Category: Creativity

Ways to Overcome Summer Stagnation

Leave a comment

Are you suffering from summer stagnation?

For many of us, summer is seen as a time for leisure. Our colleagues are off on family vacations or extended weekends hitting the beach, travelling to other countries, or finding a cottage in the woods. This can lead to a slowdown at work as key individuals are out of the office and offline. Projects pause and many of the usual meetings are cancelled.

Under these conditions, workers may feel less engaged and unmotivated as they wait for the office to return to normal. A recent article on Korn Ferry.com points out that 46% of office workers believe the quality of their work slumps in the summer. This can have many effects.

Indeed, being unmotivated during the summer can affect your ability to meet goals later in the year, says Mark Royal, a senior client partner for Korn Ferry Advisory. “It can negatively impact your image and personal brand within the organization,” he says.

Don’t let summer stagnation overcome you.
Photo by Nataliya Vaitkevich on Pexels.com

However, this time need not be wasted. Employees can take advantage of the summertime shift at work to explore news ways of doing and thinking. To counter stagnation, the article explores five ways to stay energized at work during the summer. One of the suggestions in the Korn Ferry article is to switch things up by busting out of the usual routine.

Simple changes—like working outdoors instead of indoors, or at a coffee shop instead of at home—support engagement and renew excitement, says Val Olson, a career and leadership coach at Korn Ferry Advance. “Slumps can happen due to a lack of variety. Variety is the spice of life,” she says.

If you can’t get out of the office, try rearranging the furniture or adding new decor to revive a tiresome space. Varying your surroundings can be energizing and aid focus.

Another way to take advantage of quieter summer workspaces is to reflect on what actually excites you about your work and career.

More people on vacation often means fewer meetings and emails. Experts say you can use this lull to reflect on, and pursue, the aspects of the job that most engage you. Being able to find meaning and value will help motivate you during any downtime, as well as when the workload heats back up.

Read the full article to learn three more ways to turn summer stagnation into engaging and worthwhile experiences.

Can ChatGPT Write a Speech Better Than a Toastmaster?

Leave a comment

Just say you need to give an important speech, but only have a few minutes notice. Can an AI chat service bail you out?

For my upcoming Toastmasters meeting, I was challenged to write a speech titled, “AI – Friend, Foe, or Tool?” As a fun experiment, I decided to see what ChatGPT would do with this topic. Would it be honest about its limits, share it deep dark secrets, or in the end just give me an okay speech.

Created with WordPress AI Image Tool

On the Efficient Librarian website, I wrote an article showing the prompts and output from this process. For reference I used a free ChatGPT account, which still provided enough access for delivery of a speech, but a few limitations on its output options. The whole process took less than five minutes from start to finish.

Overall, this quick dip into the AI waters showed that for all its versatility there are still some weaknesses. For example, I asked for a 5 to 7 minutes speech, but what was provided took only four minutes to speak. Also, it ran into some issues with suggestions that in the end I couldn’t do with the free service.

To see the entire process and read my other thoughts on this AI exercise, please read the article on the Efficient Librarian website.

The Secret to Success – Take Time Off

Leave a comment

When was the last time you took a vacation from work? I mean a true vacation where you unplugged completely from the office, not even peeking at your email once.

There is a mindset that we need to keep working to succeed. Breaks and vacations are seen as distractions from accomplishing goals. However, is this true or simply a recipe for burnout?

In an article on his website, Darius Foroux suggests that taking time off is actually vital to completing your goals. In fact, time off not only is good for your physical and mental well-being, but it also a way to increase creativity and focus. To start, he chastises the idea that taking time off is for wimps.

People who never take time off to do nothing are short-term focused. “I want to reach my goals! NOW!”

But as always, short-term thinking harms your long-term development and growth. What happens when you power through work and burn yourself out? In most instances, your results suffer, and you become less productive.

In some cases, you even become depressed — which will set you back even longer. 

His solution is to embrace time off from work. Whether it is deliberate breaks during the day or taking an unplugged vacation, time off has many benefits. One of the primary reasons breaks are important is that they give us time to think and process.

All ideas require processing. Are the ideas any good? Do I really want to do those things?

Again, that’s a thinking process. When you go from idea to execution, without processing, you often waste your time in hindsight.

Of course, you can never entirely prevent that. But by taking the time to process your ideas, you can prevent your future self a lot of pain, worry, and even money.

Read the full article on Foroux’s website to learn more benefits of taking time off.

Tips for Better Public Speaking from TED

1 Comment

Do you enjoy public speaking or does the thought of standing in front of an audience give you the chills?

Whenever you see a list of the top fears, public speaking is usually close to the top. There are many reasons for this trepidation, such as concerns about forgetting their speech or being seen as a fool. Yet the skill of public speaking is often required to succeed professionally at high levels. Therefore, how can someone overcome their fears and become a better speaker?

Photo by Mikhail Nilov on Pexels.com

On their website, the Bright Network has an interview with Chris Anderson – Head of TED – the non-profit devoted to spreading ideas. From his experience watching and assisting people perfect their talks on the TED stage, he has compiled five important tips for effective public speaking. They can be applied by anyone from novice speakers to the most experienced orator. For Chris, the starting point is the idea.

The most successful presentations focus on one, coherent idea – something that will change the way your audience thinks, acts and approaches the world.

Your idea should take centre stage, not you. As a speaker, your job is to successfully share your knowledge with those listening. Think of it this way – you’re offering your audience the gift of an idea and your presentation is the wrapping paper.

To learn the other four tips, please read the short interview on the Bright Network.

Habits of Success – Are They Real?

Leave a comment

If you scroll long enough on any social media feed eventually a story will show up with a title like “The Top Ten Ways to be Successful” or “Emperor Caesar’s Habits for Success.” The gist of these articles is that copying the things successful people do will inevitably lead you to success too. But is that true?

According to Darious Foroux, copying the actions of seemingly successful people is no guarantee of success for yourself. In his article, Stop Imitating The Habits Of Successful People: It’s Killing You, he points out the main flaw with all these Internet advice pieces.

They always focus on the outcome. Not the process. Studying, learning, and stealing productive habits or tactics are all smart things to do. But that’s not what I’m talking about here. I talk about people who only focus on the outcome. I.e. success.

Also, everyone pretends that the word success has nothing to do with money and status. But that’s simply not true. When we talk about success, we all talk about getting rich. Just be honest.

For Foroux, success is not simply a matter of counting your money to keep score. Success is much more varied than that. He adds:

But let’s keep it real and not pretend that “only you can determine the definition of success,” and then talk about the habits of millionaires. 

Foroux then points out the flaw in the logic of copying the actions of notable people. It is simply that mindlessly following habits alone does very little to help us achieve our goals.

For instance, take waking up early. That’s always part of the lists of habits. But waking up is not a skill that does something. When you try to imitate a rich person who wakes up early, will you become rich by waking up early?

That’s why I find it odd that people try to imitate successful people. What’s the point? Even if you know the EXACT ingredients of success, it’s no good to you.

To hear what Foroux suggests instead, please visit his website to read the rest of his article.

To Solve a Problem, Take Something Away

Leave a comment

There’s a funny thing about the human mind when it comes to problem solving. Usually, we look for solutions that add something to the equation, whether it be another resource, person, or strategy. Yet is it easier to solve problems by removing things?

In an article by Diana Kwon for Scientific America, she explores the reason that removing something is a often the more efficient problem-solving strategy. She uses the example of teaching a child to ride a bike.

For generations, the standard way to learn how to ride a bicycle was with training wheels or a tricycle. But in recent years, many parents have opted to train their kids with balance bikes, pedal-less two-wheelers that enable children to develop the coordination needed for bicycling—a skill that is not as easily acquired with an extra set of wheels.

Photo by Leeloo The First on Pexels.com

Later in the article she explores research done at the University of Virginia. Observational studies of people solving problems highlighted some interesting patterns.

The researchers first carried out a set of observational studies, assessments without a control group, to see whether this bias existed at all. In one, they asked 91 participants to make a pattern symmetrical by either adding or removing colored boxes. Only 18 people (20 percent) used subtraction. In another, the team scanned through an archive of ideas for improvement submitted to an incoming university president and found that only 11 percent of 651 proposals involved eliminating an existing regulation, practice or program.

Is there a way to guide people to consider removing items rather than adding? Turns out a little nudge in the right direction can do the trick.

The researchers also observed that people were more likely to remove features when they were given more opportunities to consider alternative ways to address a problem: when participants were asked to create a symmetrical pattern by adding or eliminating colored blocks, they opted for removal more often if they were given practice trials than if they had just one chance to tackle the problem. On the other hand, having to simultaneously juggle another task—such as keeping track of numbers on a screen—made individuals less likely to subtract elements to solve the same problem, suggesting that it requires more effort to think up subtractive solutions than additive ones. 

Read the full article to learn more about how to consider subtractive solutions.

Do Our Projects Define Us?

Leave a comment

What projects do you prioritize with your free time?

Whether we spend the time on entertainment, home maintenance, or personal development, the choice of our personal projects impacts our lives. But do these projects end up shaping the nature of who we are?

Tiago Forte believes that our projects shape our identity. In a recent article on his website, Tiago looks at recent research into the topic, first by explaining exactly what a personal project is according to the researchers.

“Personal projects” by his definition include not just formal ones you might focus on at work, but informal ones as well. Toddlers are pursuing a project as they learn to walk. Lovers are pursuing a project as they fall in love. All the way to the highest reaches of human achievement, like landing on the moon.

The key factors in making them “personal” are that they are personally meaningful and that they are freely chosen, not imposed from the outside. Little’s research has shown that such “intrinsically regulated” projects tend to be more successful and lead to greater well-being than “externally regulated” projects.

In fact, Tiago believes that our choice of projects demonstrates who we are at our core.

This is a fundamentally different view of “personality”: We are not limited to a collection of traits fixed at birth, or shaped in childhood. We evolve over time through personally meaningful pursuits we decide to take on. This opens up the possibility that we can purposefully choose the ways we want to change, by choosing projects that give us new skills, perspectives, and ways of thinking.

In other words, by changing what you do, you can change who you are.

To learn more, please visit the Forte Labs website to read the rest of the article.

Is AI Overrated?

Leave a comment

Are you concerned about AI taking over the world?

Once ChatGPT hit the scene, along with hyper-realistic image generators, it seemed to the world that there was no limit to AI. Does this mean computers will take over most jobs or render thinking itself obsolete?

In a fascinating counter-point exercise, Greg Rosalsky from Planet Money on NPR listed several reasons why AI may be overrated. He starts off with a number of quick hits:

There are just so many reasons to believe AI is overrated. I could talk about the fact that productivity growth remains super disappointing. If AI were revolutionizing the economy, we would see it in the data. We’re not seeing it. I could talk about the fact that AI companies have yet to find a killer app and that perhaps the biggest application of AI could be, like, scams, misinformation and threatening democracy. I could talk about the ungodly amount of electricity it takes to power AI and how it’s raising serious concerns about its contribution to climate change. 

Photo by ThisIsEngineering on Pexels.com

Rosalsky goes on to flush out three specific reasons to doubt that AI is all it’s cracked up to be. One reason is that despite its name artificial intelligence is not really that intelligent.

When you first use something like ChatGPT, it might seem like magic. Wow, a thinking machine able to answer questions or write or generate anything in an instant. But when you look under the hood, it’s more like a magic trick. These chatbots are a fancy way of aggregating the internet and then spitting out a mishmash of what it finds.

Later, Rosalsky points out a serious legal issue with AI that needs to be resolved before it can grow further.

It’s a copycat. And perhaps the worst part of it is a good chunk of the stuff AI is copying is copyrighted, which is why there are at least 15 high-profile lawsuits against AI companies asserting copyright infringement.

To learn the other reasons by AI may be overrated, please read the rest of the article on the Planet Money website.

The Creative Power of Procrastination

Leave a comment

Have you ever put off doing something important?

There is a natural tendency to procrastinate even on things that we ostensively want to do, including creative projects. While most people view procrastination as a vice, what if there is actually benefit to gain from delaying?

In a recent post on his blog, Tiago Forte explores this topic by diving into the creative power of procrastination. To begin his argument, he first explains the origin of delaying work.

Procrastination stems from our urge to flee the discomfort of an unwanted task. In the brain, this plays out as a war between our logical prefrontal cortex — responsible for decision-making — and our hasty, pleasure-seeking limbic system. When the limbic system wins, we rebel against the undesirable task and choose the temporary dopamine hit of procrastination instead. 

Tiago believes that our creative endeavors can benefit from a little bit of procrastination. In order to reap this advantage, it is first important to reframe our guilt around it.

Shame is a common emotion when people procrastinate, but self-blame can sap your ability to be creative. Instead, build the habit of being compassionate to yourself when you procrastinate. The process of resetting how you think about procrastination takes time and effort, as you’re attempting to form new neural pathways — but by continually refocusing your thoughts on compassion, blame will cease to be the default emotion. 

When you feel the itch to abandon a task, observe the warring forces in your brain. You’re starting to procrastinate, and that’s OK because you’re about to maximize the benefits through active procrastination.  

He then proceeds to recommend specific strategies to maximize the benefits of procrastination. One of them is to bring structure to it.

If you have multiple projects, you can delay one by working on the other. Philosopher John Perry calls this structured procrastination, and it allows you to give in to the delicious feeling of avoiding your intended task while you make progress on something else. You might even find unexpected touchpoints: switching between different projects, aka “slow-motion multitasking,” is how some of the world’s greatest innovators sharpened their multidisciplinary ideas. 

To learn more about to turn procrastination into a creative advantage, please read the rest of his blog post.