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Watching others think can be pleasant or unpleasant. I’d love to watch great designers, filmmakers, artists, and chefs work go thru the steps to achieve greatness and immortality. Unfortunately, even if I got unlimited access to such people, there is only so much time I can spare to watch them think and solve problems. I will now qualify what I said above, and say that that it will most likely be fun the first time, after that my impatience will grow and watching them in action will not be as much fun any more.

On a day to day basis, watching co-workers think thru a problem is like watching grass grow. For one thing, the problems they are trying to solve is more mundane. For another, it does not add a lot of value to you. Even if it entertaining, it is a waste of your time. As his or her mind cycles thru the problem and he or she peers at various angles, you wonder whether this can be classified as torture in the workplace.

Busy executives will throw you out if you ramble. They will decline meetings if you keep it up. Those at lower levels will put up with your rambling, but only because they are busy checking their emails or updating their status on social media sites.

Do your thinking on your own time. If you are looking for opinions or would like to brainstorm, you are inviting participation, and thats okay. But if just want to talk aloud so your co-worker can step in to correct you, or you feel insecure about thinking thru the problem yourself, you will lose your audience.

The metric is: what is the least amount of time you need from your audience to get your point across and to get their input?