Knowledge workers: What’s your creative process?

January 9, 2012

Each artist has his or her unique way of working, a “creative process”.       A way of structuring work or actively seeking inspiration that helps the artist to get into the right headspace to create.   There’s no judgment about what the process is – it’s whatever works.

I’m not an artist, but I recently realized the value of allowing myself my own creative process for my work.   For example, I’m working on designing a course and what I find works well is to read the documents, make some notes and then go for a walk.   Taking a walk is not my break – it’s part of my working process.  When I go for a walk, my thoughts tend to flow and I get good ideas for my project.     Sitting at my desk, my thoughts tend to stagnate and good work doesn’t happen.

Although I’m an independent consultant and when I’m alone I can work any way I want, I had an idea of what work looks like and what it doesn’t.      It looks like sitting at a desk, typing, making notes.  It doesn’t look like going for a walk, or chatting over coffee with someone who is in a different industry – though these might be just the inspiration I need to move forward.    I’ve decided to stop judging my own creative process – I’m going to use what works and ditch what doesn’t!

What’s your creative process?

Here are some questions to get you thinking:

What do you think work looks like or should look like?

What helps and what doesn’t when you’re working?

Are there any ways of working that you’ve avoided, as you feel it doesn’t “look like work”?

Which of your preferred ways of working can you give yourself permission to do, even if they’re unconventional?

If you’re trying something new, is there anyone you need to communicate this to, so they know that you are working?

Final note:

I’d love to hear about your creative process for getting work done and if this entry has inspired you to do anything differently!

Doing Less to Achieve More

July 26, 2011

Tony Schwartz writes on the NY Times website (“The Personal Energy Crisis”) that “demand has finally begun to exceed our capacity. We’re facing an energy crisis, and this one is personal.” He mentions, as an example, a busy executive who has 1,000 unread emails and can’t ever imagine going through them. Tony’s solution is to take breaks and naps to be more productive during your working time. I agree this is important (I personally take several breaks each day), but it misses a key productivity idea: making better choices about what we’ll do and what we won’t do. Anyone who feels their current workload is unsustainable is not going to fix things by going for a walk at lunchtime. What I believe is needed is re-negotiation of commitments. Consider Pareto’s principle and how it applies to work: 80% of our results come from 20% of our efforts. What are some of the tasks and projects that seem unlikely to yield results? What can we let go of, postpone or delegate that will give us time to focus on important projects AND allow us to do quality work by taking breaks?

No more BlackBerry blinking red light!

December 7, 2010

Yesterday I was speaking to Judi Hughes of Your Planning Partners.   Judi helps small businesses to grow and a key skill when growing your business is being able to focus.  Distractions like emails and the blinking red light on your Blackberry can hamper productivity.  Judi told me it’s possible to turn off the blinking red light on a BlackBerry, which I had never considered.   Here’s how:

  1. Go to your RingTone Profile setting (the one where you change what kind of ring/vibrate that you want)
  2. Scroll down and click on Advanced
  3. Click into your Ringtone Profile
  4. Click on “Level 1 Messages”
  5. Click on “Repeat Notification” and change it from “LED Flashing” to “none”
  6. (Make sure that you do it for what is called “In Holster” and “Out of Holster”)

These steps were originally posted on Amelia Torode’s blog and here is the original post.    Thanks Judi and Amelia!  I’ve just implemented this and am glad to have removed one more distraction from my busy life!

What email folders do you find useful?

December 2, 2010

I’m not a big fan of using email folders.   I use Microsoft Outlook and prefer to move emails to the task function and then change the subject so I know exactly what to do rather than re-opening and re-reading a filed email.

There is one email folder that I find useful, which is “receipts”.   When I get an invoice or a receipt via email that has been paid, I put it in that folder so it’s easy to find later when I’m doing my expenses or accounts.

I know other people use email folders and as I’m always interested in new ways to improve productivity, I’d like to know what email folders others find useful.

Some examples that I’ve seen include folders labeled: “To Answer” “To Do” “To Read” “Newletters” and folders labeled by project.

Are email folders useful for productivity?  What folders do you use?  Does it ever get confusing, for example when an email can go into more than one folder?

Please add your comments below or send me a message and I’ll write about this again soon!

Stop re-reading your emails!

November 30, 2010

Move information out of your inbox to where it belongs

A lot of time is wasted by opening and re-opening emails because the information has not been stored in the right place.  Why are you keeping that email in your inbox?  Often it’s because the message requires one of the five following actions:

1. Move to calendar
2. Move to contacts
3. Do something
4. Reply
5. Store for later reference

Here are some suggestions for dealing with each situation:

1.  Move to calendar – if you simply click and drag the email from the inbox to the lower left of your screen where you see the box marked “Calendar”, you’ll create a new appointment with the same subject line and all the text pasted into the body of the appointment – you’ll have all of the information you need for that event.

2.  Move to contacts – click and drag the email to the contacts section in the lower left of your screen.  The contact name will be automatically populated, as will the email address field.  You can cut and paste other details from the email into the relevant fields in the contact entry.

3.  Do something – if this email is a reminder of a task, why not use the task function to track things you need to do?  Once again, you can click and drag the email to the task function.  Once you’ve done that, it can be helpful to change the subject line to a reminder of exactly what you need to do, so you don’t need to keep opening the item to see what’s next.  You can also give the item a due date if necessary.

4.  Reply – if it’s quick to reply, do it right away.  If it’s not possible to do it right away, consider creating moving it to the tasks function so you can prioritize it with your other activities

5.  Store for later reference – if I receive an email that contains information that I may want to use later, I’ll file it electronically and also make a reminder for myself using tasks so that I have a list of documents to read if and when I have time later.