I first learned about Bill Gate’s ‘Think Week’ from the Netflix series – Inside Bill’s Brain. 

I liked the idea and checked with my coach Kurt Graves, what’s his opinion about it. He immediately said I should do it. It was a task to explain what it is to my family 🙂 It is funny that business trips and vacations are easily understood, but something like locking up inside a cabin and reading for seven days straight was new when I explained it to my family.

I planned earlier and booked an Airbnb cabin in the Smoky Mountains. I handpicked the books a few weeks before from my home library. I read every day, but this is the first time I will be dedicating a week to just reading, keeping my phone and electronics away. I purposely chose books by mixing them up. In total, I carried 18 books, a few on leadership, a few on Artificial Intelligence, a few on BlockChain technology, and a few on successful CEOs. 

My original plan was to read five books, but I ended up reading more than 12 books 🙂 

 To not waste any time, I took ‘Kachava,’ a meal replacement shake for breakfast that takes less than 5 minutes to prepare, and carried 14 freshly cooked meals. 

The daily cycle was straightforward – 

• Wake up by 5 AM
• A cold shower to reset my head
• Coffee/Meal replacement Shake and start reading.
• Take notes while reading the book so that I can work on actionable items later.

When you remove the unwanted phone dings and sit alone close to nature, I was amazed that 295 pages of reading and thinking went so quickly. I even swapped the books during the day. For example, I picked up the most innovative leadership books in the morning or thought around it, while a book around CEO stories (Easy Read) in the afternoon.

Your brain can burn a lot of energy when you read 3-4 books a day, and boy, I loved it. I think everyone should do this to improve their personal life or work life. 

Nature also teaches you a lot in unexpected ways. 

I need to see if I can inspire my team members to do this once every year if the company sponsors the entire trip 🙂

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