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From: The Idea Accelerator: How to solve problems faster using Speed Thinking by Dr Ken Hudson
In the traditional cube job, time is money; bum in seat equals cash in bank. If you’re not inspired by your job this can lead to some pretty chronic time wasting habits (feed reader anyone?).
When you’re self employed and your income is tied directly to your effort (whether it’s cranking through billable work or cracking new product markets), productivity takes on new meaning.
If you measure productivity by time committed, a nifty time tracking application like Toggl is great.
If you measure productivity by progress towards your goals, these elegant trackers for freelancers and small business might be for you.
Left brainers are logical, detail focussed, emotionally controlled, systematic, into techniques, time conscious, pattern seekers. Left brainers in stress tend to try harder and push through, becoming mechanical and tense.
Right brainers are intuitive, big picture focussed, spontaneous, imaginative, into rhythm and application, relationship conscious, flow seekers. Right brainers in stress tend to act without thinking and feel overwhelmed, becoming emotional and distant.
We rarely fit into any one box but it’s fun to play, isn’t it?
These three tests might give you something to think about - or just be a fun way to pass five minutes.
You gotta love this book just from its title: Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything (Levitt & Dubner, 2005). These articles, and studies, and books, and journals following the trend, are addressing the implications of a globalised economy increasingly founded on the exchange of intangibles. That’s one of the reasons everyone is crazy about brands and branding, the whole love-marks thing. And that’s why we find perfectly rational economists talking about sumo wrestlers and drug gangs.
The equation of classical economics, that markets will always seek equilibrium between demand and supply, only works when we’re all making rational choices all the time. And we don’t, we just don’t. Tag something in your product range with the word ‘FREE!’ and see what happens.
In A Whole New Mind, Daniel Pink lists Play as one of the key competencies we will need to thrive in the emerging conceptual age. Pink quotes Pat Kane, author of the Play Ethic, “Play will be to the 21st century what work was to the last 300 years of industrial society — our dominant way of knowing, doing and creating value”(p185).
At the 2008 Serious Play conference, designer Tim Brown talked about the powerful relationship between creative thinking and play — with examples you can try at home. See it on TED. (If you haven’t discovered TED yet, be warned - it’s addictive!)
