Letting Things Sink In

Let Ideas Sink In

Perhaps the point of a football huddle isn’t just to set up the next strategy. What if the 20 minute period break during hockey isn’t just so the team can rest. Maybe taking a month or two off after college graduation is better than running straight into a job. Science tells us we retain, understand and think about information better by getting a good night’s sleep. I see rest as effective on a smaller scale too.

Having a brain storm session then forcing employees to get working on an idea right away isn’t as effective as letting them sit on it for a bit or congregate around the water cooler to chat about it outside the Thunderdome Of Ideas.

Too often we invest in the belief that being and staying busy is being productive, is creating value. Wrong.

A remarkable friend of mine schedules time to get away each week, not because he’s unhappy or that work is too much for him, but because he knows to give himself time for things to sink in.

When you react to a medication, that’s a bad thing. When you respond to treatment, that’s a plus. – Seth Godin

The best feedback on meetings comes the day after. When you ask for feedback right at the end of the meeting, you have a room full of people reacting, not responding. Yet, so many managers ask for feedback right away or schedule tasks one after the other, no break.

By regularly placing ourselves in an environment that isn’t pulling us this way and that, we can process situations on a deeper level of understanding, we can invest time to truly think why X happened instead of Y or maybe realize why X was a good thing to happen in the first place.

If you think all this is hard to believe, then you’re thinking right. Take however much time you need to mull it over.

 

Stay Positive & Wine Tastes Better After You Let It Breathe

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Two Necessities If You’re Going To Live The Busy Lifestyle

Weird art

We all have our ebb and flow. This time of year, though, typically marks the start of the ebb. School starts, numbers from last year’s sales get thoroughly reviewed and new strategies implemented,  we’re kicking ourselves to meet our new year’s resolutions. It all adds to a busy lifestyle.

I’ve had the ebb of life smash me against the wall enough times to learn two valuable necessities to making the ebb more bearable.

1. Have plans ahead of time, before you schedule all your work deadlines and meetings. Make it so you work around scheduled times of fun and freedom. Not the other way around. It’s essential you make the plans now. It’s easier to cancel them than it is to plan them a week in advance while you’re already feeling behind on work. And even if you have to cancel last-minute, it’s the idea of having something to look forward to that makes all the time leading up to the last-minute cancel worth it.

2. Have a playful, maybe even pointless habit. For me, I make sure to do a word search or some type of brain game every day.  Sometimes what stands between you making it through the ebb and just crashing is a little habitual, grounding nonsense. Doodle. Juggle. Play with legos. Make it weird. Make it you.

 

Stay Positive & Prepared, Always

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This Week’s Schedule

Your schedule, that is.

 

Monday: curiosity

Tuesday: open-mindedness

Wednesday: intellectual courage

Thursday: thoroughness

and to top the Friday off: Humility

 

Don’t worry, you won’t be graded. Although, I can’t stop you from grading yourself.

 

Stay Positive & “A” For Effort In My Mind

Garth E. Beyer