Creative Reaction

Another great TED video. This one by Julian Treasure about the ways (both positive and negative) that environmental sounds affect us, including a shocking statistic on open office noise. Managers and owners should watch this, especially when planning work spaces!

Ah, nothing like a good paradox, to make you stop and ponder. And I have two.

To Get More Done, Slow Down

If You Need to Work Better, Work Less

The first article is a bit of a cheat; I’ve linked to it before, though I described it cryptically with only two words. It’s an excellent anecdotal article explaining the importance of taking time off to work more effectively.

The other – OK, I cheated a bit here too because I edited the title, which was wimpy. Any advice with the word “try” in it lacks conviction and offers a way out. “I tried, but I couldn’t.” (The hair on the back of my neck is standing straight up. Deep breath. OK.) I’m not a huge Star Wars fan, though there’s a quote from Yoda that has always resonated with me. ”Do, or do not. There is no ‘try.’” And to make things worse, the title originally said “maybe try”. Aarrgghh! (Another deep breath. OK. I won’t let little things distract me from good advice.) Check out the article and scroll down about an inch to hide the title.

The second article also has to do with taking time off, even if you have to force yourself to do it. This one is backed by both anecdotes and research. Pure gold.

There are three important lessons to be learned here:

1. Our bodies and minds need rest.
2. Family and friends are vital to life, and thereby work.
3. Having fewer hours to work, forces us to work more effectively.

You need to spend more time with family and friends. If you find it hard to not work, and believe me, I’ve been there, you have to make some important choices. Start small, even if it’s just one evening a week. Shut off your cell phone and your computer, and spend some time with people you care about. Do this for a month. The guilt about not working will gradually dissipate. Eventually, you’ll be able to take a full day off, and someday you’ll discover weekends.

Back on September 3rd, we covered a BBC article about Stanford University’s research on the myth of multitasking, and now Harvard Business Publishing has chimed in with their take on the same research.

“Despite starting the research on 100 college students with the hypothesis that multitaskers had some special abilities, the study found that multitaskers were actually quite ineffective at managing information, maintaining attention, and getting results. Compared to study participants who did things one task at a time, they were mediocre.”

There’s still a tendency to stand back and admire multitaskers for being able to do so many things at once. It’s like looking at a bunch of smokers out on the stoop, and catching yourself thinking “Oh, they’re SO cool“, then realizing, “What am I thinking? They are killing themselves and poisoning us!”

Multitaskers aren’t cool. They actually deserve a dope-slap. Especially when it’s you who are paying them.

A great follow-up to Last Friday’s post, Focus on What’s Important, Not What’s Urgent, is an article which explains a system to do just this.

Using Time Effectively, Not Just Efficiently offers a great explanation of the “Urgent/Important Matrix” aka the “Eisenhower Matrix”.

It is a tool to keep us working on what is important, even while faced with things that are urgent (and inevitable interruptions). Focusing on the important is what enables us to meet long-term goals. Worth reading!

It wouldn’t be funny if it weren’t so true…

The Hierarchy of Digital Distractions. It’s a wonder sometimes that we get anything important done.

Chris Brogan has a great post in which he asks, ”Have you ever stopped to consider how various communication tools impact the person receiving the communication? Have you ever thought about the various friction and interruption costs of various products?” He suggests determining:

1. How important your message is.
2. How quickly you need a response.
3. How willing you are to interrupt the other person.

Every workplace needs to train its employees to ask such questions and establish guidelines. And if possible, allow times for employees to go off-line and actually get some work done.

Based on the number of comments, the article seems to have struck a nerve. Check it out.

The 99% has a good article entitled Reclaim Focus, One Day at a Time, which deals with a dilemma faced by most creatives and Professional Knowledge Workers (PKWs).

“Reacting to each request while setting aside time to proactively research and execute new programs is an unrealistic proposition at best, and flat-out unattainable at worst… A lack of focus is at the root of this problem. Constant shifts mean that no task receives the proper attention.”

The author’s solution was to set aside specific days for specific ares of focus, then adjust her own mindset, as well as that of her co-workers according to these tips:

1. Inform those around you that you’ll be switching to this workflow.
2. Stop thinking of yourself as “on-call.”
3. Do something to get yourself in the day’s mindset.
4. Allow a bit of flexibility.

Of course, this means her employer must be more interested in results than procedures.

Managers, how can we allow our employees to be more effective without getting in the way?

For those of you still unconvinced, there’s more research featured in this BBC article showing that multitasking is counter-productive. Even more interesting is the fact  that people who think that they are bad at it are actually more productive than people who think they are good at it!

“The shocking discovery of this research is that [high multitaskers] are lousy at everything that’s necessary for multitasking… (and) when you ask the low multitaskers, they all think they’re much worse at multitasking and the high multitaskers think they’re gifted at it.”

(Click on the productivity or the myth of multitasking tags for similar posts here at CR.)

Slow down, focus, and be more creative. (Shortest post EVER.)

What a great Topic. Wait. Harvard Business Publishing? Really?

Oh, it’s Gina Trapani of LifeHacker guestblogging. Alles klar.

• READ the post.
• DO everything it says (thus leading by example).
• BUDGET so that your staff can do everything it says. (Especially the part about a good chair and monitor real estate!)
• TRAIN so that your staff can do everything it says.
• ROCK.

Thinking time = Better innovation admonishes us to invest an hour each week to stop and think and offers some guidelines to make good use of that hour. The best part is that this can be done practically anywhere, as long as you have a means to record your thoughts. Creatives can apply this as well; just one creative challenge at a time, please.

(via Innovation Tools.)

Quick, little post over at SIgnal v. Noise, where Jason realizes that his organizational systems have fallen into disarray recently. Using his words to paraphrase his post’s title, “Things suck when you don’t give them your full attention”.

“If you want to do great work, focus on one thing at a time. Finish it and move on to the next thing. It means some things aren’t going to get done as fast as some people may want. It means some people aren’t going to get your full attention for a while. But doing a bunch of crappy work, or making a bunch of poorly considered decisions just to get through the pile isn’t worth it.”

(I’m linking to this primarily because I’m only now getting my own blogging act together, after some of the busiest work weeks I’ve ever had, though the reason I haven’t been blogging is that I’ve had no choice but to focus on the work at hand.)

The romantic notion of being a creative recluse in a cabin by a lake in the woods is far from the day-to-day reality of a collaborative creative business. Time management as well as the “management” of interpersonal relationships is an integral part of work.

Making Time to Make by Merlin Mann of 43Folders deals with exactly these concerns from the creative person’s perspective. We’re going to repurpose Merlin’s article to take a look at meeting creatives’ needs from a managerial perspective.

One of the keys to productivity is making a conscious choice to determine the most important thing to be working on at any given time. Of course, this choice alone is not enough; structures and conditions must be present to shelter creatives from distractions and the office environment must be conducive to creativity. Ultimately, it is up to managers to ensure these conditions are present.

Merlin’s article is primarily about interactions with people and determining what is appropriate; specifically, interacting with people “enough”, yet not so much that work is inhibited. It asks a series of questions (and I’ve added a few of my own) to optimize both work and creative output.

Environment/Conditions:

• What kind of environment does my talent need to do its best work? The needs may change depending upon personalities, moods, energy, and even the time of day.
• What can I change today to protect that environment for extended blocks of time?
• How much busy work is expected of the creatives? Meetings? Paperwork?
• Does the busy work support the creative work by optimizing blocks of time or inhibit it?
• Can you assist with the busy work or hire an assistant to do this for the creatives?

Time to Create:

• How can we allow our creatives to be “unavailable” for blocks of time?
• How can we keep interruptions away from them?
• Can we shield them from phone calls, e-mail, IMs, and meetings?
• How can we structure work schedules to allow blocks of time to work?

We need the entire company as well as clients and collaborative third-parties to understand the reasoning for this.

Finally, creatives need to be trained to be social and yet stay on task. “Creative breaks” such as foosball or video games are healthy in small doses.

• Which kinds of interaction with clients and co-workers are necessary?
• Can we encourage mealtime interaction?
• Do co-workers make unnecessary demands on your creatives’ attention?
• Can we run interference if need be?

We may need to be the bad guy for them. Enforce a kind of elitism where you help shape interaction to focus on the bigger picture, whether that be the current project, client service, or long-term career decisions. Some requests for attention do not even deserve a response.

Ultimately, this is about keeping perspective. Creatives’ ideas are our company’s products; they’re often the primary source of income. Everything that gets in the way of ideas is a waste of precious talent, so let’s allow creativity to flourish!

“When forced to work within a strict framework the imagination is taxed to its utmost – and will produce its richest ideas. Given total freedom the work is likely to sprawl.”
- T.S. Eliot

As tired as I am about “boxes” and “thinking” both in and outside of them, Think Inside a Self-Constructed Box an article on effective brainstorming by the folks at Behance is based on research and deserves mention. They offer the following “tips”, though I think they’re being modest; these are success ingredients:

1. Keep the brainstorming groups small (ideally four people or less).
2. Gather people from different backgrounds, experiences, and interests.
3. Ask questions to build context, a brief, and core values, all to ”frame” the discussion.
4. Have a singular goal. For multiple decisions, hold multiple specific sessions.
5. Leave the meeting with “Next Action” steps.

With the time pressures faced by creative businesses on a daily basis, we would all benefit from more effective brainstorming.

Via 43Folders, I came across this fascinating post on project planning and as it promises, it will change your life.

The article discusses what researchers call “Hofstadter’s Law”, which can be summed up this way: “we know everything always takes longer than expected; we just seem to forget, again and again”.

Our finite minds cannot plan for unforeseen problems because they can’t foresee them.

Which explains why even the “list-makers among us get up each day and make to-do lists that by the same evening will seem laughable”. We are simply setting ourselves up for disappointment.

The two solutions are equally counter-intuitive;

1. Plan in the broadest terms possible, or
2. Simply do things without planning

Quoting the author, “sometimes, the secret to getting things done is just to do them.”

Read the post; bookmark it; print it out; e-mail it to everyone you care about –  it’s that important.