Archive for April, 2007
April 24, 2007 at 5:08 am · Filed under learn, grist mill
Living in “Internet time,” you’re probably used to being bombarded with information, making snap decisions, and needing to pick up new skills at the drop of a pixel. But a new study from researchers at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Brigham and Women’s Hospital is the latest in a series suggesting that we’re not wired to work our best under time pressure.
There is validity in slowing down, even in fast paced environments. Kind of like our speed that varies while driving: sometimes we’re zooming on a freeway, and sometimes we’re going block to block in the city. And sometimes we park and walk. I like this quote also, and can vouch that I’ve woken up hundreds of times with a clearer picture of a next step on a project:
relational memory – the ability to make logical “big picture” inferences from disparate pieces of information – is dependent on taking a break from studies and learning, and even more important, getting a good night’s sleep.
It points back, again to the Aluna Time post: no matter how fast we think we have to be to compete, it’s the ones who know how, when, and for how long to slow down that ultimately come out ahead.
April 18, 2007 at 10:05 am · Filed under learn, grist mill
“I will readily concede that if you achieve something in one hour, you will achieve two somethings in two hours. If your desiring limit is 16 somethings, then you have the mindless formula. But what if you want a million somethings? Then you need a new math.”
I’m not in love with the title, but here’s The Lazy Way to Success.
“If we were to graph the relationship between hard work and money we would see that the harder and more demanding the jobs, the less they pay. As effort decreases, success (as measured by money) increases. If people were remunerated based on the amount of hard work necessary to accomplish a job, physical laborers would be the richest people in society. Obviously they are not.”
April 12, 2007 at 11:59 am · Filed under learn, grist mill
I’d love to go to TED, but it sure seems like an elite group (Bono? Jeff Han? Carolyn Porco? those are some serious high profilers), and that’s a bit of a turn off. TED 2008 is already completely booked. This is a pretty compelling talk from Ken Robinson.
April 11, 2007 at 6:16 am · Filed under play, projects
Lots of parallels in this interview, like, “design by committee” - my version is “Death by Committee”. Also, “…[creative] potential is in everyone” my version - see the Myth list on the front page at Creativity Applied. Not that any of the ideas are new; what’s new is pushing the concept that everyone’s creative.
Relaxing and slowing down is also key to creativity. Except people don’t want to slow down b/c they are deadline driven. It’s easily possible to carve an hour of downtime out of a schedule that is inefficient from multitasking.
Doing multiple things simultaneously compromises quality of all tasks. Many times tasks are done twice or more as a result of mistakes or incompletions arising from partial focus. Doing things once with more focused energy frees up time to re-energize and have better focus - it’s a self perpetuating cycle.
I’d like to implement mandatory down time into project timelines, and between projects, and compare productivity efficiency between the presence or absence of down time. This would be especially interesting in a creative environment, which is almost always intensely deadline driven.
