Some random things I've found during the past week ...
Creative Technique: Free-writing – Some good simple instructions for one of the most basic brainstorming techniques, an especially good one when you’re working solo. (From BQF, the blog of the British Quality Foundation’s special interest group on Innovation, written by Paul Sloane.)
How to live a simple and peaceful life: 13 tips – If you want some basic tips to simplifying your life, this is great. If you can read between the lines, there’s some interesting points here about creativity too: being aware of living in the moment, seeing unusual relationships between objects, finding metaphors between different tasks – and perhaps a new solution, scheduling time to think – or dare I say the word, ‘daydream’? (From WikiHow, a useful blog about all sorts of different things.)
Six writing techniques to increase your creativity – Love tips, absolutely love them. This post has six good ones about proper preparation, analysis and creativity to improve your writing skills. In particular, I love tip number 5: annotating. It’s not only about thinking actively about what you’re reading, but then, writing down what you actually mean. I constantly read things where I stop and ask myself: what is this person trying to say? (From Fast Cash Freelance, a blog about – how aptly named! – free lance writing.)
Six tips for presenters – Six tips from Scott Berkun’s book – Confessions of a Public Speaker. If you don’t feel like buying the book, focus your attention instead of key tip #4: “Good public speaking is based on good private thinking.” It reinforces my Central Principle #1 in Public Speaking: “Know what you say, not say what you know.” (From Olivia Mitchell’s blog Speaking About Presenting.)
The art of business storytelling – Kelsey Ruger writes The Moleskin, and I liked his thoughts on business storytelling. This is the first of several posts on the topic, and he promises to write more in the next few weeks about crafting a good business story, organising storytelling elements, and providing storytelling resources and inspiration.
Distributed Idea Generation Outperforms Team Brainstorming – Here’s another article (this one based on a study by INSEAD and Wharton) suggesting that brainstorming is ineffective. I have to admit, I'm never really sure about the purpose these studies. I mean, isn't it common sense that if people use something incorrectly, it doesn't work as well as it should? Personally, I don't find brainstorming any more or less effective than any other tool. Also, the study never suggests that the quality of the facilitator might enable a group of people to think better collectively than people thinking individually. Also, the study (sorta) smacks of some academic who wants to make a name for themselves by coming up with a psychobabble title like "hybrid structure." (Too bad they didn't spend some of their time coming up with a better name?) On the other hand, the article does raise some interesting points, particularly that selecting the right idea is the most crucial element of a brainstorm.
QuotablesAnd finally, my favourite creativity quote of the week. “If you lay down with your feet in a hot oven and your head in a refrigerator – on average – you will be quite comfortable.” (Thanks to Kevin Byron.)
And a good runner-up: “I didn't fight my way to the top of the food chain to be a vegetarian.” (Thanks to Dave Rodgers, or ‘voucherboy’ on Twitter.)
