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Do You Know Too Much?
A while ago, Scientific American Mind magazine had a cover story on the latest research and insights into unleashing creativity. One of the research results shows that creative people are less likely...
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Is Slow And Steady Best After All?
I used to be an ‘all or nothing’ type. I would only take on the all-consuming challenge. I would leave my bedroom until it was so messy that it took a whole day to clean up. If I needed to diet I would...
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Talk Doesn’t Cook Rice
In my Monday microbusiness class, we were discussing the things that get in the way of making time to think creatively about your business. A popular topic was procrastination, another was...
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How To Encourage 'Aha' Moments
The other day I woke up with the answer to a problem that had been chasing me around in circles for several days. It felt great to finally have it resolved. Isn't it a relief when it all falls into...
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Have You Been Seduced By The IKEA Effect?
I watched a very excellent TED talk the other day by Dan Ariely. It was full of great stats and stories about how we value our work, resulting from his very serious research using origami cranes and...
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30-Day Challenges
Nearly two years ago, I ran an experiment for a month. I made one little change to my life every day - with a commitment to continue every change at least until the end of the month. And each change...
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How Do You Plan Your Projects?
If you want to implement a change in your life, it takes more than just making a decision in your head. (Nothing new there...) I’m developing a range of new programs at the moment, including (for the...
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Need A Fresh Idea? Find Three...
It's a great technique: Whenever you have a problem to solve, or need to come up with a fresh idea, challenge yourself to come up with at least three ideas, not just one. Or if you are a team leader,...
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Gratitude
Today's blog is about gratitude. I have been into gratitude for years, but felt a bit squeamish about blogging about it. Silly, really, but I felt it was a bit hippie-herbal and not at all workplace or...
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Looking to kickstart some fresh thinking?
I have been running a number of creative thinking workshops over the last few weeks, really fun. I have generally included my two fave processes, mind maps and 'reverse goals' (or LAOGs). And last week...
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What are your questions?
Whenever I work with a client, I talk about the value of curiosity - it's one of the 4 elements in my '4 habits' model for creative thinking. Curiosity, and asking questions, are also central to a...
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Are You Taking Yourself Too Seriously?
I’ve been taking myself far too seriously lately - verging on martyrdom, actually. My Masters research won’t work, clients keep canceling sessions on me (OK, so they have flu, but ...), new projects...
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Is Collaboration Useful For Creative Thinking?
Many people believe that all creative genius is a solo affair and that to involve a group at best dilutes the process and at worst risks ridicule or outright idea theft. Whilst it is true that private...
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The Third Space - A Key To Happiness, Creativity And Productivity?
Last week I went to Melbourne for the Happiness Conference (described by a colleague of mine as ‘that happy clappy thing’, but pretty excellent nonetheless...).Lots of great speakers, fascinating data,...
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Are You In A State Of Flow?
I've been doing some talks lately about using your strengths, and on each occasion I include a discussion on that state called 'flow'. It's an almost automatic, effortless, yet highly focused and...
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Have You Met The Procrastinator?
I took a couple of client-free days last week to do some writing on my Escape Hatch book. First thing on Monday morning, I fired up the computer, opened Scrivener (the best book-writing software I...
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The Why Of Leadership
Last week I spent two days of my Masters intensive session looking at the qualities of a transformative leader. I’m particularly interested in leaders of ‘social enterprises’, which are businesses with...
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Change Is Scary (And That's OK...)
There is a moment in my Escape Hatch career change program when clients 'get' that this might lead to actual real change in their lives. They realise that they might actually succeed in finding a new...
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Can You Overuse Your Strengths?
It’s very fashionable these days to focus on strengths and ignore weaknesses, and in the main this is a good thing. But it doesn’t mean that you just need to find your top one or two strengths and...
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Making Connections
One of the best ways to increase your capacity for both critical and creative thinking is to find activities that improve connections between the right and left sides of the brain, so you can use your...
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