Focus and Creativity

Stress Series: What causes stress?

2009-04-25T10:24:00.000-07:00

You might think that writing about what causes stress is to reinvent the wheel but I don't think so. I will summarize my experience of stress and try to give a clear picture of what causes stress - and equally important, what does not.

Stress is caused by things that you care about.
Obligations
Responsibilities
Expectations

If you don't care about it, it will not make you stressed.

Stress is not caused by having many things to do. Yes, you will be more likely to be stressed if you have many things to do but it does not have to be that way. One thing that is almost certain to cause stress is to care about more things than what is physically possible to accomplish.

First tip: Try to have a defense mechanism handy when your project presentation is on the same day as a ceremony that you are expected to attend.

Sometimes there just is no compromise and that means the only constructive thing you can do is to defend yourself from the disappointment of others.

I find that the most common reason for stress is that there are many things to do that are nothing but a nagging thought in my head. I follow the GTD task organizing system which is a way for me to change every nagging thought into something on a paper that I only have to care about when I want to.

Stress Series: Introduction

2009-04-23T08:27:00.000-07:00

The last three days I have been very stressed about things that I am obliged to accomplish and thus I have slept 4-5 hours for three nights which is completely unsustainable for me. I get unfocused, unproductive and lose my creativity because of both stress and lack of sleep.

Stress is a big part of the puzzle to combine focus and creativity and thus I will write a series about it to explain how it manifests itself and how to deal with it. I will also give tips on how to retain focus on one task while also being stressed by other things.

The useful information will be the tips I give you and the motivation I give you for dealing with stress in a constructive way.

Proposing an old technique

2009-04-21T13:24:00.000-07:00

I suggest that you focus on three main tasks to accomplish every day. It is an old productivity technique to alleviate stress and decrease distraction. In other words it is perfect if you want to have focus.

If you decide to be focused on day X and do three tasks that day (excluding things like answering phone, email etc.) you will accomplish quite a bit with the focus that you have. I find this technique very helpful when I have many things to think about and many items on my to-do list.

Choosing three relatively big and urgent things from the list and dropping everything else really helps. Never ask "What happens next?" Next, when you are done, you reflect about your work thereby adding a component of creativity and after that you can ask the question.

Don't read the daily newspaper

2009-04-20T14:19:00.000-07:00

I do not read the daily newspaper and I don't think you should either. When trying to both focus and be creative sacrifices has to be made and it's best to start with those that you're better off without anyway.

What do I suggest instead?

1. Read a weekly magazine
News are important for several reasons but the things that might change your life on a day to day basis will find their way to you pretty soon even if you don't read a daily newspaper.

2. Read blogs
If you read about things that interest you in blogs then that will be a focused activity that will reward you more than simply going through the newsitems and the not-often-valid journalists analysis. Blogs often give valuable perspective which can induce creative thinking. Seth Godin writes in a prediction that newspapers will change radically in some way soon and blogs may be a part of that.

So here are the reasons why people trying to maximize focus and creativity should skip the daily newspaper:

1. I have never gotten a single novel idea when reading the newspaper
Even though the news items change every day it does not seem to help the creative process yet it is a focused activity that takes quite a bit of time. Instead I recommend that you read blogs. I probably read 15+ blogs every day.

2. Weekly magazines are more worthy of your attention than daily newspapers
Daily newspapers often have to cover events that are too momentary for any analysis to be more valid than some other analysis. In this idea I am inspired by author and philosopher Nassim Nicholas Taleb who argues that coverage of day to day movements of the stockmarket does not help anyone reach a valid conclusion.

3. It takes more time to read daily news than weekly
It actually does. Magazines like The Economist summarize useful information and they don't include the "useless" slownewsday items.

4. Daily news is a distracting activity and weekly news is a focused activity
Taking Sunday morning to read a magazine is relaxing and feels really good. Being able to go to a news site every hour or so will be distracting. If you read a magazine your work will be more focused because distractions are reduced. You also get to take news off your mind until Sunday.

I hope that you think this is something that you can use in your life to become more focused on studying and working while also getting better at preserving creativity.

Theory and practice

2009-04-20T09:25:00.000-07:00

When I read my own blog I realize that I write quite theoretical posts. To some extent I like doing that to give you the opportunity to question my ideas but on the other hand I will also share how to use those ideas in practice.

I have some readers now and I do not want you to dismiss me as too theoretical.

Inspiring: About You

2009-04-19T05:24:00.000-07:00

David Armano writes a blog about design and visualizing complex ideas. When browsing his blog I noticed that he had an About You section in his blog menu. My opinion is that the idea is wonderful. But as interesting as the idea is there is something that I find even more dazzling:

There are probably a lot of people like me who think it is a great idea but who didn't come up with it.

It is exactly the kind of thing that cannot be accomplished by solely focusing on success in blogging. There also needs to be a creative component which is also required in visualizing as David puts it in his blog: Logic+Emotion.

Focus: Knowledge

2009-04-18T13:24:00.000-07:00

In this post I gave some reasons to acquire knowledge. I want to start by saying that the kind of knowledge that you acquire is not relevant to this post. Whether it is knowledge about a hobby, nutrition, marketing or engineering. The important thing is that you can somehow use this knowledge to come up with new ideas.

There are many means of acquiring knowledge today (Thank God) which means that you probably have a very good chance of finding a way to acquire knowledge that suits you perfectly. It seems though, that one thing is important to all ways of acquiring knowledge: focus.

The main way of learning things is still to study at a school or university. Success in studies requires intense focus for most people. Education has always been important to me and I have always maintained focus to succeed. For one I can tell you that this works. All subjects I have learned to understand and develop with my own ideas have been studied with focus.

Focus is:
Working effectively
Being productive
Retaining knowledge and experience

Focus is easier when:
You you do something that you think is fun/interesting
You feel healthy physically
You feel healthy mentally (depression, lack of sleep etc.)
There are no distractions
You feel relaxed

Focus does not mean:
What you do doesn't fulfill you
That you are forced to do what you do

Focus means:
You can be more accomplished
Tasks might be easier
You can help others
You can be more valuable to employers
It is easy to explore topics that interest you

In my blog I will go into detail how I try to maintain my focus, which is not easy at times I tell you. I will explain what focus can be used to more generally than just learning things.

This is what is great about you.

2009-04-17T10:40:00.000-07:00

I asked this question in my previous post:
Why is it better for a company if you work for them rather than a machine?

This is not easy to answer and one totally acceptable answer would be that there simply is nothing.
The machine can work 24/7,
won't get irreparable damage,
will be more skilled at condensed tasks,
et-cetera

My answer to the question is simply: creativity.
If you are creative enough and use the experience and knowledge you gather in your work process to come up with ideas that will help your company then the machine won't stand a chance. Thus I think it is important for companies to embrace creativity and leave time for reflection without imposing constant 60-80 hour work weeks.

Having a RnD or a similar department to come up with ideas is not the natural way to do it. It is the artificial way.

What is good about you?

2009-04-16T15:26:00.000-07:00

I've been taking the SAT Practice Test for several hours so I'll just give you one question to ask yourselves.

Why is it better for a company if you work for them rather than a machine?

Don't say "because machines can't do my job". Assume they could. Why is it better to have you in the process even though a machine could do your job?

Puzzled? Stay tuned for an answer!

About blogging

2009-04-15T13:34:00.000-07:00

It's not so bad! Here are some explanations/definitions for the terms I use:

Ideacontent:
The idea as it is without being associated with a certain application. The idea combining the two things lever and rock is ideacontent. A lever and a rock is a bad way (but environmentally friendly) to move your car but it can be an exceptional way to move another rock.

Abreal:
Just a term I made up to describe the ability to see ideas in their real application. I'm not sure if I'll stick with it.

The idea process 2

2009-04-15T11:04:00.000-07:00

I have previously described how I see the process of getting ideas in my post The idea process 1.

So let's suppose you are really creative and you know a lot of things too. You probably get a lot of ideas which is great! Not all of the ideas are though..

Not all ideas are great. That is what this post is going to be about. I have explained why it is important to have ideas. I have explained what fundamental factors influence the amount of ideas you get. But not all ideas are great. Not all ideas are even good and some fail to be decent. Ideas can even be pretty stupid if you try to apply them to achieve a specific goal.

Remember that. It is very hard to call an idea stupid. In the intended application it might be stupid but the ideacontent as it is is hard to judge in those terms.

The ideacontent can be judged in terms of:
Logical/Ilogical
Interesting/Boring
Surprising/Not surprising
Elegant/Not Elegant
Et-cetera

Stupid/bad/good is a judgement of the idea when it is proposed to achieve a specific goal.

Why is the distinction important?
As you will see a considerable part of the idea process is to weed out the good ideas from the bad ones when trying to achieve a specific goal. I find that keeping an open mind about ideas that I want to dismiss as bad might hurt me when I try to achieve other goals than the specific goal I judged the idea by.

It is impossible to apply every idea to achieve every goal
Duh! So I think the second part of the idea process is to match every goal with ideas that are a plausible way of achieving that goal.

I think the there are two main factors that determine success in the matching process:

1. Knowledge and/or experience
It is easier to match good ideas to a specific goal if you know a lot about the goal you are trying to achieve. A programmer can easily weed out bad ideas to structure software development. A mechanic can match good ideas of how to troubleshoot a car with different types of cars. The examples might be off.

2. Ability to see the ideas in reality
A good ability to take something purely theoretical and see it in its practical application makes it a lot easier to find out which ideas will achieve a specific goal. While creativity gets a lot of attention and knowledge gets HUGE HUGE attention this ability doesn't get the attention it deserves. At least not from what I have seen which is the better part of a scholarly system.

I finish this post here but I will discuss these key parts of the idea process in great detail in my blog:
Knowledge
Creativity
Experience
Abreal

The idea process 1

2009-04-13T12:20:00.000-07:00

I have described the value of ideas and now I will try to examine what the process of getting an idea actually is.

All ideas are a new combination of two or more previously known things.

Examples of what previously known things can be:
Old ideas
Experiences
Physical objects

The car is a combination of the wagon and the engine for example. No idea can be original in the sense that it does not build upon previously known things.

If you know about only two things then you can only have one single idea and that is to combine those things. Suddenly you can combine those two things with your idea in many ways.

This is not particularly interesting however. No one will ever be impressed by the number of ideas I could get if I am not likely to get those ideas. This is where creativity comes in.

Creativity is the ability to combine two or more previously known things to form something new. What it is doesn't really matter as most of the combinations of my knowledge probably are pretty unimpressive. Some might be brilliant though.

Try to accept these points: (or if you can't do that, imagine you accepted them)
All your ideas are combinations of things you already know.
It is clear that the number of ideas you can get is limited by your knowledge.
Creativity is the ability to combine things you already know and form something new.

What would be the logical conclusions of those points? I might be wrong but this is my attempt:

1. The amount of your knowledge doesn't matter if you are not creative (unless you aspire to be a search engine)
Have the wagon? Have the engine? Not creative? Too bad, someone else will invent the transportation of the next century.

2. Studying one area will increase the number of ideas you can get involving that area.
If you know a lot about cars then you are more likely to get an idea involving cars. Please be aware that I am not saying that knowledge in the area of cars will not be of use in another area. Cars need to be repaired which requires troubleshooting. Troubleshooting might come in handy in some other area.

3. You need both creativity and have knowledge to get ideas.
The number of ideas you can get increases with your knowledge and the number of ideas you will get increases with your creativity.

Let me elaborate point 2 and 3 a little bit. The number of possible combinations of your knowledge quickly surpasses the number of ideas you can conceivably get in a lifetime but by increasing your knowledge will increase your ability to get ideas formed to reach a particular goal or to solve a particular problem.

How creative you are will increase the chance that you actually get an idea which might or might not help you achieve a specific goal.

It is clear that there is no obvious reason to prefer creativity over knowledge and vice versa. I think my ability to reach any goal will be the best if I can increase my knowledge as much as possible while also increasing my creativity as much as possible.

That last sentence is the single reason I write this blog. I can safely say that I am not currently able to maximize those two things and I want to share my ideas on how to do that.

The value of ideas

2009-04-12T09:16:00.000-07:00

I'll start my blog off with something that is easy and probably obvious. Not because it's revolutionary but because it's fundamental.

Ideas are the essence of any activity because it is the only way to create a positive sum game from something that is usually random. Anyone who tries to achieve something can do so by the means of ideas. Not everyone who has ideas succeed but those that do not have ideas of how to achieve something will never succeed other than by the means of luck.

1. Have a goal, something you want to achieve
This is pretty simple as most individuals (or organisations for that matter) have a goal. It doesn't have to be a general goal for everything you ever want to do. Just a good, simple idea of what you want from your work or what you want a dinner with a few friends to be like.

2. Have an idea of how to achieve your goal
Sometimes having an idea of how to achieve something is the easiest thing in the world. If you invited people for dinner before you know what to do. Maybe you want something to be different which requires an idea. Maybe you never answered the question of what you want your work to be like and then you can't rely on reusing old ideas other than for recombination into new ideas.

3. Take action
This is pretty straight-forward. Don't get me wrong, it might be just as hard as having and idea. It's just that when you have the idea of what you need to do then you need motivation and structuring and there are plenty of useful ideas of how to get those things that you can use.

4. Fail or succeed depending on what the outcome of your actions were
This step is really what you had in mind when you set your goal. Whether you fail or succeed depends on your actions and possibly factors that you can't control. Your actions depend on your idea of how to succeed and this is why the idea process is vital to achieving any goal.

Summary:
Everything can't be achieved by ideas and related actions.

That which cannot be achieved with ideas and related actions depend solely on factors that you can't control.

Every individual must rely on ideas and actions or luck to achieve any goal.