Home Lifestyles Advice June 2008 Brainstorm E-Bulletin

June 2008 Brainstorm E-Bulletin

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June 24, 2008 – I've just come back from a two-week break in Porto Santo, a little island near Madeira. It's unspoiled but there are a lot of cranes around, so it may not be this way for long. It was a great chance to do a little less thinking (sometimes that's necessary, too), and now I'm back and eager to share some ideas with you. Here we go:
1: Do you amble?
In "The Independent," John Walsh wrote about the pleasures we have lost because we're usually in so much of a hurry. Here's part of what he wrote:
"How long is it since you entertained the concept of Going For A Walk? I don't mean the urgent dash to the shops on Saturday afternoon, or the purposeful not-quite-run on the common in your expensive trainers. I mean the purposeless amble through the backstreets of your fashionable suburb, taking in the sights, peering through windows (but don't push your luck) and greeting neighbours with a cheery doffing of one's Homburg. The lack of any actual goal, other than getting out of the house and seeing what the world is up to, is what gives the random constitutional its old-fashioned charm."
Action: Sometime in the next couple of days, stroll!
2: Start your day with a headline
Here's a playful but effective way I've come up with to give direction and motivation to your day: before you start working, write a headline about what you intend to achieve. Here are three examples (the exclamation marks add to the fun):
Writer Finishes Chapter 3 of Her Novel!
Taxpayer Adds Up All Receipts for Tax Returns!
Freelancer Catches Up With Back Filing!
Generally, just the headline is enough, but if it helps, you can add a paragraph that specifies how you'll achieve it: "Despite the need to prepare dinner for her family and to go shopping, this writer managed to take one hour out of her day to go to Starbucks and finish the second half of Chapter 3 of her novel."
This is a fun way to highlight the single most important thing you need to do every day.
Action: Give this strategy a try every morning for the next seven days and notice whether it makes it easier for you to achieve your most important tasks.
3: Your four ways to be more creative
In an interview in "Scientific American," Robert Epstein, visiting scholar at the University of California, San Diego, discussed four different competencies that he believes are essential for creative expression:
The first and most important competency is "capturing" – preserving new ideas as they occur to you and doing so without judging them.
The second competency is "challenging" – giving our selves tough problems to solve. In tough situations, multiple behaviors compete with one another, and their interconnections create new behaviors and ideas.
The third area is "broadening." The more diverse your knowledge, the more interesting the interconnections – so you can boost your creativity simply by learning interesting new things.
And the last competency is "surrounding," which has to do with your physical and social environments. The more interesting and diverse the things and the people around you, the more interesting your own ideas become."
Action: Are you active in each of these areas? Capturing is easy – just have a notepad or little digital recorder with you all the time (and maybe a digital camera as well); are you giving yourself new challenges? If not, what could be one to tackle soon? Are you learning new things? If not, what could be a new book or class that would challenge you? And are your surroundings (places and people) stimulating? If not, what could you do to your workspace, and with whom could you have lunch or a coffee?
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4: From weight loss to productivity gain
Recently I ran across a collection of tips for people wanting to lose weight and realized that they could be adapted to being more productive. Here are three:
For weight loss, sip green tea to give you energy. For productivity gain, consume something that inspires you to work on your most cherished project. For example, for writers this might mean keeping books of poetry or short stories around and reading a page or even just a few lines during the day to stay inspired.
For weight loss, walk around while making phone calls. For productivity gain, carry around a little notebook and keep your most important goal in mind. Let what you see, hear and experience during the day give you ideas.
For weight loss, if you feel the emotional drive to overeat, stop and figure out what you're feeling. For productivity gain, when you procrastinate, stop and figure out what fear or other emotion is getting in the way.
Action: Try adapting one of these three strategies to help you be more productive.
5: The paradoxes of creativity and innovation
I read an article recently by Detlef Reis, founder of the Idea Company in Asia (his site is www.thinkergy.com), in which he discussed eight paradoxes in business creativity and innovation. They included:
The paradox of incubation: to get an answer, you need to let go of the problem. Then the solution may well pop into your mind at an unexpected time.
The paradox of failure: to succeed, you have to plan to fail – that is, to try things that probably won't work and keep going until you succeed.
The paradox of business success: to bring about an innovation, you need to invest time and other resources to develop it, which may lead to long-term success but reduces your short-term success.
Action: If you're feeling stuck in any part of your work or life could it be because you haven't embraced one of these paradoxes? Does thinking about it in these terms change your ideas?
6: And a quote to think about:
"Confusion is a word we have invented for an order which is not yet understood." – Henry Miller
Until next time,
Jurgen
PS: If you haven't looked at my blog lately, you've missed posts on Buckminster Fuller's greatest invention (it's not the dome), mistakes 'creatives' make, rejection is not just for writers, a different approach to procrastination, the questions of rejection and more. Check it out now at www.timetowrite.blogs.com.
For UK readers: I'm happy to report that my new book, "Focus: the Power of Targeted Thinking," is out and doing well (so far there are 13,000 copies either sold or on the shelves). You can find out more (and get lots of interesting free stuff) on the site: www.focusquick.com, and you can buy the book online or at bookstores (they're featured at WH Smith travel outlets).
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You may also want to have a look at our websites, www.TimetoWrite.com; www.yourwritingcoach.com; andwww.BrainstormNet.com; and my two newest books, "Your Writing Coach," published by Nicholas Bre
aley Publishing, and "Do Something Different," published by Virgin Books.

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