creative thinking Archives - Work Less & Achieve More

October 30, 2019May 1, 2020

Know The Fatal Traps That Logical Thinking LOCKS You Into (And Ignore Them At Your Own Risk) Part 3

3. Thinking Big

A Powerful Strategy To Improve Your Efficiency

Most people are under the mistaken thought that to gain a big result you must be working on a big project. This sounds correct but the contrary is also very true. That is, it is possible to gain a huge result by working on small or even micro-tasks. I bet you are thinking, “This should be good as I don’t see how that could happen!” This is because this idea is counter-intuitive. Let me clarify my idea for you. Huge results will not come from working on any old small or micro-tasks, but a special breed of small or micro-task. These special tasks are the ones that will repay you again and again and again. This is very important as that is how these tasks make you super-efficient.

I’m talking about targeting work to improve how you do small or even micro-tasks that are repeated often. This could be weekly, monthly or even daily. Let me give you an example. Say you spend 30 minutes reading but you do this three times a day (90 minutes in total). Now if you could improve your reading speed and comprehension by 10% you would definitely improve your efficiency.

Imagine you spent 3 hours studying and practicing to improve your reading speed by 10%. In the scheme of things 3 hours once-off is small or even micro-task. To see what benefits you get from this one idea it is best to benchmark your work first. By that I mean to keep doing things the old way with your reading for three days. Each day count the amount of time you spend reading and exactly how often you do that. This will give you a benchmarked baseline to work out how much time and energy you have saved.

Compound Time Saved To Supercharge Efficiency Improvements

Don’t forget even if you are only saving around nine minutes per day that would be amazing over the full year. Let’s see how the numbers crunch below:

Time Saved With Reading Efficiency

Wow, that is a serious amount of time saved in one year. Remember you will keep saving because of this improvement for the rest of your life. Now you can see what I mean about targeting small or micro-tasks that are repeated often paying you back again and again and again. Take a look at the return on time invested figures below.

Return On Time Invested

Time Saved & Break-even Point

This table shows that while all the work is done upfront it only takes 4 weeks to break even. After that time, you will be reaping benefits each week for the rest of your life. Yes, that is my kind of pay-off. Some people can be put off from having to do all the work upfront when working on efficiency improvements. Think of it as a way that you are working your way to being able to cope much better with high workloads without feeling too much pressure or stress. If your job is one where you have periods with high workloads and other times where the workload is lower. The lower workload times are the ideal times to do these small tasks that will allow you to work more efficiently in periods of high workload.

Multiply Your Benefits

You are building on two fronts when you increase your efficiency. Firstly, you become more valuable to your current employer or any employer as you can achieve more in less time. Secondly, you are investing in a way to improve your future by cutting down on pressure and stress at work which will also help you to greater efficiency. There are real bonuses to being more efficient at work. That is a deep sense of satisfaction you will gain by raising your value to all around you. This, in turn, will allow you to enjoy your work more and become more engaged at work. Employers love fully engaged staff.

Start thinking small today to give yourself a far brighter future and you will be developing skills that are valuable to all employers. These new skills (in developing efficiency) are transferable to any role that you may take on it the future, especially in new industries that will develop in the future. This will also help to keep you employed when up to 40% of jobs are automated by 2030.

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Work Smarter Not Harder

September 30, 2019October 30, 2019

Know The Fatal Traps That Logical Thinking LOCKS You Into (And Ignore Them At Your Own Risk) Part 2

2. Focus Is On The Past, Not The Future

Know That Resistance To Change Is High

In business there is a great emphasis given to maintaining the status quo. This is one of the main reasons that there is a high resistance to change.

A McKinsey study found that seventy percent of all change programs fail to achieve their goals in large part due to employee resistance. Logical Thinking is ANALYTICAL, interested in where an idea came from.

That is a backward use of information or a RETROSPECTIVE VIEW. On the contrary, Creative Thinking is PROACTIVE, that is interested in where an idea might lead to, this is a forward use of information or PROGRESSIVE VIEW. This trait of Logic makes it work against us when we are trying to be innovative and come up with a new idea or method.

Magnetized To The Past

When we use Logic there are times it spirals us into patterns from our past and holds us back from discovering the possibilities of the future. As we spiral, the patterns of the past become more and more entrenched making it harder and harder to break free from them. This is part of the reason that so many change programs fail. People like the status quo as it means they don’t have to start over and learn new things like new procedures and policies.

Major resistance to change often arises when the rate of change becomes too fast. Change driven at a fast pace is very challenging and is a main cause of turbulence with staff. Sometimes higher levels of management will implement important changes without realizing that there have just been major upheavals delivered by the efficiency initiatives of lower level managers and supervisors. This will really strain the ability of staff to cope with change.

Make Staff Part of The Solution To Change

The way to break free of many of the problems of change is to arm staff with tools to assist them to cope. Creative thinking tools can be part of the solution. They provide us with a strong provocation which jerks us away from old patterns. Super simple creative tools can drive us to a very disciplined approach which is the key to making us work more effectively. When looking for a simple way to be more innovative try choosing a random word to help your team make new associations which are very effective and assist them to break free from old patterns. Try it out for yourself to see how useful it can be.

Ask staff to help build part of the solution. This will deliver much greater engagement to any changes that need to be delivered. That will really help staff get behind the changes rather than fight against them. It will make a world of difference and may just make the difference between a success or failure with the program. This does not mean that staff must assist in designing the program (which would be great if possible) but that they have some input in the best way to implement the program. As well as ways to smooth over the path to make implementation simpler and easier for staff. Remember acceptance by staff is the key to making any program not only work but work well and achieve the full potential.

Turning Staff Into Advocates

One of the keys would be to make sure staff are all trained well in the changes. This could include a buddy system where slower learners are paired up with fast learners. A second level to this is to carry the buddy system on once training has finished. Then back on the job pair the buddies up again for the first few shifts to make sure things learned in training are carried through onto the job. Once slow learners have mastered the changes, they will then become some of the best advocates for the changes.

There are stacks of other creative tools that one could choose from that will provide similar provocation to move away from current thinking (or patterns of the past). It is handy to have a range of creative thinking tools that deliver in different areas of our work. These are all designed to break through limitations of logical thinking in diverse situations. Creative thinking tools act like a template in that they are part of the solution (already created) and focus and guide our efforts so that we can become more productive.

The other fatal trap of logical thinking will be covered in another post soon.

July 5, 2019August 15, 2019

Why Creative Thinking Is A Mystery To Most Workers!

1. What is Creative Thinking?

2. Why is Creative Thinking Valuable To Worker?

3. How Creative Thinking Adds Value To Your Work!

1. What Is Creative Thinking? Definition and Meaning

A way of looking at problems or situations from a fresh perspective that suggests unorthodox solutions (which may look unsettling at first). Creative thinking can be stimulated both by an unstructured process such as brainstorming, and by a structured process such as lateral thinking.

2. Why Is Creative Thinking Valuable To Workers?

Creative Thinking techniques are designed to improve on logical thinking in different situations. They have been designed to take the weak points out of our thinking. Most importantly, as a large amount of time has gone into the clever design of creative thinking techniques they are able to save us time and effort in the long run. As they are based on a different way of thinking it is vital to keep an open mind when it comes to learning creative thinking techniques. Their counterintuitive nature will lead to valuable workflow improvements and insights that increase efficiency at work.

To highlight how creative thinking is capable to improve our work methods try answering the following questions:

When was the last time you thought about how you think?
Have you ever thought about your thinking process?
Have you ever designed a new (simple) process that takes advantage of your thinking style?
Have you thought about the limitations to your current thinking style?

If you answered NO to most or all of these questions you would not be alone. People have been relying on logical thinking for around 2400 years. There has been little change to thinking productivity in all these years. Creative thinking has been developed over the last 50 years and is based on finding methods to improve our thinking.

Creative thinking works very well on a few levels. Let’s take a look at one of these. Many creative thinking techniques are super simple yet very effective as they are based on provocation. That is a series of techniques designed to provoke us to think in a different way and easily break away from patterns of thinking which we have used in the past.

As an example, I am a toastmaster and have written many speeches to give at our meetings. I decided to write a new speech with a completely fresh style and message. I started out well but it did not take long and I found that I had fallen back into old habits . My speech sounded just like many that I had given in the past. This was easily solved when I heard a speech from another toastmaster on how he used a simple creative technique to provoke him to write a fresh and amazing speech each time. It seemed a little more work in the beginning but the result was far superior. The technique was to use a random word which we had to try to associate each element of our speech with.

“Creative thinking inspires ideas. Ideas inspire change” – Barbara Januszkiewicz

3. How Creative Thinking Adds Value To Your Work

I look at the Creative Thinking landscape, as a way to create a clear difference from other businesses or even staff members. The versatility that creative thinking brings to any individual is staggering. This is because there are literally dozens of creative thinking techniques already existing that are extremely effective in improving workflow and thinking style. More importantly, these techniques have been the product of tremendous thought to allow them to improve one or more specific work functions. Their brilliance is in the framework that strictly guides our thinking while leaving the result open to the flexibility to provide endless possibilities.

Try this simple creative exercise below to see how creativity works.

2 .. 5 … 9 …. 14 ….. 20 …… X

Can you figure out what X equals?

How did you go? How were you able to figure out what X equalled? If you said that you found a pattern then you were using logical thinking as it works on recognising patterns that we know from the past. The pattern was created by adding 3 to the first digit, 4 to the second, 5 to the third and 6 to the fourth. So X would equal 20 + 7 = 27. Logical thinking is fantastic for recognising and linking to patterns of the past. But it can hold you back when you want to create new and more creative answers to any challenges.

Did you notice the second pattern as well where each gap had one extra dot in it. If you did now you have crossed over to using one of the most valuable tools in creative thinking. It is the skill of being really observant. Simple yet effective. Developing a high level of observation will be a skill that will repay you handsomely for the rest of your life.

For example, high level observation skills could allow you to pick up what the most efficient staff are doing where you work. This would allow you to emulate their best work practices to improve your own working efficiency. Doing this could save you time and effort as well. That in turn would help you cope with high workloads and also lower stress levels.

I hope you have found this article helpful and that it will increase your interest in creative thinking. To build a better understanding of how to work less and achieve more please read the other articles on my blog.