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Show Your Workspace Some Love

Filed Under Motivation/Inspiration, Successful Blog | 5 Comments

I Don’t Read Your Desk

Messy Desk


Productivity.
A desk is like a garage — it’s where you keep your tools. It helps if it’s organized, but your car will run fine when it is not. But messy writing is a sign of messy thinking. It’s proof our ideas aren’t under control. No one wants to be behind the wheel with someone who can’t keep the car on the road.

The thing is it’s a whole lot easier to do clear focused thinking when we don’t see clutter all around us looking back. If we take a few minutes to straighten where we work, our thought come through more easily. Here’s a way to make work more motivating when you return Monday morning.

Friday’s Answer to a Motivated Monday

Finish your last work task early on Friday, so that you have time to complete this list. If you’re working late this week, do all you can to take a “last half hour” anyway. On Monday morning, you’ll be glad you did.

  • Put things done away.
  • Lay out things that still need attending to. Mark what needs to be done. Make a to-do list, if that’s your way.
  • Use the things you laid out to make a plan for next week. Decide what you will tackle first and what your three most important goals will be.
  • Order the Monday tasks by putting what you can get done fastest first. Do this for two reasons. You’ll quickly have a sense of accomplishment, and you’ll be able to pass on what you finished to someone else can take that piece to the next step.

Then consider the week closed, leave the work at the office, give your brain a break, and have a weekend. What a great way to remind yourself and everyone else that you can enjoy your job — head for the weekend with an office that looks like it could be in a magazine . . .

Whether you work in a building away from home or in your bedroom, it’s boost to your Monday to walk back into a space that’s ready to work in.

Don’t you think the way that we take care of ourselves shows in our work? Show your workspace some love. You’ll feel it back guaranteed.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

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Universal Thoughts

Filed Under Motivation/Inspiration, Successful Blog | 27 Comments

I've been thinking . . .

about the power of thoughts.

They say that what I think is the deciding factor in what the universe serves up to me. I can see the sense of that.

As I think, I see.

When I choose to focus on the brighter, smarter ideas and people, I seem to find them more.

When I’m sure of my direction, folks follow me. When I’m feeling insecure, folks challenge my ideas. It’s hardly quantum physics to calculate that why should be.

As I think, I feel.

When I’m certain that what I’ll be doing is going to turn out right, it always seems to . . . maybe that’s because I make it so. When I know I’m on the right track, it’s as if I touch a cloud to make the right things rain down

As I think, I am.

This weekend the universe is supporting every good dream.

I’m going to think it so.

What about you?

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Left-Brain, Right-Brain, Whole Brain Think

Filed Under Analysis, Motivation/Inspiration, Successful Blog | 25 Comments

Analysis and Synthesis

It’s no secret that our brains have two hemispheres or that the two work differently. Despite how we talk, people aren’t really right-brain thinkers or left-brain thinkers. Everyone uses both sides of their brain in everything that they do. Each hemisphere takes charge of certain specialized thinking.

What is managed by the left hemisphere of the brain?

  • action and response on the right side of the body
  • sequential and linear thinking — a, b, c, . . . 1,2,3
  • reading left to right
  • interpreting the meaning of text without context
  • analyzing details — drilling down into spreadsheets
  • knowing logic

What is managed by the right hemisphere of the brain?

  • action and response on the left side of the body
  • simultaneous thinking — That’s a math book. That’s newspaper.
  • reading right to left
  • interpreting the meaning of context
  • synthesis — the global view
  • knowing the world

People do have attributes that lean toward left-brain directed thinking or right-brain directed thinking. Here’s what Daniel Pink says about that in his book A Whole New Mind.

Call the first approach L-Directed Thinking. It is a form of thinking and an attitude to life that is characteristic of the left hemisphere of the brain — sequential, literal, functional, textual, and analytic. Ascendant in the Information Age, exemplified by computer programmers, prized by hardheaded organizations, and emphasized in schools, this approach is directed by left-brain attributes, toward left-brain results. Call the other approach R-Directed Thinking. It is a form of thinking and an attitude to life that is characteristic of the right hemisphere of the brain — simultaneous, metaphorical, aethetic, contextual, and synthetic. Underemphasized in the Information Age, exemplified by creators and caregivers, shortchanged by organizations, and neglected in schools, this approach is directed by right-brain attributes toward right-brain results.

Of course, we need both approaches in order to craft fulfilling lives and build productive, just societies. But the mere fact that I feel obliged to underscore that obvious point is perhaps further indication of how much we’ve been in the thrall of reductionist, binary thinking. Despite those who have deified the right brain beyond all scientific evidence, there remains a strong tilt toward the left. Our broader culture tends to prize L-Directed Thinking more highly than its counterpart, taking this approach more seriously and viewing the alternatve as useful, but secondary.

But this is changing . . .

What changes do you see? Are you using your right-brain talents more? Are you feeling less appreciated for your left-brain abilities?

–ME Liz” Strauss
Behind every successful business is an outstanding manager –The Perfect Virtual Manager.

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Thinking about thinking . . . and playing

Filed Under Motivation/Inspiration, Successful Blog | 15 Comments

I've been thinking . . .

about this quote

Too often, young artists paint before they think. Over the years, I have disciplined myself to think before I pain. When I see a paintable subject or interesting situation, I paint more than I see. I paint what is to be seen. I paint what is inside me. I personalize the scene, make it my own so that through my painting you and I, viewer and artist, can communicate. My goal is to create paintings that are a voice, not an echo — Charles Wysocki, Heartland from The 9 Rights of Every Writer

wispy dandelion

I’ve learned to think about what I write before I write. I know that when I do it’s so much more valuable. The words, the words I choose are chosen so much more carefully when I finally get around to deciding to choose them.

Thinking, trying on a thought, I let it live in me. Giving a thought time to breathe like a fine red wine sets the nuances out where I can see them. They’re like the wisps of a fall dandelion in the breeze floating against a blue sky background.

While I while away time letting thoughts go where they will go, my body takes a posture of relaxation. I breathe in ideas about whatever I’m letting myself think upon. So when I start to write I have a peaceful, deep understanding. I type slowly what I know intuitively about my ideas.

Today I was thinking about thinking about how a life might be wonder-filled if I were to take time to think before every important thing I ever do, especially playing.

Liz's Signature

_________

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Time to Spend and to Save

Filed Under Business Life, Community, Motivation/Inspiration, Successful Blog | 27 Comments

I've been thinking . . .

“Beginning in 2007, most of the United States begins Daylight Saving Time at 2:00 a.m. on the second Sunday in March . . ” This year that is March 11.

The clocks are about to change. I heard a bird yesteday. Soon it will be spring. I hope I get to see it. The tulips are my favorite.

My life has started speeding up. Gee, like it hasn’t been fast all along. Projects are reaching their launch. Big events are happening. SOBcon is one week. My son graduates from college the next. How can time go by faster than it already has?

Spring forward one hour — one hour less. I don’t need less. More might be useful.

Daylight Savings Time. Who is saving mine? I only know who is spending it. That would be me.

Sometimes, without thinking, I spend and save time simultaneously.

We’re on the porch in Massachusetts. My husband is fixing my glasses. My son smiled, “So, you finally found a use for him.”

We’re in the living room in Illinois. I wrote a poem for a kindergarten lesson. “You think you’re five, but you’re only four-thirty,” joked my husband.

I hear my father saying, “If you sleep on the floor, you’ll never have to worry about falling out of bed.”

My my older, older brother called on our 23rd wedding anniversary. “Tell your husband I said he chose wisely.”

When I was small, time was huge, unending, constantly thrusting me forward. But that’s not time, no, not really. Time’s not a moving, unbending force upon me.

Time is a paradox of meaningful or meaningless moments. We can lose track of it We can waste it or wait for our time to be over.

If we’re lucky we find that time is the one thing we can spend by living and save in memories..

Spring back and breathe.

I don’t need to save time, or find time or make more time in my life.

I need to spend more time that I can save as memories.

Liz's Signature
via letting me be
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