Cleanse your palate

Hey, everybody. Drew McLellan here from Agency Management Institute this week coming to you from home in Denver, Colorado. You know, there's something to be said about that discussion we often have about the value of what we do, and that sometimes those ideas just pop into our head while we're driving, in the shower, whenever that may be, when it's basically cooking in the back of our head and we're not thinking about it actively. But sometimes a thorny problem needs to work itself out in the background and then kind of pop its answer to us in the foreground. Sometimes – again, when we're driving, when we're in the shower– we're giving our brain that break to think in the background. But I also think it's important that we think about it more actively. So we went to dinner the other night with our oldest daughter and her husband, and they picked the restaurant, and it was a very nice restaurant, frankly, fancier than what we normally go to. And between all of these courses, the waiter and the chef, when he came out, we're making it very clear that we had to cleanse our palate, that we needed a fresh palate to really experience this next course.

And I think sometimes our brains need that cleansing of the palate as well. So one of the things I want to challenge you about is how do you give your brain time to process in the background without actively working on a problem? Let me give you a couple examples. So do you go running and listen to music? For me, one of the things I do to cleanse my palate is – probably like you, I'm very curious, and I'm always reading business books. But I allow myself – and sometimes I make myself –read a mystery novel or some other fiction in between business books, so I won't let myself read two business books in a row. I give myself that palate cleansing so that I can just process what I just read before going on and putting more new information in my brain. So for every one of us, how we cleanse our palate may be different. Might be, playing Barbie with your kids. It might be going for a long walk or going for a run and listening to music or instrumental music. It might be like for me, playing a board game, doing a puzzle, reading a fiction book. But we have to give our brain time to do its job. And part of our brains job is what happens in the background. And when we are constantly pushing our brain to think, think, think and focus, focus, focus, we don't actually allow that part of our intellect to do its work. So as odd as it is with a business tip, what I'm suggesting to you is that you identify 3 or 4 ways that you can turn the active part of your brain off and let the, sort of background part of your brain do its job. So 2 or 3 things that you can sort of work into your week, work into your routine, work into your normal life, that gives your brain that time to think in the way that it can only think when you're not paying attention to it. All right? Cleanse your – cleanse your mental palette.

That's your homework for this week. I'll talk to you soon.