"Solitude and Leadership"

You do your best thinking by slowing down and concentrating.

It seems to me that solitude is the very essence of leadership. The position of the leader is ultimately an intensely solitary, even intensely lonely one. However many people you may consult, you are the one who has to make the hard decisions. And at such moments, all you really have is yourself.

So solitude can mean introspection, it can mean the concentration of focused work, and it can mean sustained reading. All of these help you to know yourself better.

People do not multitask effectively. And here’s the really surprising finding: the more people multitask, the worse they are, not just at other mental abilities, but at multitasking itself. 

What we don’t have, in other words, are thinkers. People who can think for themselves. People who can formulate a new direction: for the country, for a corporation or a college, for the Army—a new way of doing things, a new way of looking at things. People, in other words, with vision.

“He who should inspire and lead his race must be defended from travelling with the souls of other men, from living, breathing, reading, and writing in the daily, time-worn yoke of their opinions.” ~ Emerson

“the soul environs itself with friends, that it may enter into a grander self-acquaintance or solitude.” ~ Emerson

That’s the first half of the lecture: the idea that true leadership means being able to think for yourself and act on your convictions.

Thinking for yourself means finding yourself, finding your own reality.