« Seeing What's There | Main | Ask for What You Need »

May 1
Fixes to Help You See Better
  • Take time outs to reassess. Take a break to make sure that you’re working on the right thing and spending the right amount of time on it.
  • Take time outs to reward yourself for focusing. If you’re on a roll, don’t quit, but if you need a breather, give yourself that reward.
  • Have a pad and pen ready to jot down ideas. That way you won’t lose ideas, you can get back to work quickly, and you can take time later to develop the ideas.
  • Contrariness: get in the habit of noticing when you’ve made a statement to yourself and make the opposite statement to see what you can learn (for example, if you were watching the people in black in the video, it’s more likely you would’ve seen the gorilla, since it was black too).
  • Have tasks written down so you can refer back to the list, not your memory. If you insist on relying upon memory, one of those balls is going to bonk you on the head.
  • Take a break to tell someone else what you’re doing; a coworker, colleague or friend. Sometimes just hearing yourself talk makes your own ideas clearer to you.

related entries


7 Comments/Trackbacks




» Ways to see better from Lifehacker
The Productivity Goal weblog lists a few behaviors and exercises that will help you see more clearly as you work. A couple of my favorites: Have a pad and pen ready to jot down ideas. That way you won't lose... [Read More]

Claire, these are excellent tips. I am FLABBERGASTED that of all the thousand-plus souls who moseyed through here, NOBODY bothered to leave any kind of comment. That irks me to no end! Let's figure this one out - are people just not aware of how to comment at our blogs, or are they all afraid because of our awesome expertise ;P, or what? Let's talk about this some more and get some ideas rolling. There should have been at least 50 comments here already, I think.

Hi - well first to the site via Lifehacker and I really like your tips; I do most of them already but 'tell someone else' (kinda like Mcall's Mystic Monitor I guess) and 'contrariness' are new to me - I'll give them an go and see what happens.

Easton,
Perhaps I need to ask more questions, specific ones, in my posts to get that ball rolling. I will try that.

blah,
Thanks for the compliment! What is McCall's Mystic Monitor? It sounds fascinating, but I couldn't find any info about it on Google.

Good idea, Claire - I should try that, too.

» Productive Contrariness from ProductivityGoal
One of the tips I gave in an earlier post was about contrariness. I suggested taking a statement you make to yourself and telling yourself the opposite instead. It’s a way to give yourself a “whack on the side of the head”... [Read More]

Thanks. A very thoughtful and well-done post

submit a trackback

TrackBack URL for this entry:

post a comment

Name, Email Address, and URL are not required fields.





Comment Preview

« Seeing What's There | Main | Ask for What You Need »

Advertise

Related Resources

sponsored ads



subscribe


Prefer Email?
Subscribe below-

Enter your Email:


Powered by FeedBlitz What's this?

Current News

Support This Blog

My site was nominated for Best Business Blog!

business social media

Use these fast growing business social media sites to promote your business, feature your products, spotlight your business leaders, create links, and drive traffic back to your company site, all for free!

BIZZlogos - Add your logo - free link to your site
BIZZphotos - Add photos of your products and people
BIZZprofiles - Submit your profile and build your online visibility
BIZZspotlight - Spotlight your business with free links
BIZZvideos - Videos about businesses, products and business people.
BIZZbites - "Digg" for Business - Submit your articles and posts

know more media network

View Network Map

Network Feed List (OPML)

Know More Media Network
Feed


we support unitus

PRWeb

Influencer



ProductivityGoal is a member of the Know More Media network of business related blogs.

Here are some current headlines from some of our business publications:

ProductivityGoal

CallCenterScript

AdHurl

TheBizofKnowledge

LandingTheDeal

CustomersAreAlways

HealthCareVox

BrainBasedBusiness

TheInsurancePolicy

MarketingBlurb