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Published by angeleyez1042 on June 1, 2008

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14 Ways to Brainstorm More Effectively

Published by angeleyez1042 on February 22, 2008

This article comes from HOW Magazine:

 

14 Ways to Brainstorm More Effectively

January 23, 2008
by Cailín Boyle

To help you ensure a productive creative session we consulted brainstorming facilitators Jim Ferry of Boston Innovation Group (B.I.G.) in Weston, MA, and Brody Hartman of Hartman Communications in San Francisco. The offered 14 tips for how to juice-up your next idea meeting:

Do your homework. Sometimes brainstorming sessions will be spontaneous, 15-minute spurts, where your group will churn out many ideas in a small amount of time. But when you’re going to be involved in more formal brainstorming situations, collect research and information ahead of time so you can have it at your fingertips during the session. Be like the proverbial Boy Scout—come prepared.

Construct a safe, creative environment. The brainstorming setting should be a place where people are comfortable speaking their minds.

Create a level playing field. Enable brainstormers to leave their other tasks behind. Consider beginning with breathing exercises or stretching. This physical activity separates what’s happening in the brainstorming room from what was going on when the team members left their offices.

Focus. Brainstorming is not just a process of “coming up with some wild ideas.” The group’s target must be well-defined. “When you have a task to develop a new food, you may get blank stares from the room,” Ferry explains. “Refine that task to developing a new snack food, and people start to generate ideas. If you narrow the task even further to a new snack food for kids, the room starts to buzz with talk of dinosaurs and interesting shapes. You’d never get to dinosaurs unless you limited the task to a well-focused, manageable target.” While the discussion wanders, keep an eye (and ear) on its direction, so you can control where it’s heading.

Have the right people in the room. Invite staff members who aren’t too close to the problem being discussed. Make sure someone represents the client—either employees of the client company or someone from your team who is tuned into the client’s needs and desires. Remember, the room shouldn’t just be packed with creative types. Throw some noncreatives into the mix, too. Sometimes a firm’s accountants or administrators are closet creatives who might blossom in an environment where they can exhibit their latent creativity.

Listen to what people say. Remember that your brainstorming members aren’t simply designers or project directors or administrators; they’re also pianists and painters and parents and travelers and readers. Draw on the group’s richness; tap into their nonwork world. Great ideas can spring from topics of interest to them.

Watch the quiet people. Often they’re the ones jotting down notes on paper. Their ideas might be great, but their reserved personalities might prevent them from speaking up.

Remain objective. When you’re running the session, you can’t be involved in the outcome. You’ll get nowhere if you keep tripping over your own ego or personal agenda.

Eliminate negative thinking. Welcome all ideas and extinguish any attempt to brand an idea as “bad.” Brainstormers need to feel like they can share whatever idea comes to mind without having to defend it or fear it will immediately be shot down. Don’t let members get too judgmental too fast. Squelch responses like “We can’t do that” or “We tried that eight years ago and it failed.” Those comments stymie creativity. Record all ideas and move on. Don’t allow too much “airtime” for any person on the team.

Actively manage the group. Members should remain present for the entire session (no coming and going) and be mutually committed to maintaining group energy.

Offer creative distractions. Incorporate a variety of exercises that promote creative thinking. Stimulate the brainstormers with magazines, books and visual aids relevant to the task at hand.

Consider a change of location. Off-site meetings can liberate people’s minds, eliminating their persistent thoughts of email and voicemail messages piling up. Keep in mind, however, that the most important element in the room is energy. A poor location can be overcome if the energy level in the room is maintained.

Remember the task at hand. The objective of a brainstorming session is to get ideas to the surface. Productive sessions usually result in the raw material that must later be molded and crafted into shape. Rarely do final ideas come from the brainstorming session.

Review the results at a later date. For ideas to work, they must survive more than one brainstorming session. An idea that sounds brilliant one day might appear trite the next. Allow time for the soak-in process, when members can consider an idea from a fresh perspective in a more removed environment.

CREATIVE BLOCKS: From Me to You

Published by angeleyez1042 on December 28, 2007

Do you ever be in the middle of a design and all of a sudden have a creative block? Well, that has happened to me. I am in the middle of design postcard sized flyers for Chili’s here in Brentwood. They want 3 flyers but I have only designed 2 so far. I cannot think of anything for the last one. After some searching I found an article about creative blocks.

Derek Powazek listed some of the things to do to chop the block:

• Go away. If you’re spinning your wheels in front of the computer at 2pm, you’ll probably still be spinning at 5pm, only then you’ll be 3 hours angrier. Short-circuit this by getting up and heading out the door. Run errands, walk the dogs, walk around the block - anything. Just leave. You won’t be doing any good in front of the computer anyway. Getting yourself into a completely different physical space can help move your mental space.
• Change mediums. If you’re getting no joy in pixels, change to paper. Try designing a site with just office paper and a Sharpie. If you’re bored with your digital camera, get a film one. Sometimes bumping into a new set of constraints will free you up in other places.
• Log off. Take your modem, unplug it, and put it in a closet. The internet may be the greatest self-publishing medium ever invented, but it’s also the greatest time-suck to ever exist. Sometimes connecting with your inner voice means disconnecting from the rest of the world.
• Bust that cycle. When you’re feeling overwhelmed with your usual process, pick one habit and change it. It doesn’t have to be a bad habit, like quitting smoking. It could just be waking up at a different time, listening to new music, going to new places for lunch. Breaking a cycle can lead to a feeling of renewed possibilties and excitement. (Thanks for this one, Ze!)
• Stop multitasking. I have my tasks divided into two groups: half-brain tasks and full-brain tasks. Watching TV, skimming the latest news, doing the dishes … these are half-brain tasks. I can do more than one at once. But writing stories, researching stuff, hardcode design … these need the full brain. If I’m getting nowhere, it may be because I’m trying to stuff a full-brain task into a half-brain time slot. (On the other hand, sometimes with a design challenge, I’ve found that doing it with half a brain can help me stop over-thinking it. Experiment with your tasks to see how you’re most productive.)
• Quit. That’s right, quit. The worst thing you can do to creativity is give it a deadline. Make a complete and total decision to stop the project. Dump it from your mind. Think about something else. Anything. Then go to bed. This is like zapping your RAM. You may just wake up in the morning with a brand new idea - one that’s not too different from where you were trying to go in the first place - once you take the pressure off.

I am going to use one of these tips so I can get my creative juices flowing again.

See ya!

Why do we procrastinate? Let us count the ways:

Published by angeleyez1042 on December 3, 2007

Leah Henderson, a life and business coach with Henderson & Associates here in Atlanta, provided some insight to this dirty little secret. She says that procrastination keeps us from doing the things that we want to accomplish and steals opportunities.
1. Lack of vision. If you don’t know where you really want to end up, then it’s difficult to get started on a journey. Set a goal or a “vision” and then plan the “baby steps” to get you there. Start with a general outline or checklist–it doesn’t have to be rocket science; keeping it simple is key.

2. Distractions. We wake up in the morning, get to the office and get preoccupied with “Gotta make coffee. Gotta check my messages. Oh look! More email!” We look at what is right in front of us instead of thinking intentionally, “This is what I want to accomplish today.” Having a list of things that need to be accomplished and doing them in some sort of order helps put order in our lives. Label them “H” for high-priority (must be done first, “M” for medium-priority (must be done before end of business), and “L” for low or “can be done another day”.

But be aware of making lists to put off what you really need to be doing, like filling up your Outlook with the things you need to be doing. Before you know it it’s time for lunch. People have a tendency to get in the rut of writing “lists” FOR lists.

3. Fear of Getting It Wrong and Lack of Confidence. Often times people will have the ambition to get the task done, but they don’t know how. If you don’t have the skills that you need, then acquire those skills. If you allow fear of not being adequate get in your way, your imagination can take over and before you know it, you can talk yourself out of being competent in any area of your life.

Say you’re looking for a new job. You have a portfolio with all your marketing brochures and catalogs you’ve helped put together throughout the years, but employers are asking you to email your samples as PDFs. You’re not a designer, you don’t have a scanner or Acrobat, so you just keep putting the task off rather than go ask someone for help or go to Kinko’s and have them put your things on disc. If you need help, just ask and get the ball rolling.

4. Indecision. It is a cousin of “getting it wrong”. Most of the time when people can’t decide how to get something accomplished, it is often because they haven’t tested their ability to make a good decision or remember making a wrong decision and don’t want to repeat it. Most decisions are not life and death. We seem to handle life and death decisions just fine. It is the “should this logo be red or purple?” that occupies the space in our minds.

5. Boring tasks. Some tasks are boring. Period. Get over it. If you put off a boring task, it grows when you go to sleep. The next day you have “Boring Task X 2”. Remember why the boring tasks need to be done. You don’t want to ruin your credit, so you have to pay your bills on a certain day. Your company likes to know you’re out visiting clients, so you have to document things in your database.

6. This task is overwhelming! I just don’t have the time! When a task is overwhelming or you feel that it will take too much time “right now”, then you need to break the task into smaller chunks. If you wanted to design your own website, you could break it down into time chunks. “I’ll work on this every Wednesday from 3 – 5 in the afternoon and Friday morning from 9 – 11 am” until it’s accomplished. You don’t have to do it all in one shot. If you don’t have 2 hours like that, then make it even more doable for yourself by putting it into 15 – 20 minute chunks.

7. I don’t have a “real” deadline, so I should get something else done. Many people procrastinate because they may have their own personal deadline, but no one to answer to or be accountable to. Fiction writers who do not have a publisher yet fall into this category. Set your own deadlines, block out time in your calendar and make an appointment with yourself. Ask a friend or colleague to do weekly checks with you to make sure you’re staying on task. Or join a writer’s group or graphic design association so you have to show off new pieces on a regular basis.

Henderson says, “Procrastination both drives us to those places where there are tasks to accomplish and at the same time keeps us from doing the tasks that we put off until tomorrow.” Time is precious. If we are lucky enough to be getting paid for doing the work we love, embrace all the tasks, large and small. Don’t put off projects because of feeling overwhelmed—just jump in!