see what answers may arise when mulling over what’s missing. Again, assign a separate colour.
Prioritise: You should now have three groups showing in three different colours on your canvas. If these aren’t yet clustered together use the SORT feature to group the colours together to help see these more clearly. Review each grouping and identify the most important or standout idea within each group that you want to take into your meeting and use the GEM highlighting feature to capture it. Alternatively, create a new entry that captures the most important summary from that group and turn that into a gem.
Voila! In a very short space of time you have a quick-fire way of prepping and going into any meeting with three of the most relevant thoughts you may wish to share.