Critical Skill 3: Fluency: with Ideas

April 9, 2006 by Liz

Stop Not Having Ideas

The first part of fluency with ideas is having them–LOTS of them. There she goes again. What is she talking about? She might have lots. Right now I’d be happy with one.

The trick is get to learn how to stop not having lots of ideas.

That’s not a typo. You can stop not having ideas.

Open the Valve

Ideas are being stimulated constantly in your subconscious so often and at such a rate that, if you let them all in, you wouldn’t be able to pay attention to anything else. You would literally be aware of stimuli that you have no need for, such as the feel of your shoes on your feet or the chair that you’re sitting on. That’s why we come equipped–at no extra charge–with a filtering unit, a valve-like screening device at the base of our brains–the Reticular Activating System (RAS). The RAS allows us to filter out most of that unwanted stimuli. It serves as a closed door allowing only life-skill information into our consciouness. Unfortunately with the door closed we don’t have access to some great ideas.

The good news is that the RAS can be trained. Firemen can make it let through the sound of the fire alarm. You can can use it to access things you forget that are still in your brain– great ideas when you put them together again. Ron Daugherty offers some ways to expand and explore your ability to open the RAS in his article, Understanding the Mind: 5 Keys to a Writer’s Creativity.

With Access Comes Fluency

With a little practice you’ll be able to access more and more ideas. Seriously, believe that they’ll come. Relax and make room for them, and they will. Getting them is just the first step toward fluency with ideas. To follow a language metaphor, the ideas are just your vocabulary. Now you have to be able to use them–pull ideas to match three basic scenarios. Here are ways you can practice to build up your fluency.

Brainstorming wild lists. When you have a few minutes waiting in traffic, pick an everyday object such as a plate. See whether you can come up with 25 things you might do with that object, silly or otherwise. As blogger, you should be pretty good at this. After all bloggers know a thing or two about making lists. Don’t edit. Be as wild and creative as you can. When you reach 25, try for another 10.
Freewriting. When you’ve got a few minutes and some paper and pencil, write without stopping about a simple pleasure, such as drinking coffee or running. Explain all of the impacts and outcomes it’s had on your life. Try to write 15 minutes without stopping.
Problem solving. The next time you or your child has a problem don’t begin to address it until you’ve identified at least five solutions. Not every solution needs to be doable or practical, but all of them need to fix some aspect of the problem, using facts that you know. Allow for an outrageous solution or two. Outrageous solutions often lead to extremely solid ones, once the outrageous solutions have been talked about. Think through what the impact of trying every solution would be and name all of the possible outcomes that could occur if you tried each one.

If you want to be truly future skilled, you’ll do each of these things verbally and in writing too.

Reading, Writing, Listening and Speaking the Language of Ideas

The more you practice with your vocabulary of ideas. The more fluent in the language of ideas you will be. That means you’ll not only be good at speaking and writing your own ideas. You’ll also be good listening and reading other folks’ ideas too. You’ll get really quick at telling a great idea from a loser when someone else offers one.

Imagine the time and money a business might save when they know you can tell a solid idea from pipe dream that just sounds really good. AND that you can explain in writing how you know. Now there’s a concept on which you could promote your business and yourself. That would be an added value idea plus.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Cool Designs April 2006

April 8, 2006 by Liz

Successful Blogs Look Successful

Spring is time we think of spring cleaning. I’ve been thinking it was time to show off some of the folks who add to the wonder and beauty of the blogosphere. So here’s the first in a showcase of great blog designs. As I said last December, successful bloggers are constantly trading ideas and talking about things. Design is always a topic folks like to discuss.

As always, click the screenshots to get a closer look.

You’ll never convince me that no one’s listening when Yas, CFrederick, Lindsay, Bocker, and Karsten talk. They bring together ideas, information, and design as news. They’re always thinking and creating.

Veerle’s blog was sent to me as a recommendation by two people. She not only knows her stuff. She knows how to make it look easy and fun.

Brother Jones is the blog of Brother Jones Artworks. This page features the art of illustrator, Dennis. Visit the site to see Don and Doug, and the Brother Jones Band too.

Tom Coates, who works for Yahoo, masterminds this intelligent, playful blog. The minimalist design pulls my eyes right into it. I love the best use of highlights I’ve seen on the Internet. AND he’s more fun to read than those serious Google guys.

Design Melt Down is the Studio/Working Blog of Patrick McNeil. It has pages of information and tutorials for folks to browse and learn from, as well as outstanding design.

It’s a magazine. It’s a blog. It’s a walk through an art museum in your living room that feels like a tour through a toy store. Pingmag is like no other blog and uses design to let you know.

Blogs are getting further and further from the look of the printed page. Take your time. Get ideas for your own blog. Now’s the time to spruce up, clean up, paint, polish, and promote your blog again. Give your brand new curb appeal. Take a lead from the pros.

If you don’t love what you see here, I plan on doing another feature like this, so e-mail me a link to where I might find some other great design at lizsun2@gmail.com.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Related articles
More Blog Designs to Discuss

Thanks to Week 24 SOBs

April 7, 2006 by Liz

Successful and Outstanding Bloggers

Let me introduce the bloggers
who have earned this official badge of achievement,

and the right to call themselves
Successful Blog SOBs.

I invite them to take a badge home to display on their blogs.

They take the conversation to their readers,
contribute great ideas, challenge us, make us better, and make our businesses stronger.

I thank all of our SOBs for thinking what we say is worth passing on.
Good conversation shared can only improve the blogging community.

Should anyone question this SOB button’s validity, send him or her to me. Thie award carries a “Liz said so” guarantee, is endorsed by Kings of the Hemispheres, Martin and Michael, and is backed by my brothers, Angelo and Pasquale.

Want to become an SOB?

If you’re an SO-Wanna-B, you can see the whole list of SOBs and learn how to be one by visiting the SOB Hall of Fame– A-Z Directory . Click the link or visit the What IS an SOB?! page in the sidebar.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Have Failure of the Imagination

April 5, 2006 by Liz

Plan B No–Fail Fast and Move On

The meeting had just started. We were talking to the company’s major owner-partner. We had laid out the framework of how we would turn the company around. The partner turned to the company president and said, “And do you have a Plan B, in case this doesn’t work?”

I said, “If you don’t mind . . . ” and asked if I might edit his question. We knew each other well, and so he said, “Sure.”

My new version was, “Is the plan flexible enough that if you find one or more parts not working, you can adjust your plan and keep moving forward?”

. . .

After the meeting, the owner-partner queried what my thinking was in editing his question. I said that it was two-fold: that how he thought affected our thinking and that to talk of Plan Bs at that juncture was to give permission to fail at Plan A before we’d even tried to make it work.

I really don’t like assumptions that Plan A has a chance of failing. I really don’t like Plan Bs for that reason. I don’t mind failures. I like to see them coming, fail fast, and move on.

Failure of Imagination

I actually seek out failures of imagination. I have them on purpose often. This is not a literal “my imagination does not work” kind of thing. It is my imagination conjuring all kinds of failure situations.

I use imagined failures to get ideas for writing and for all kinds of problem solving. Here are a variety of situatons and ways you might use failures of imagination to bring you to a stronger outcome.

Getting Ideas for Writing

Ask questions such as these.

Personal Failures as Ideas

Questioning Other Folks’ Possible Failures
Why is this person not qualified to teach, say, or do this?
What would happen if I actually tried this?
Where’s the flaw in this argument?
What information is missing from this report?
What failures are in the famous person’s past?
How many failures preceeded this invention?
How long before this gadget breaks down?

Designing a Process

Ask questions such as these.

On an Interview or With a Client

Ask questions such as these.

On Your Brand Identity

Ask questions such as these.

On Promoting Your Blog

Ask questions such as these.

Positive Negatives

No need to jump to the negatives. Instead, use them to keep your life positive. The trick is not to focus on the unproductive, but to seek out unwanted outcomes to find fun, positive ways to avoid them. Think of imagining failures as building a safety net for the tight rope walk that is your brand and your business.

Having a failure of imagination can be a fantastic resource for protecting your business. It’s so much more fun than working out a Plan B that, if you think about it, could easily have the same failure opportunities as Plan A does.

Can you have a failure of imagination? Are you positive or negative?

–ME “Liz” Strauss

New Flat Screen–I Can See the Words!!!

April 2, 2006 by Liz

Should I Have Let the MSM Provide Tools?

I guess when you’re going blind, you don’t really notice, especially when dyslexia runs in the family. Still it was getting hard to miss the fact that I was correcting mistakes over and over. Then my editor–yes, I have an editor–was finding even more. I had started to think of my writing as chili–better on the second day.

Cash flow can be a bit of a problem, especially when a most deserving son is wowwing them at an expensive school called Georgetown. Laptop blogging was my only answer–that and squinting–until I knew I was doing harm to myself and to my brand. Credibility means a lot to this writer. How could I promote my blog, my business, and my brand, when I preach one thing and deliver another?

All of you have been most gracious and forgiving of the repeated repeated repeated and ~~mispelled~~ misspelled words that have been the bane of my writing–your reading–existence. Alas, I was looking like what Tom Glocer and Trevor Butterworth would call a “citizen journalist.” Ew. I lacked the tools for these over-used eyes to see the words. Perhaps I should have spoken to Tom and Trevor about their suggestion that the mainstream media provide tools and editors? Hmmmm. No.

New Computer, New Flat Screen

Instead, waited and waited until this past week when–my tax return check arrived and THEN within what was a matter of minutes a new desktop with a wonderful flatscreen display arrived in my office. And . . .

My God! I Can Actually See the Words!!!

My thoughts on why this took so long

Only my family comes before my readers.
This new computer was an investment in my brand.
I put my brand at risk by not doing it sooner.
This is a textbook example of managing to make a decline happen.

Don’t be me. Spend the penny and save your brand. Not the other way around.

I finally followed my own branding advice. At last, I have fixed the problem. In my opinion, far later than I should have. As my friend, Nancy, often reminds me, “Liz, sometimes you’re so fast, and sometimes you are sooooo slooooow.”

My apologies to everyone who has read through the errors and skipped the multiple corrected posts in their feeds. Hopefully, this new purchase make my visual weakness a little closer to irrelevant. You should also know that transitioning computers is incredibly easier and way less painful than it was a mere six months ago.

BIG CHESHIRE CAT GRIN!!!

I’m thinking of taking a typing class next. Do you think that might be a good idea?

Smiles,
ME “Liz” Strauss

Thanks to Week 23 SOBs

April 1, 2006 by Liz

Successful and Outstanding Bloggers

Let me introduce the bloggers
who have earned this official badge of achievement,

and the right to call themselves
Successful Blog SOBs.

I invite them to take a badge home to display on their blogs.

muddy teal strip A

They take the conversation to their readers,
contribute great ideas, challenge us, make us better, and make our businesses stronger.

I thank all of our SOBs for thinking what we say is worth passing on.
Good conversation shared can only improve the blogging community.

Should anyone question this badge’s validity, send him or her directly to me. This award comes with a full “Liz said so” guarantee. It is endorsed by Kings of the Hemispheres, Martin and Michael, and backed by my brothers, Angelo and Pasquale.

Want to become an SOB?

If you’re an SO-Wanna-B, you can see the whole list of SOBs and learn how to be one by visiting the SOB Hall of Fame. Click the link or visit the What IS an SOB?! page in the sidebar.

–ME “Liz” Strauss