Tag Archive for 'creativity'

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Years ago, I found that I could survive on 4.5h sleep but…

Published on 18 June, 2009 in High Performance. Closed Tags: , .

Years ago, I found I could survive on 4.5 hours of sleep per night but that my creativity died. Seems that Jim Collins feels the same way http://is.gd/HCXE

It was while I was at university, and while I found that I could work hard enough to get some of my best academic results, I felt drained. Not that I couldn’t think – but just that I could only think within the rules. I couldn’t look beyond the rules, frameworks and paradigms that were presented to me, and I certainly couldn’t explore the connections between systems. So I went back to enjoying dreams.

Still, it was a worthwhile experiment!

(originally published on DanielSmith.info)

Design Perfection

Published on 16 February, 2009 in Innovation. Closed Tags: , , , .

‘You know you have achieved perfection in design’, Antoine de Saint Exupéry, the great adventurer, once wrote, ‘not when you have nothing more to add, but when you have nothing more to take away.’

While design and creativity are noble concepts and innovation a powerful notion, the reality is that it is very difficult to operationalise design quality. It seems self-evident to reduce such questions back to the desired values… but what are they?

While growth and development is part of education, discrimination remains one of the fundamental purposes… the challenge is how are we to discriminate fairly?

Daniel Smith

Human Nature?

Published on 2 February, 2009 in Change and Innovation. Closed Tags: , , , .

We are really simple creatures.

As I listened to a successful business leader of innovation I was dumbfounded at how even one of the most advanced organisations can use just a few different techniques and suddenly they’re classed as ‘innovative’. I have great respect for de Bono popularising creativity and expressing a few useful tools. And it is probably because of this that an organisation just selecting the first thing that occurs to them happens.

Perhaps it’s an explanation of why McDonalds does so well: Don’t give your customers too much choice!

Even if you felt called to use de Bono’s suite of techniques, ignoring the fact that none are validated (and that many other schools of thought exist), I remain bemused that a ‘leader’ of innovation would just choose the first technique that comes to hand. Not that the techniques themselves are poor in themselves – but surely an innovator would be called to look beyond the obvious?

If you want to use de Bono, go beyond the 6 Hats – they’re great, but they’re just the beginning. A scientist should explore water logic, action shoes, ToLoPoSoGo and a bunch of ideas outlined in Serious Creativity… AND look to other sources of thinking on creativity.

We set our standards so low… even people who innovate often end up just innovating enough. With the rise of Asia in an era of abundance and outsourcing, the only way that the developed world can continue to demand the sort of quality of life that it has grown accustomed to is through lifting up the value chain. We don’t get that by digging deeper holes: We get that by freeing our minds…

Take off the handbrake, unleash the throttle and explore the things that you’ve never thought possible… That is the path to genius.

Daniel Smith

Ideas are everywhere: Innovation changes the world.

Published on 2 January, 2009 in Innovation. Closed Tags: , , .

Here’s the 100 word summary of a training presentation that I made…

Transform creativity into innovation by organizing your ideas. Whether you’re in a meeting, brainstorming or thinking on your own, convert your ideas into action by identifying it as one of three things:

  1. An outcome or action for your task list,
  2. Filed for periodic review, or
  3. Filed for reference.

Once you have actions on your task list, delegate them to the right person for the job. When you focus on what’s most important and do what you’re best at, you might start to notice yourself showing your talent – and even genius – being revealed.

Daniel Smith

The messiness of innovation

Published on 3 December, 2008 in Innovation. Closed Tags: , , , , .

Changing things is great, though it’s important to keep making progress. And when you’re trying to do something amazing all the time, you have to make sure that you have spare time… otherwise, you’ll end up being late for everything a lot of the time. Back in the 1930s, Felix Pollaczek said this: “high capacity utilization and high variability in task-completion times can combine to create severe delays.”

So if you are committed to getting things done, keep focused on tasks whose duration you can maintain good control; if you are looking to do something amazing, don’t work too hard.

Then again, you could take a leaf out of Tim Ferris‘ book and just work for four hours a week… if you can eliminate time wasting habits, put your cashflow onto autopilot by outsourcing everything that you can, and keeping mobile by moving from place to place in a series of mini-retirements (ie work hard, play hard). I like his style…

I do love how there are so many ways to express the same thing. “Behonce’s Action Method” strikes me as being just a fragment of David Allen’s Getting Things Done (GTD) approach, though it’s still a nice way of expressing the sentiment. I like to think that I come up with the odd novel thought from time to time… though maybe I ought be satisfied with just coming up with my way of expressing something. Yet I really do love their Action Pads and how they’ve created a product from their service experience!

Daniel Smith

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