Growth and improvement don’t always come in a single, massive breakthrough. More often, progress is the result of intentional, incremental habits. In this exclusive conversation, leading business journalist Ruth Sunderland sits down with Continuum’s Managing Partner, Martin Brown, to break down his personal philosophy on how to make tomorrow better than today through structured thinking time and strategic focus.
RS: When I speak to you Martin, you often use a phrase that strikes me. ‘How can I make tomorrow better than today?’ Is this your mantra and why is this phrase so important to you?
MB: It is a mantra. It is a common phrase, but I don’t think it can ever be over-used. I always ask: ‘How can I make tomorrow better than today?’
The one-hour weekly sense-check
RS: OK so now I’m going to put you on the spot. How can people make tomorrow better than today in practice? Could you give me some tips for going about it please?
MB: It’s a simple philosophy, but if you’re always stuck this always works for me. Set aside time for an hour a week, just with a blank piece of paper and a coffee. Turn the laptop off, turn the emails down and just sit there for that hour, one uninterrupted hour with a pen and paper and say, right, okay, what have I achieved this week?
RS: What would count as an achievement?
MB: Well that would be down to each individual and what are their aims and goals. It is not just about activity. It is not what have I done this week, but what have I achieved this week. Because you can be very busy, and use a lot of energy, without achieving very much. Just that exercise will tell you either you have achieved great things – so then if you have, you can think about how to replicate that and improve on it. And if you haven’t, why not? If you’re always consistently doing that sense-check, on a weekly basis, it will help you move forward.
RS: What about a longer term perspective?
MB: On a monthly basis, I have a day – I’d always say avoid Fridays and avoid Mondays – where I set aside half a day, just to have some subliminal thinking. So I have half a day blocked out for that. It might be a couple of hours rambling in the country, but you subliminally think about what you want to achieve. Then every quarter I have CEO strategy days.
RS: What to they involve? It sounds quite high-powered.
MB You don’t have to be a CEO to have strategy days, anyone can have them. It’s two days out for unadulterated thinking time about your business. It’s reviewing what you’ve done, what you are trying to do and what you want to achieve. Then you put your plans in place for the next quarter.
“It is not just about activity. It is not what have I done this week, but what have I achieved this week. Because you can be very busy, and use a lot of energy, without achieving very much.”
Martin Brown
Scaling up your long-term strategy
RS: How you harness all your ideas Martin, so that you have the best chance of translating that creativity, those brainwaves, into real achievements and progress for the business?
MB: I get ideas at the strangest times and in the strangest of places. You find when you are running a business your mind never stops, it never settles, it is always thinking. So the thing to do is make sure you capture those ideas! I use the notes facility on my phone all the time to put ideas down. So I have got it in there. Maybe it’s February and I am thinking about by quarterly review at the end of March, so I drop ideas in that I need to think about then. It means I have a list of things I want and need to address.
RS: Yes, because you can’t deal with everything all at once, can you?
MB: No, you can’t. You can’t always just stop what you are doing and try to address something right there and then. You need to think, can this wait, can I plan it forward.
RS: If you are really busy, it can make you reluctant to take out time for thinking on strategy days, or even shorter slots of time – maybe it feels like it is wasting time when you have so many immediate challenges on your plate. Isn’t it tempting sometimes to push that thinking time out of the diary?
MB: If you have planned ahead and built in issues you want to address in those two days, then you are less likely to worry about taking time out of the business, because it has been organised. If you do that, you won’t think you are wasting our time, because you have so much stuff to cover and it is all important. It is not just two days thinking for the sake of it. It isn’t time out of the business, it is time you need to use productively for the sake of the business.
“Some of the most profitable decisions you make are the ones you walk away from. You don’t have to be a CEO to have strategy days, anyone can have them.”
Martin Brown
How to make tomorrow better than today: The framework
- The weekly hour: Turn off notifications, grab a pen and paper, and honestly review your achievements rather than just your activities.
- The monthly half-day: Dedicate time away from the screen for subliminal thinking—such as a long walk—to realign with your primary goals.
- The quarterly reset: Dedicate unadulterated strategy days to review your past performance and systematically map out your focus for the upcoming months.
- Capture, don’t react: When inspiration strikes at unexpected times, log it in your notes app and schedule a future date to address it rather than disrupting your current workflow.
