All men's miseries derive from not being able to sit in a quiet room alone. Blaise Pascal

One of my favourite things to do is to sit there and think.  Not think about useless stuff though, but actively think about things that matter to me, or things that I'm working on.

So I'll actively pick out a problem, close my eyes and visualise how it's going to work.  Then, iterate the process until it's easy to communicate the process very simply in a few sentences.

Otherwise, if it's for something tangible and real like a design, close my eyes and see in my mind how it is all put together in vivid colour.

I believe that visualisation is useful because it helps you realise exactly where you want to go, and helps you break down what you need to do in order to get there.  This makes execution so much easier, saving time, money and energy.

I'm designing a prototype of a device now.  I sat down the other day, and in 1.5 hours of thinking and brainstorming quietly by myself, the design has completely changed to something very simple and very logical.

I began a new job recently.  When I began, I took 10 hours to complete my first 4 graphic drawings on the computer aided design program.  I thought that that took a long time and that I could do my job a lot quicker.  So, I had a think about it, and then took 5 hours to do my next lot of 10 drawings.

How did I increase my effectiveness by 5-fold?  By spending 30 minutes planning before I touched the computer.