Many pop psychologists divide mental work into "right brain" and "left brain" functioning. The right brain is supposed to be the holistic, intuitive, creative, emotional side. The left brain is supposed to be the logical, analytical, verbal side. This division was...
In the last blog post, I pointed out that when you struggle there is a fact that needs to be accepted. In a post a month ago I explained that the way you accept facts is that you factor that fact into your thinking, your expectations, and your planning. This leaves...
Perhaps the most important lesson I've learned in life is to treat struggle as an alarm that warrants your immediate, full attention. By "struggle," I mean "to proceed with great difficulty and effort." [Merriam-Webster] You struggle because the task is difficult...
About Brainstorming "Brainstorming" means systematically generating a large number of candidate ideas for some purpose, usually to solve a problem. Brainstorming works because one idea triggers another. A "bad" idea, when considered seriously without censoring, can...
A friend once told me about a man he knew who never interrupted. Call him the super listener. You could go to this super listener for business advice, and he would sit and listen to you as you talked and talked, never interrupting. Then when you were finished...
A member of the Thinking Lab came to a consult the other day to discuss a situation from work that was bothering him. I blithely suggested he needed introspective work — meaning he needed to identify the deep rational values at stake underlying his feelings. I suspect...
Realists point out that if you want to live in the world that exists, you need to accept facts. Idealists point out that you can change the world that exists — if you take the appropriate action. These two perspectives needn’t conflict.
I had a long talk with a Thinking Lab member the other day. He was concerned about his power of concentration, which wasn't all he wanted. He often got distracted and tired when he worked for a couple of hours. So I gave him my spiel on concentration, and thought I...
In recent years, I've incorporated ideas from The Twelve Week Year (by Brian Moran) into my routines, and found them very helpful. My top takeaway from this book is the idea of setting quarterly goals rather than annual or monthly goals. When you set goals you intend...
In a one-on-one coaching call a few months ago, Roger (not his real name) reported that he was being pulled off course into doing unimportant work. I asked him if he was taking a few minutes to plan the day in the morning. We had previously discussed how to plan the...
"A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step." The importance of taking small steps is well known. It's the most likely advice you'll get if you're bogging down on something. "Try taking a small step." And yet, I have often found this advice unhelpful. I'm...
"Change your smoke detector batteries when you change the clocks to or from Daylight Savings Time. Otherwise you'll forget." This little trick suggests a way to help you achieve some of the most important goals you'll ever set: your lifetime goals. Your lifetime goals...
Mark Murphy has a great short article titled "Don't Make Constructive Criticism so Soft That People Miss Your Message." In it, he criticizes the feedback sandwich, which I learned long ago in Toastmasters. It's simple: when you are giving feedback, first tell...
It is not enough to know that washing dishes is a good thing, that it helps you keep a clean kitchen. The dishes won't wash themselves. The same is true of every mental tool. No matter how long you have used a tool and no matter how convinced you are that it works,...
If you’ve been following me for a while, you’ve been introduced to “thinking on paper.” If not, you can read about it and get instruction on it with my Thinking Directions Starter Kit. With that as the context, a client sent me this note about "thinking on paper"...
In a recent newsletter I talked about transitioning to “neutral” when I was feeling resistance to doing chores. You can’t get yourself excited to do the chores, but if you can get to neutral, you’ll probably be willing to do it. Then I read a blog post by my friend...
When something's on your mind, talking over the issue with a friend is a real value. A good listener can gently encourage you to untangle your thoughts, without taking over the conversation and/or enforcing his own agenda. Wouldn't it be nice if you had a good...
"How did I wind up here again?" We've all had the experience: a bad situation keeps repeating itself. Maybe it's a confrontation with a particular person that keeps coming up and going badly. Maybe it's the feeling of being overloaded by routine administrative work...
Here’s another blog post from Peter Bregman: Quash Your Bad Habits by Knowing What Triggers Them. He's a terrific thinker on productivity and execution issues. What I like particularly about this article is that he documents the physical warning signs that Jeff was...
Imagine that every time you faced a daunting task, you could immediately hit on a way to make it easy and inviting to get started. I bet you can—if you make a "Maybe" list. The problem you have is a blob of overload and uncertainty in your mind. You know too much...
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