We’re all told, ‘if you want something done, ask a busy person to do it.’

But one of the UK’s top leadership experts has said that in order to succeed, we need to step away and take time to think.

Drew Povey, author and founder of the Drew Povey Consultancy, says it’s important we nourish our mind in the same way that an athlete nourishes their body if we want to achieve our potential.

“Success is rarely built by accident,” says Drew, who works with some of the country’s leading companies and sports teams.

“We live in a world where we are bombarded by ideas, messages, conflicting opinions and demands on our time. We have set a philosophy that in order to be successful you have to constantly be busy.

“But the reality is that leaders are paid to think. And just like anything we want to be good at, we need to make time for it and train for it.

“That means dedicating time for it, nourishing it and, just like a football team will watch a game back, challenging our thought processes so we can improve.

“It’s called metacognition, and it’s the ability to become aware of, understand, and regulate your own thought processes, allowing you to effectively plan, monitor, and evaluate your learning or problem-solving strategies.

“Because the quality of the way we think shapes the quality of our decisions, the quality of our behaviours and therefore the quality of our actions. It influences how we respond to setbacks and where we focus our attention and ultimately what we build over time.

“Modern neuroscience tells us exactly the same: that what we repeatedly focus on strengthens those neural pathways associated with those thoughts and behaviours.

“Our minds can't tell the difference between fact and fiction, so what we do tell ourselves will become our reality.

“So, if we want better outcomes, we need to be more deliberate about how we think.”

Audit your thinking

We need to take stock of the way in which we think. Most of people will monitor their finances more carefully than they monitor their thoughts, yet it's the thoughts that influence almost every decision we make.

It influences how we feel on a daily basis, so spend time noticing the conversations happening inside your own head. What are the thoughts that help you move forward? Which are the ones that create doubt, distraction, or some kind of limiting belief or some unnecessary limitations?

In basic terms, conduct an audit of what thoughts help you and what hinders you and use that awareness to drive change. You can’t improve on what you’re not noticing.

Focus on what you can control

One of the biggest drains on performance is investing energy in things that are outside our sphere of influence. This isn’t a new philosophy; it goes back to Athens in 300 BC, and yet it’s something that so many of us haven’t grasped.

Stoics believed that the key to a good life lies in self-discipline, inner resilience and reason. That whilst you can’t control the world around you, you have complete control over your own thoughts, actions and how you react to them.

True, they didn’t have the distractions we do now or the multiple demands on our time, but the premise stands to this day: the more attention you give to what you can influence, the more effective you'll become, but also the more resilient you'll become.

Take your thoughts to court

If your mind can’t distinguish between fact and fiction, then it’s important that you consciously challenge the stories that you tell yourself – and that others may tell you.

Many of the barriers that we face are not external; they're narratives and stories that we've repeatedly told ourselves so often that they feel like facts.

If you tell yourself ‘I’m not good enough’ or ‘people don’t like me’ – where’s the evidence for that? If you’ve been living with toxic behaviours from others constantly telling you something, your brain starts to believe it is true, and it then reacts accordingly.

Be the judge and the jury to those thoughts because it’s high performers who learn to question those assumptions rather than automatically accepting them as truth. You’ll feel better for it and be able to break out of the cages created by false beliefs.

Feed your mind

‘You are what you eat.' ‘Abs are made in the kitchen’. We know these phrases, but what about what we feed our mind?

The conversations you have, the people you spend time with, the content you engage with, and the environments you place yourselves in – all these things influence the way you see the world.

If you constantly feed your mind with distractions, comparisons and negativity, and if you are always on your phone, don't be surprised when those become your dominant thought patterns.

Your mental diet is as important as your physical diet, so if you are what you eat, then you are also what you think.

Set aside time to think

Thinking isn’t wasted time, so make time for it. I speak to leaders all the time and say, 'How much time do you spend thinking?'

They often look at me blankly, as if taking time to think means sitting around wool-gathering.

Many leaders will spend a lot of the days reacting and firefighting. They're in meetings, they're doing emails, they're dealing with problems, they're trying to hit deadlines.

But the most important work we do isn't action; it's reflection. Leaders are paid to think, not do, so schedule in time for thinking and ideas. This allows you to gain perspective and spot patterns, and ultimately it will help us to make better decisions and avoid becoming trapped by constant busyness.