Thinking-Outside-of-the-Box Archives - Page 2 of 3

Critical Skill 6B: 5+1 Ways to a Best-Fit Niche for YOU & the Market

July 17, 2006 by Liz

Finding that Ellusive Niche

Everyone talks about finding their niche, but I haven’t heard much about how to do it. How do you do a niche that fits? Finding a niche is Critical Skill 6 in what I call The 10 Skills Most Critical to Your Future. Once you can find hidden assumptions, you’re on your way to finding hidden niches.

Finding a niche that fits you and the market takes involvement, patience, and self-awareness — you need to know all points of view to get the perfect fit, and nothing less will do.

That best-fit niche is a tiny space where you’ll live, work, and relate to people. You’re going to have to like it there, but so are folks who don’t even know you. How do you find the niche that works for you and attracts an audience? [Read more…]

Critical Skill 6A: Five Tools for Finding Faulty Assumptions

July 15, 2006 by Liz

What Is the Premise Behind your Thinking?

At the time I was an Executive Editor. The project was simple. Build a binder of about 300 pages. I’d probably built four times that many books already. For a rush job, this one should be a piece of cake.

We made the bookmap. We went through the usual steps. We got the pages. Got the binders. Got everything ready for assembly. That’s when we faced our hidden assumption.

We’d assumed that Binders go together exactly like books do.

They do except in one important way. Books don’t have those tab dividers. Our tiny assumption caused a major, stressful, and immediate problem. The first divider belonged between pages 23 and 24. So? [Read more…]

A Silly Left Right Brain Test

June 9, 2006 by Liz

Here’s a Fun Test

Here’s a fun test on right and left brain thinking with only a few questions. If you know this stuff you can easily skew it. I tried not to, but I did anyway. We know that I am very right brain. But I also have left brain qualities. I won’t give you my results before you take the test.

Have some fun with it, but don’t plan your life on the results. Click on the title below to try it out.

We all use both sides of our brain and we can develop the side that we don’t use.

–Me “Liz” Strauss

Knowing How People Think — As a Business Tool

June 8, 2006 by Liz

Creative Logical

Hardly anyone is right brain or left brain only. Some of us lean heavily one way or the other.The side favored by most people is the left-brain. It’s also the side that schools spend time developing. Most of us, however, use both sides of our brain when we need them.

Here are some interesting facts about the brains of men and women.

Men have more brain cells than women–about 4% and 100 grams more.
Women have more dendritic connections between their brain cells.
Women have a larger corpus collusum, which is the organic network between the left and right brain hemispheres.This means women have a faster data transfer pipeline between the two sides.
For most men, the left side is their dominate side.
For most men, language skills are only in their dominate side. However, more women seem to develop language skills on both sides.

Different not better is the key here.

Knowing about Thinking

We all have brains. It’s easy to assume that all brains workthe same like legs and arms do, but that’s just not so. Still we tend to think that people who think the way we do are smart . . . and those who don’t, well, they’re not. [Read more…]

Right Brain Creative? Business Needs You

June 7, 2006 by Liz

Brain-Left What?

I won’t go crazy here on scientific theory, but it goes like this. Experiments have shown that each side of the brain seems to work on different types of thinking.

Left brain thinking includes:thinking that is logical, sequential, rational, analytical, objective, and looking at parts. Right brain thinking includes: thinking that is random, intuitive, global/holistic, synthesizing, subjective, looks at the whole.

To say it in other ways, people who prefer left-brain activities deal well with statistics, analysis that drills into data, information, language, and like to build from the bottom up. Right brain thinkers focus on aesthetics, arts and music, big-picture ideas, patterns, geometry, and creativity. and like to build from the top down. Almost everyone does both. Almost everyone has an inate preference.

Most schools are highly left-brain places, focused on academic subjects.

What does this have to do with business? [Read more…]

Ideas When I Get My Hair Cut

June 4, 2006 by Liz

Ideas Everywhere

Yesterday, I got a haircut. While I was waiting I looked through a magazine and took notes. I took notes on articles and on advertisements. When I was through one magazine, I had complete ideas for four blog posts — not counting this one — and 27 phrases that I thought might spark ideas later.

Not bad for just sitting around waiting my turn.

I hate actually reading those magazines in places where I get my hair cut, and there’s never time to get into a good book.

–ME “Liz” Strauss