Ideas Circus

Ideas Circus has moved!

2009-01-09T02:28:00.000-08:00

If you're subscribing to this blog or have just stumbled across it and are wondering where more recent entries are. They've moved to my main website.

You can read them at www.aydinstone.com

Or subscribe to the new feed here.

Many thanks,

Ayd

Now is Not the Time to be Sensible

2008-12-16T02:45:00.000-08:00

Being cautious is what causes slowdowns which lead to a run on the bank. The time when everyone wants to cling on to what they've got, to not take risks and bury heads in sand is exactly the time when you should get up and get out there.

We call the area around us where we feel safe our 'comfort zone'. This is where we retreat to when we feel under threat. But the answers to our problems are not to be found in our comfort zones. We have to step out and that means taking risks.

Creativity is all about taking risks. What happens if it doesn't work? What happens if I look foolish? The creative individual doesn't even ask those questions. Only a risk-averse, self-judging, low confidence loser even bothers to waste time worrying about such things.

Why? Because the creative winner knows that if the same path is followed, it will get the same results. And if the economic landscape is shifting, those results aren't even going to be as good as before. So doing the same (or less) is very, very bad.

"Oh, the phones aren't ringing". Why not try calling someone? Doing something different - actually trying to 'sell' for once (see quote at top of page) - actually doing some targeted measurable marketing - actually defining what your key problems are and working on solutions - improving service and quality. These are the things we need to be doing.

After all - if no-one else is doing it (including your competition probably) you'll have the playing field to yourself.

Being sensible is dangerous and deadly. It's boring. Being boring will destroy your business. No-one cares about you - they're too busy thinking about their own problems. Why should they look up from their own wonderfully delicious doom and gloom to see what you've got? They won't want to risk good money and time on boring and sensible - they won't even notice you.

But if you took the risk and stood out from the crowd and stopped talking about what you've got and what you do and started talking about other people and their pain and how you can solve their problems. What would happen then?

Perhaps you'll not only survive - but thrive. What a silly thing to do.

If you want something entertaining, motivational, unusual and highly relevant in today's climate for your conference or company training have a look at a clip here and visit my keynote page here.
Click here to read more about creativity.
Click here to read articles on creativity, design and branding.
www.aydinstone.com

The Genius of Oliver Postgate

2008-12-16T02:41:00.000-08:00

Oliver Postage died this month. His voice, instantly recognisable to millions of British children, harks back to a fairer, more generous, more innocent time. A time of wonder, of looking up to the nights sky and wondering about life on a small blue planet in space and the strange whistling knitted creatures that live there. His animated stories of 'The Clangers' gave us a sense of politeness and calm. A world of soup dragons and copper trees, of magic froglets and music that grew on trees that you could use to power a flying boat (or to eat). "It's nice to have visitors" said Oliver's narration, "but sometimes it's even nicer to see them go".

'Ivor the Engine' told us the stories of a Welsh steam engine who sang in the choir. The stillness and warmth of the tales gave children a sense of peace and friendship not found in modern television storytelling with its crashes, bangs and rushing around. My three year old son loves Ivor. He has a tiny toy train and imagines his own adventures, making the sound, "Sher-ta-coo, sher-ta-coo" as his plays.

The same alternative energy was found in the most loved children's programme of all time, 'Bagpuss'. The story of the most important, the most beautiful, the most magical, saggy old cloth cat in the whole wide world. He lived in the window of a junk shop who came to life with all his friends, to mend whatever item Emily brought to the shop.

As you may remember, the Clangers spoke only in whistles. This is what Oliver Postgate said about that challenge:

"They spoke a language of very articulate whistling squeak, which needed to be translated from its natural medium of nuclear magnetic resonance (there being no air to carry sound) into audible terms. The nearest I could get to that was to write out the script in full and then persuade Stephen Sylvester to help me record the dialogue...by reading it, or rather playing the inflections of it, on a selection of Swannee whistles. In this way I was hoping to make a sort of wild-life film in which, by listening carefully, the viewer would be able to understand what was being said and work out what was going on ... I made a separate voice-over tape, a sort of intermittent running-commentary on what was going on. It worked quite well but I have always wondered how the films would go in their original form.

I did try it once, I took an episode of The Clangers to the 1984 E.B.U. conference in Germany and showed it to the participants without my voice-over. Afterwards I asked them whether they had been able to understand what the Clangers were saying. 'But of course.' they replied. "They are speaking perfect German.' 'But no.' said Gerd, 'That is not so. They spoke only Swedish.'"

See the remarkable and creative story of the making of the films here.

If you want something entertaining, motivational, unusual and highly relevant in today's climate for your conference or company training have a look at a clip here and visit my keynote page here.
Click here to read more about creativity.
Click here to read articles on creativity, design and branding.
www.aydinstone.com

Creative Space

2008-10-31T03:28:00.000-07:00

Your working environment and surroundings are far more important than people realise when working on creative projects. Process jobs like administration, manual labour and accounting can be done anywhere within reason but to be able to think of ideas, write, draw or design, the surroundings become an extention of you and you part of them.

If you find you have 'writer's block', feel distracted or uninspired it's often because your surroundings are relating to you in the wrong way. The wrong sort of noise, mess, dirt and clutter outside you become refelected in your creative mind which then can't perform.

Before starting on a project or creative session, tidy up everything that does not relate to the task in hand. It's fine to have mess and clutter that is diretly related to the project, but everything else must go. You need to create outside you the space you want reflected inside your mind. A tidy desk and office gives you space inside to think and breathe. Being surrounded by things, sounds, smells and people that inspire you will make massive changes to your creative productivity.

Try this tip: get everything off your desk - yes I mean everything. Put it all in boxes or folders, neatly out of sight. Wipe the desk down. Then put back only the things you need to work on during the next two hours. Leave everything else packed away. See how you get on.

Last month I spoke at the launch of the Portfolio Innovation Centre in Northampton. It's a centre for small creative businesses to supply them with the right creative space to live and breath their craft. If you're in that area, contact Wendy on 01604 779000 and take a look. The event was a great success, organised by Enthuse PR who specialise in organising PR for businesses who want tangible results. Contact Rachel on 01933 666091. You can read the press story about the event here.

Photo: Louise O'Callaghan

If you want something entertaining, motivational, unusual and highly relevant in today's climate for your conference or company training have a look at a clip here and visit my keynote page here.
Click here to read more about creativity.
Click here to read articles on creativity, design and branding.
www.aydinstone.com

On the radio

2008-10-02T05:06:00.001-07:00

I was interviewed on the radio this week, and not on my usual topic. The programme was on BBC Radio Suffolk and the theme was if you knew your friend or family member was being cheated on by their partner, would you tell them? Should you tell them? I put the case that you should and that the truth is important. (If it was you being cheated on, wouldn't you want to know?).

The reason I was involved was because I'd written a book called 'How to Survive Infidelity'. The interview was done over the phone, live. I drew upon what little I knew from previous radio interviews and my limited media training; have a single point you want to get across and no matter what questions are asked, make sure you get that point over. I've learnt from experience that if you wait for them to ask you the golden question that allows you to get your message out there, you'll be disappointed by the end which comes all too quickly. Instead, interviewers usually ask questions that take your further away from what you'd like to talk about.

My message was that I'd written the book and it helped people survive infidelity. I managed to squeeze in the website address. So how did I do, talking about a topic I don't really talk about, live and with little idea the direction of the interviewer? You can listen yourself here.

The book by the way is available as a download, here. If you're planning to use the media, consider some advice from the experts. Have a look at what Alan Steven's got to offer.

How to Survive and Thrive in Difficult Times

2008-10-02T05:05:00.000-07:00

In difficult times the creativity of you and your team, can be your biggest asset. Following on from my article last month on why there has never been a better time to do buisiness than right now, I've teamed up with Business Link to create a half-day workshop on how we can kick-start our creativity and use it to innovate and troublehsoot our businesses for hidden profit.

This interactive workshop will help you focus on your product or service in a different and more creative way. It will help you improve your offer and in doing so increase sales and profit. You will spend time on your business and work on action points that you can implement after the workshop.

We'll be looking at how to be more creative in problem solving, how to increase in sales and save costs, how small changes can have a dramatic effect as well as looking at how your brand values and marketing messages work in the minds of your potential customers.

It'll be thought proving and fun and you'll leave with a set of creative tools and ideas you may not have come across before.

The workshops are FREE (bookings need to be made in advance)

8th October, 8:30am - 12:30pm at National Badminton Centre, Bradwell Road, Loughton Lodge, MILTON KEYNES, Buckinghamshire, MK8 9LA

12th November, 8:30am - 12:30pm at The Oxford Centre, 333 Banbury Road, OXFORD, Oxfordshire, OX2 7PL

To see more details and sign up click here.

If you want something entertaining, motivational, unusual and highly relevant in today's climate for your conference or company training have a look at a clip here and visit my keynote page here.
Click here to read more about creativity.
Click here to read articles on creativity, design and branding.
www.aydinstone.com

There has never been a better time to do business than right now

2008-08-14T02:00:00.000-07:00

"But times are hard, the economy's slowing and inflation is up" say the little voices all around us. That may be the case, and that's precisely why right now is the best time to do business.

Many small businesses think they're in the business of selling their products or of supplying their services. Successful businesses, those that thrive in more trying times, are those that realise this is not quite the case. In reality, every business is a problem-solver. They exist to solve their customers problems. They exist to make the customer money by driving up profits, save the customer money by reducing costs, or to make the customer look and feel good in some way.

These are all problems that our customers have, and in trying times these problems do not go away, in fact they often increase. So to a keen problem-solving business there's plenty to be getting on with. We have to work out ways that we can be more creative in selling, marketing and positioning our problem-solving products and services. Can we turn our troubleshooting skills in on ourselves to hit upon the ideas that will reduce our own costs or increase our own profits? How can we become expert, flexible and creative problem-solvers?

We must understand and unlock our individual and our company’s collective creativity. In affluent times, creativity and innovation are often seen as soft skills, nice to toy with, but not really taken very seriously. In more troubled changing times, your creativity and the creativity of your team become your biggest asset. Creativity has become a hard skill. Fortunately it is one that can be enhanced through training and practice.

Here’s a tip to start you off.
Get a piece of paper and write at the top your biggest problem right now as a question, e.g.. ‘How can I increase sales’, ‘How can I use the internet to drive business’ or ‘How can I improve cashflow’. Then write on the sheet twenty-one answers to the question. Do not stand up or do anything else until you have twenty-one answers. (You’re allowed to shout across the room for help from your colleagues!)

To complete the list, some of your ideas will have to be fanciful or even silly. If you fail to complete the list it is because you’re trapped in judgmental thinking and that is what is holding you back. Be more open and think of some ridiculous ways to answer the question. Just doing this exercise will open your mind to possibilities. You may even find that your stupid ideas are actually inverted good ideas. Do this every day and you will soon become an expert problem solver. Who knows, on one of those lists you just might find the big idea that will change everything and take your business to the next level.

If you want something entertaining, motivational, unusual and highly relevant in today's climate for your conference or company training have a look at a clip here and visit my keynote page here.
Click here to read more about creativity.
Click here to read articles on creativity, design and branding.
www.aydinstone.com

An Englishman in New York

2008-08-14T01:57:00.000-07:00

I've just come back from my first ever visit to New York where I attended the National Speakers Association conference. Some of the top speakers in the US gathered (around 3000 of them!) to hear from some of the very top speakers. The highlights were for me my walk in Central Park, the amazing lift shafts in the conference hotel (the Marriot Marquis in Times Square) which looked like something from the Jetsons and a speech by social entrepreneur Bill Strickland.

24 years ago Bill started a programme in his desolated hometown of Pittsburg which has become a foundation for disadvantaged children and people on benefit. His facilities are amazing, full of valuable art, gourmet restaurants and hand-made furniture, provided for or made by the local transformed students. Bill says that there's nothing wrong with poor people except for the fact that they have no money - and that's a curable condition. His aim is to cure the cancer of the spirt with sunlight, flowers and music, which his facilities are full of. The story of how he got backing and finance to fund the project is truely amazing. You can read about it in his book here.

If you want something entertaining, motivational, unusual and highly relevant in today's climate for your conference or company training have a look at a clip here and visit my keynote page here.
Click here to read more about creativity.
Click here to read articles on creativity, design and branding.
www.aydinstone.com

Do our schools programme us to fail in business?

2008-07-29T12:06:00.000-07:00

What is the point of the education system? Is it to prepare our young people for a productive and happy life in society? That would be nice. Is it to allow every child to be the best they can be? That would be a great goal. Is it just to keep kids off the streets (as many believe)? Sadly, it is possible that the education system has no goals at all.

But it once did have a goal. It was set down in the Victorian Industrialist era to prepare children to work in factories. That purpose was never replaced with anything more suitable. That’s why we were all educated in a room full of children all sat in rows. We were all told to shut up, don’t talk to your neighbour, don’t look to see what anyone else is doing, just concentrate on your own work and face the foreman at the front. Above the foreman was a clock and when a bell sounded we were all allowed outside and when a bell sounded again we all came in. Just like in the factory. We were given a smattering of almost useless general knowledge and the education system’s job was done.

The problem with having a goal such as this means that we were all trained to behave in a certain way in the world of work, for a world that no-longer exists. Being told that to ‘conform is good’, that to ‘keep quite is good’ and ‘not to copy is good’ all have latent side-effects. Those behaviours give rise to beliefs that strangle creativity and leave us unprepared for a changing world in three ways:

1. If you conform in business you don’t stand out. Ok, you don’t risk making mistakes, but being risk-averse means you become frightened of failure and that means you’re unable to grow. Instead we’re taught that failure is bad.

2. If you’re in business and don’t talk to anyone else you will hate networking and fail at building relationships and teams, the secret to success in society. Instead we’re taught that you should work by yourself in silence.

3. If you’re in business and you don’t look to see what the competition is doing, if you don’t copy the best ideas and improve on them you end up being left behind. But we’re taught that we have to be totally original (which is impossible) so we fail.

As adults, by realising this, we can turn back the clock and reinstate our creative selves that were persecuted and locked away all those years ago. Perhaps times have changed slightly. Perhaps there are individual schools that have greater, more honourable goals. But the ‘system’ has no such goal except to produce ‘results’ by testing and ranking pupils and schools. For our children we can and should examine how they are being educated and ask the simple question - what is the system for.

Click here to read more about creativity.
Click here to read articles on creativity, design and branding.
www.aydinstone.com

Creative, Moi?

2008-07-12T14:26:00.001-07:00

The midwife holds up the newly born baby and declares, "we've got a creative one here all right. This one's a genius and no mistake." You can tell just by looking at them can't you?

Well, the people that society judges to be genii, the cleverest people that humanity has ever produced all say that although babies are born with a tendency to be better at some tasks than others or be interested more in one thing than another, 'being creative' is not something you are born with to a greater or lesser degree than anyone else. It's like running. Babies aren't born Olympic sprinters or long distance runners, they become them many years later by training. We could all become Olympians if we went through the relevant education and training and it's the same with creativity.

A dictionary definition of creativity is "the ability to create new ideas or things using your imagination". Notice it doesn't say "the ability to be able to draw and paint a lifelike representation of a bowl of fruit".

So why do people think it is? Perhaps it's because creativity hasn't been understood or taught particularly well in so many schools.

This could be changing. Teachers have realised that creativity can be taught alongside and within every subject. The National Curriculum is tackling this and have come up with their own definition of creativity: "First, creativity involves thinking or behaving imaginatively. Second, this imaginative activity is purposeful: that is, it is directed to achieving an objective. Third, these processes must generate something original. Fourth, the outcome must be of value in relation to the objective." It sounds a bit vague perhaps but it seems to encompass everything.

Creativity is the process of making associations between disparate concepts, to make decisions based on those associations and then take action. What that means is that creativity is looking at things, making connections between things that weren't connected before and then doing something about it. We can simplify that to a formula:

Perception + Decision + Action = Creativity

So what's this all about you say, and how does it relate to me making more money? Well the products of creativity are ideas. Ideas are the currency of tomorrow’s world. We need more ideas. If you can consistently come up with good ideas in your field, for your business, for your life, you win.

Still think you're not creative? No, I didn't think so. I know you'd never admit it but you're probably the most creative person you know.

Click here to read more about creativity.
Click here to read articles on creativity, design and branding.
www.aydinstone.com

We love stupid ideas

2008-07-11T02:46:00.000-07:00

Stupid, idiotic, bad ideas are great. Think of bad ideas. Think of very, very stupid ideas. I challenge you - think of five stupid ways you could improve your business or lifestyle right now. Five rubbish ideas.

Bad ideas are good because bad ideas lead to good ideas. If you wanted to be a photographer but didn’t take a single photograph until you were sure that every photo you were going to take would be a good one - you wouldn’t take any photos. Creativity seems like an illusive mist to most people who think that creativity is some sort of gift. It is not a gift, it is a skill. Like any skill it has methods that need to be mastered. Like any skill the methods need to be practised. Just knowing the lines of a play aren't enough. It's the rehearsal that makes it work.

You can learn how to negotiate, how to project manage and how to sell. There are courses on all of those. You can practice those in your field of work. But don't leave out creativity from the mix. Learn the techniques and use them to get the ideas to get ahead.

We need to think new thoughts. Find better ways of doing things. Find better things to do. That's what people overlook. That's what creativity is.

So when you have a problem and you need a solution don't be concerned with convention. Don't be concerned with what's expected. Don't be concerned with what people will think. Don't even be concerned with what's possible. If you put constraints like these on your ideas or if you judge your ideas during the brainstorming phase you might as well give up and join the legion of mediocrity because these things will prevent you from having the best ideas at best, but will more than likely totally kill the process at worst.

Work out what is actually possible and allowed later, in the planning phase, not in the creative ideas phase. Learn to play, to make new associations, swap things around, wonder, be silly, experiment. These are the attributes that will enable you to solve the problem with a unique solution and to think of that elusive winning idea.

Where do good ideas come from? From Bad ideas. So don't be a fool, think of foolish ideas. Get them out and get them out of the way. Don’t judge them or analyse them, just get them flowing out. It’s from associations connected to these bad ideas that the really great ideas will come.

Click here to read more about creativity.

www.aydinstone.com

Don’t Fight Fantasy

2008-07-08T03:27:00.000-07:00

In 1983 a new craze spread through Britain’s children (mostly the boys). It was a range of books called 'Fighting Fantasy' by Steve Jackson and Ian Livingston. Based loosely on the role-playing game 'Dungeons and Dragons' that had taken the US by storm, the books differed in that they were for just one player/reader and they covered a much wider range of adventures and settings than the role-playing games did. The idea was simple. It was a book where you started reading and after a few pages you were given a choice. Did you want to go north or south? Ask the wizard for advice or not? Fight the monster or run away? Each choice would be accompanied by a page number which you would then turn to and continue reading. So you read the book by constantly moving from one page to another in a non-linear way. The aim was usually to survive long enough to solve the mystery. The adventures, whether set in a magical land, the past or the future where always very exciting and vividly described. The prose was always written in the present tense and from your perspective, "The door opens and you see stone steps leading down into darkness. Do you enter (turn page 263) or turn back (turn to page 47)".

Then the backlash began. The books came to be perceived as a problem by many who misunderstood what was really going on. Some criticised the magical elements, feeling it encouraged interest in black magic (the same issue raised its head more recently with Harry Potter). Had these people not read Grimm’s Fairy Tales or Lord of the Rings?

There was also the old chestnut that turns up every time something is popular for children that they weren't reading 'proper' books. English teachers frowned at the style of prose and bemoaned the lack of variety in children’s reading.

What they all failed to realise was that these books got children reading. We read them over and over again. We devoured them. And when we’d been through the thirty or so books in the series we moved onto other books such as Tolkien, C.S Lewis, Terry Pratchet and Douglas Adams and devoured them too. It doesn’t matter what children read, just as long as they do read.

There were other positive side effects too (again viewed by teachers and parents as bad). We started writing our own inventive fantasy fiction. Initially it took the form of writing your own adventure books for your friends. It was easy to do. You plotted out your story, the characters, events, mysteries and twists and then numbered blank pages of an exersise book from 1 to 100 and then got writing, inventing numerous traps and tricks for the reader on the way.

Slowly and inevitably we all grew up and no longer had the patience to play the book adventures anymore, wanting instead the passive reassurance of a linear novel. But the concept of the Fighting Fantasy books unlocked a unique form of creativity and imaginative invention in those young minds that shouldn’t be underestimated. Don’t fight your children’s fantasy. Let them explore it and express it in any way they choose.

Click here to read more about creativity.

See my showreel here at www.aydinstone.com

Lateral thinking problems are evil

2008-06-17T03:03:00.000-07:00

One bane of working in the field of creativity is the curse of certain 'lateral thinking' problems like the nine dots you have to join up without your pen leaving the paper or the paragraph were you have to count the occurrence of the letter 'f'. Very few people manage to solve these problems and they seem to serve only as examples to prove how stupid we all are, especially as once the obvious answers are pointed out, we’re kicking ourselves that we couldn’t think 'out of the box' enough to spot it.

Although interesting and sometimes fun to do, these exercises have little connection with enhancing your creativity. Try this one that circulated on the internet recently:

"I am only sending this to my smart friends. Can you figure out what these words have in common - Banana, Dresser, Grammar, Potato, Revive, Uneven, Assess. You will kick yourself when you discover the answer. Go back, look at them again and think hard."

The tedious answer is that in all of the words listed if you take the first letter, place it at the end of the word and then spell the word backwards it will be the same word. Did you get it? Probably not. These tests in no way reflect your intelligence or your creativity. There is no evidence to suggest that becoming good at them in any way increases your creative output. In fact, highly creative individuals, those who actually do produce great creative works or ideas, are no better than average on these tests. Being good at these problems means that you will now be better at that particular problem (obviously as you now know the answer). These 'problems' are worthless and the reason is that they aren’t about anything. They have little or no meaning. If you failed on the word test above you were probably looking for meaning in the connection of the words. You were actually being creative but unfortunately the solution required you to ignore meaning and look at the features of the letters.

It was a trick, like so many of these so called tests, designed to catch you out. A cheap trick to place the perputrator on higher intellectual ground than his audience. This sort of thing is an anathema to me. It goes against everything I talk about which is that everyone can be more creative. The main thing stopping us is confidence in our abilities which smug little problems only eat away at.

So pay no attention to these parlour games and continue to work on developing your true creativity that will enrich your life and work.

Click here to read more about creativity.

See my showreel here at www.aydinstone.com

Using narcotics to enhance your creativity

2008-05-28T08:50:00.000-07:00

Many people have suggested that their creativity has been enhanced by ingesting mind and body altering chemicals. Let’s have a brief look at some of the most common.

The most popular drug in use today is alcohol. Acclaimed for its supposed social skills enhancing powers it actually does the opposite. Users believe themselves to be articulate, decisive and responsive but in reality the drug is a depressant which saps joy and reduces rational and creative thought as well as limiting vocabulary. Any positive affects can actually be assigned to the simple fact of groups of friends getting together to talk.

Although fast becoming a social anathema, nicotine inhaled from smoldering tobacco leaves was thought to be useful to aide relaxation and thoughtfulness. In fact, nicotine acts as a stimulant. Because of the addictive nature of the drug, the stimulation only brings the user back up to the level they were at before initial use. The positive effects of the drug can be ascribed to taking breaks, breathing slowing and deeply and stepping outside for a short time. All of these are better done without the inhalation of carcinogenic particulates.

Tetrahydrocannabinol is a psychoactive chemical inhaled from burnt cannabis sativa plants. It works as an anesthetic, counteracting tics, seizures and spasms by numbing the nervous system. Although the effects are a stress-free relaxed state, the drug is linked to memory loss and loss of cognitive function which prevents the user from getting anything worthwhile done.

The temporary increased euphoria from ingesting cocaine desensitizes the brains neurons’ feel-good neurotransmitters, reducing levels of joy as well as causing irregularities in heart beat and paranoia. It also increases levels of arrogance. There are no discernible benefits that can’t be replicated by just doing something exciting.

Albert Hoffman was a Swiss chemist who died last month aged 102. In 1938 he created the psychedelic drug LSD. A tiny amount of the crystal causes heightened senses and synesthesia (switching of the senses), dream-like perceptual changes and a holistic viewpoint of the world. Although non-toxic it can trigger latent psychosis and makes the user more prone to accidents. Few users could claim to being creative while on a ‘trip’, their creations were made some time afterwards. Any experience can inspire great works. The same effect can be achieved by meditation, religion or simply physically going on a trip.

To summarise, try these cheaper, safer and legal methods instead: meet up with friends to discuss ideas, relax, get some fresh air, get excited, meditate, explore what you believe in, do something different and change your state of mind from within.

Click here to read more about creativity.

See my showreel here at www.aydinstone.com

Vision On and Take Hart

2008-05-11T13:27:00.000-07:00

This month I finally got to meet one of my heroes, the artist, broadcaster and double BAFTA winning Tony Hart.

He wrote and presented the childrens' weekly television programmes such as Vision On, Take Hart and Hartbeat from 1952-2002 on which he demonstated how to draw, paint and create different forms of craft. He also designed the Blue Peter logo, still in use today.

As a child I was inspired by his easy going style style and straightforward step-by-step methods that made artistic creativity fun and imediately do-able.

I never did send any of my pictures to the Gallery (to be shown on the programme), one of the few things I always regreted (not writing to 'Jim'll Fix it' was another), so finally meeting the man and seeing the studio where he thought up all his techniques was a great honour.

Tony was also kind enough to write the forward for my new book which details how everyone can begin and progress on their creative journey. It'll be out very soon. Visit Tony's website here.

Here's a clip from the first episode of Take Hart from 1977.

Click here to read more about creativity.

www.aydinstone.com

What will you leave behind?

2008-04-29T04:12:00.000-07:00

I felt a kind of sadness in an odd way when my Grandad died. We were at his house, sorting out the stuff. Grandma had died a few moths earlier. Apart from the funiture and his war medals there was nothing else to say he’d been here on Earth for the past 80 years. None of his memories, thoughts or feelings had been recorded in any form. No writings or drawings, no collections or indications of hobbies, just a few photos of the cat. Of course I’m viewing this from my perspective of being a creator, so I’m looking for these things. It’s not to say he didn't have a happy and fullfiling life, he probably did. But there’s no evidence to show that he did.

My other Gandma on my dad's side had left her play scripts, songs and musicals along with photos of her and my Grandad and their cast performing their concert parties and music hall entertainment during and after the Second World War. I know that she created a lot of pleasure for people. Everybody has a story to tell of how she touched their lives.

What stories will people tell about you? What will you leave behind to pass onto the next generation? We can all expect a digital footprint these days perhaps in the form of left-over information on a long forgotten social networking website profile, but what more can you proactivly do with your talents and your life? Will there be something of worth left behind for future generations? What will it be?

Click here to read more about creativity.

www.aydinstone.com

You CAN draw and don't you forget it!

2008-04-29T04:11:00.000-07:00

Can you use a pen or pencil to write your name? Can you catch a ball from a distance of two metres? Can you thread a needle? If you can, then you can draw. If you can write your name you can hold a drawing impliment and make marks on paper. If you can catch a ball you can judge distances. If you can thread a needle you have the dexterity, accuracy and patience. Those are the skills needed to draw, there are no others. The only other element is practice. You'll need to practice the secret of drawing. Want to know what it is? It has nothing to do with art or talent. It has nothing to do with what you were good at when you were at school.

It is simply to look at the object you are drawing. This is the secret that so many get wrong. In my workshops I've positioned a four-legged chair for people to draw. I positioned it in such a way that they could only see three legs from where they were sitting. But they all drew a chair with four legs because they 'knew' that the chair had four legs. When drawing something, never, ever draw something. Never name it or any part of it. It is not a chair, a car or a person. It is a collection of lines, shapes and shades. Look at it and see and you'll open up your non-verbal right brain and the joy and peace of the moment.

Never mind those logic problems, crosswords and sudukos, drawing is a great work out for the brain and it will enhance your creativity.

Click here to read more about creativity.

www.aydinstone.com

Can you draw? Of course you can!

2008-04-14T09:11:00.000-07:00

In my workshops I teach people to draw. Actually I don't teach them at all, I just prove to them that they can draw, it's just them telling themselves they can't that stops them. I received this from one of the delegates:

"After your talk I was thinking about what you'd said, about how the conscious mind can't draw but the unconscious can, and I picked up a notepad and pencil and just sketched what was in front of me (a dressing gown on the door). To my surprise it actually looks like my dressing gown!

"I am writing a book on the unconscious mind, and its role in happiness. I am planning to use music as an example. When you mentioned that drawing was an unconscious activity I immediately realised that the techniques I have developed for allowing the unconscious mind access to the body (e.g. the hands) without conscious "correction" - techniques that have allowed me to play the piano in a few months without tuition - should work just as well for drawing, since both activities are best done by the unconscious. Hence, it was not difficult for me to ask my unconscious mind to draw something, rather than play the piano.

"None-the-less, it was your talk that inspired me to try drawing when I had long-since given up!
Thanks again, and best wishes, Paul Rudman"

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www.aydinstone.com

Do you use your talents at work?

2008-04-14T09:06:00.000-07:00

There's a Monty Python sketch where Michael Palin's character is an accountant who's gone to a careers advisor played by John Cleese. The accountant says he's fed up with being an accountant. He wants to be a lion tamer. The careers advisor says he doesn't suit such a career. Couldn't he work his way towards lion-taming via say, banking.

I had the misfortune of going to a careers advisor once. They asked me some dumb questions about exam subjects and then asked what I wanted to be as they had lots of pamphlets on various career paths. Well the answer to that was obvious to this 16 year old. I wanted to be a rock star. So I told her. She shook her head and said I should take this seriously. I was taking it seriously and I asked her where the relevant pamphlet was. There wasn't one. She advised instead that I join the YTS (the Youth Training Scheme designed for non-academic pupils a bit like an apprenticeship). I said no thanks.

That careers advisor is in our heads, holding us back from what we really should be doing and being 'realistic' and pushing us into mediocrity. Think of the jobs that you've done and that most people do. They all have job titles, but let's be honest, most of them mean absolutely nothing. When you or people around you were children I bet you wanted to be a clear-cut interesting profession like an astronaut, doctor, film star, or vet. No-one wanted to be a marketing assistant or sales manager. How did they become them? There's nothing wrong with any particular job, unless the person doing it isn't satisfied and is capable of doing more. Then it's a cage.

Most workplaces don't know how to deal with talent, it gets in the way. They can't reward it or promote it and it doesn't fit into a neat box. That's why you can't rely on your job or others to give you satisfaction without you doing something about it yourself. Wouldn't it be wonderful if you got paid for doing what you loved doing? Wouldn't it be wonderful if we found the courage to find a way to make that happen?

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www.aydinstone.com

The antidote to fear

2008-03-28T02:30:00.001-07:00

One definition of fear is that it stands for False Evidence Appearing Real. Fear appears not when we know what to expect or when we don't know what to expect but when we guess what to expect.

When I coach people in public speaking, I explain to them that to overcome the fear you need to remove as many of the unknowns as possible (such as know your material well, you've examined the room, you know the profile of the audience etc.). Whatever unknowns remain, the one's you can control are the ones that could remain in the dimension of fear, such as audience reaction. So for these last few we need to imagine their outcome as the outcome you want. Remember, the fear is always based on imagining the worst, so imagine the best instead. The 'fear' then become 'excitement'.

There are only really two types of fear. We fear not being loved and we fear that we are not enough. Fear of failure is actually one or both of these: we fear people won't love us if we fail (or even if we succeed) and we fear we're not worthy enough to succeed.

Our faith should answer both of these. We are loved. We are enough. Faith not only removes fear - it is the polar opposite of it. To live in fear is to live without faith. In our secular world some people seem to think they don't have or need faith. This is not true. We all have faith in gravity. We don't need to hurl a stick in the air to see if it still works. It is more than just belief. We have a conviction that it still works and will always work. This is faith. Faith is certainty, the antidote to fear.

So if we're living without fear is there a danger that being completely fearless puts us in danger? Actually no. We should still take risks, but only calculated risks, in confidence, through faith.

The only reason we have for not pursuing our dreams is the story that we tell ourselves that we can't. In that situation, fear is controlling us and holding us back. We need to re-write that story. The secret to achieving is to imagine yourself already in possession of the goal and believe you have it with conviction. That is faith. That is certainty.

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www.aydinstone.com

The Apple of Your i

2008-03-27T07:39:00.001-07:00

Is the iPod the best mp3 player around? Possibly, it's certainly outselling all the others put together, controling over 70% of the market. Interesting that it has the least features of all its competitors. So what's going on? Anyone who owns an iPod or an Apple Mac knows. Apple products appeal emotionally and asthetically. Other manufacturers seem to 'over design' and over complicate things. This is why Apple is doing so well at the moment; their products appeal to the right brain directives of wholeness, meaning and empathy.

According to Steve Jobs, Aple CEO and co-founder, one major reason for the iPod's success was its relative simplicity.

"Look at the design of a lot of consumer products—they're really complicated surfaces. We tried make something much more holistic and simple."

Jobs was asked if he was worried about Microsoft's new media player (Zune) and its "community" features:

"In a word, no. I've seen the demonstrations on the Internet about how you can find another person using a Zune and give them a song they can play three times. It takes forever. By the time you've gone through all that, the girl's got up and left! You're much better off to take one of your earbuds out and put it in her ear. Then you're connected with about two feet of headphone cable."

Proving that the best solution is usually the simplest. Always ask yourself, 'what am I trying to achieve here?' In the case Steve mentions above you want to share your music to get connected with someone. The idea isn't to prove wireless technology. Some companies seem to have lost awareness of the benefits in their race to prove how good their features are. Not Apple, and the sales figures speak for themselves.

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www.aydinstone.com

Be a creator

2008-03-18T05:18:00.000-07:00

There is an interesting dimension to being a creator that sets apart creators from non-creators. It is that highly creative people value what they have created while less creative people don’t.

A friend of mine, Abbie Cooke, runs a session for business that gets the executives to paint a picture by the end of the session. Everyone enjoyed the session and seemed to learn something from it and the messages that she taught them. But then she noticed an interesting thing. Some of the delegates left their drawings behind. They obviously didn’t feel they had any value and effectively had thrown them away at the end of the session. I wonder, does this mean they metaphorically had also ‘thrown away’ the learning from the session, and perhaps every other training session they’d ever been to? So she changed the focus of the session from then on. Now the delegates had to make a frame for their paintings. She began to teach them the value of what they had created.

To a true creator it doesn’t matter if you took just a few minutes to create the work (Paul McCartney wrote ‘Yesterday’, the most recorded and most played song ever, in just a few minutes.) or whether it took you years to complete the project. Whatever you bring into being in the universe that wasn’t there before always has value. We need to understand this and trust it. All creation has value and worth. Overlooking this will stop your creativity dead as who would want to create something worthless? If you don’t value what you do you haven’t done anything more worthy that what you flushed down the toilet this morning.

To a creator, the worth of their work is tied into their self worth. If you don’t like yourself or trust yourself you’re going to have real problems being more creative.

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www.aydinstone.com

Don't turn your brain off

2008-03-04T02:25:00.000-08:00

There have always been opponents to new technology. Long before 'luddites' smashed the machines that stole the work of men during the Industrial Revolution, many early philosophers (including Socrates) argued that even writing was dangerous technology. They said that the written word was not alive and the act of reading was passive unlike taking part in an argument. This is actually true and during learning, involvement is much better than reading a textbook.

There is another reason why writing is bad technology; it allows us to forget and to use our m emories in a sloppy way which has destroyed the continuity and accuracy of oral tradition which lasted tens of thousands of years. Obviously writing has so many plus points that we tend to overlook these two small handicaps.

But what about other, more recent technological developments where the advantages and disadvantages are far more evenly matched?

New technology makes idle promises that it often fails to keep, or by doing so causes new, unforeseen problems.

In 1980 by great aunt bought a microwave oven. She must have been one of the first people in the north-east to have one. In those days they were heavier, noisier and weirder than they are today. A large number of the family had gathered for Christmas dinner. Aunty Madge was to impress them all. Their Christmas dinner was to be cooked entirely by microwave, 80s style. We can all guess what that meal was like. They had a course of carrots followed by a course of sprouts followed by a course of gravy . I don't think the turkey was quite edible and the brandy soaked Christmas pudding burst into flames.

New technology is often misunderstood. Around the same time there was the story from America where a woman had put her poodle in the microwave to dry its fur. We of course all know that microwaves cook by vibrating water and salt molecules on the inside of small dogs.

A decade ago a machine was invented that sliced onions perfectly. It peeled and sliced the entire onion into exactly the size of pieces you required. Gone were the days of weeping or getting smelly onion acid on your fingers. Now it was all self contained and perfectly sliced in no time at all. A wonderful labour and hassle saving device. Until of course you tried to clean it. It required disassembly and all the small delicate parts had to be hand washed to remove the onion. So now you were exposed to the tear making acid and the process took ages. Using a simple knife would have been better after-all.

There has been a surge in the number of people who have problems getting to meetings due to over-reliance on sat nav. Satellite navigation is an incredibly sophisticated and complicated technology. Just think about it for a moment. It requires the ability to put a self-powered complex computer system in a geostationary orbit around the Earth. It requires radio transmitters and receivers, advanced micro processors and speech simulators.

It is so wonderfully advanced and useful that people repeatedly get lost using it. "Take the B408 for two miles and then take the third exit onto the B3129" says an emotionless voice. What are you talking about? If you were describing it to a friend you'd say "turn left after the pub". People place their trust in the machine so much that they turn their brain off and then wonder how they ended up on a farm track in a field instead of at the conference centre.

Technology is neither goo d nor bad of course. It provides us with tools which we can choose to use to make our lives easier. But be careful - there is always a trade off. There's an argument that the pursuit of technology for it's own ends is certainly bad, that is when we run into problems.

The best idea may be to apply Occam's Razor to any new development. Occam's razor is a principle attributed to the 14th-century English logician and Franciscan friar William of Ockham which advises economy and simplicity in scientific theories. Occam's razor states that the explanation of any phenomenon should make as few assumptions as possible, eliminating, or "shaving off", those that make no difference in the observable predictions of the theory. Applying the razor to our examples here give us the following simple answers: use a conventional oven, a knife and a map.

So when you are confronted with any new idea, gadget or method, experiment with it by all means, but don't, on any circumstances, as you turn the gadget on, turn you brain off.

Click here to read more about creativity.

www.aydinstone.com

Taste the Moment

2008-02-22T12:54:00.000-08:00

We tend to live locked-up in our left-brain controlled critical world. Is it any wonder that we find it so hard to let go and experience the world around us and live in the moment?

I noticed when my son was around a year to 18 months old and he suddenly able to move around, stand up and reach out to explore this strange universe he found himself in. When he came upon something to investigate (like the washing machine), he wouldn’t just stare at it. His first reaction was to get his lips and teeth onto it. Smaller objects were even easier to get in his mouth. It wasn’t that he was hungry. It was his desire to taste.

This was really because taste was his primary sense that helped him experience and make sense of the world. Ours tends to be mostly visual, if we bother to look at all that is. He would want to taste, to smell, to touch and see the object. He wanted to understand it, to feel it, to consume and to be part of it.

A child knows how to live in the moment.

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www.aydinstone.com

Thinking on the Eastern side of the Brain

2008-02-18T07:25:00.001-08:00

Learning Mandarin is very likely to give you an economic advantage in the years ahead. Recent research has shown that it could help you in other more surprising ways too.

A six-year German-Chinese research project has shown that Chinese brains work faster than western ones. The Chinese students were better at processing information intellectually and quicker at memory tests. But when it came to simple reaction time tests, the Europeans were better. The researchers believe that it is because of how the mind has to process the more complex Mandarin and Cantonese languages than the Roman alphabet. Mandarin has about 50,000 word characters. A knowledge of 3000 would be needed to read a newspaper. A well-educated person may know around 5000. To complicate matters further Chinese languages are phonetic. A vocal change can dramatically change the meaning of words. Mandarin has four tones, Cantonese has eight.

It's also thought that there is less difference between the left and right hemispheres of the average Chinese brain compared with the average European brain. This is perhaps due to the very visual pattern recognition nature of the language which requires a more even balance of the traditional left and right brain specialisms. European languages are much more left brain dominant.

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www.aydinstone.com

Music for Pleasure

2008-02-15T13:06:00.000-08:00

A colleague of mine, Alan Stevens, recently wrote in his (excellent) newsletter that he'd been converting his old vinyl LP records to digital files on his PC and commented on his nine year old daughter's astonishment that they had music 'on both sides'. It reminded me of the fact that new technology and new ways of doing things are usually more convenient, but not always better, or more fun. Listening to a vinyl LP (or 45 rpm single for that matter - which can be exhilarating) is a totally different experience to listening to a CD or iPod. I would say that it's a better experience and this is why:

First of all the sleeve is bigger. At 12" the photos are nice and big and the sleeve is satisfying to hold as you listen to the recording. Care is needed taking the record out of the sleeve impressing upon you the value of what you hold in your hands. You need to slowly lower the needle into place, it can't be rushed. The sound of a vinyl record is an analogue of the actual sound that was recorded. That means it's almost exactly the same. This is not true with digital playback which is a sample of the original, it misses data out. True audiophiles can hear the difference and will tell you that CDs sound 'cold' compared to the truer, warmer sound of micro-groove vinyl.

But I haven't mentioned the best bit yet. The record only lasts about twenty minutes or less, even though these are 'long players'. Then you have to get up, walk across the room and pick the needle up and turn the record over. This has a massive impact on how music was presented and listened too. Artists had to arrange the records with a great opening track and closing track on both sides, like two acts of a play. It also means that you don't put a record on and then wander off, you actually have to be there and listen to it. You're involved in it, it's interactive.

When the record industry sold us shiny CDs they were interested in making a lot of money in the short-term, by re-selling us what we already had, more than they were interested in the quality of the music or the concepts of the album and single . But by changing the listening habits and making music more convenient somthings were lost.
For example, it's only now, with the concept of downloads that the idea of buying one song (ie. a single) has come back into play.

We all seem to succumb to the marketing messages and the thrill of the new. New technology is like electricity, fire or money - neither good nor bad. It's what you do with it that counts. Does a high-tech solution always add to the human experience? Or is it better, sometimes, perhaps on a sunny day with a picnic by the river, to open up a hand crafted wooden box to reveal a wind up gramophone which, without contributing any CO2 to global warming, will play a thick shellac disc at 78 rpm and the sounds of musicians and singers who knew nothing of mp3s and downloads, will fill the air. Let's not give up on an experience for the sake of convenience. Keep your records, keep your CDs and keep downloading. There are times and places for them all.

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www.aydinstone.com

So Why Can’t We Be Polymaths?

2008-02-07T05:33:00.000-08:00

In this age of specialisms and niching, we’re all told to be good at something (see last issue). But by that many people usually mean for us to be rubbish at everything else. We’re streamed and channelled in our education system to hammer home the messages that we can study science OR the humanities, be an artist OR technician, languages OR mathematics etc.

Like many others who came through the state school system in the UK, I was frustrated that I couldn’t do German because I was doing Physics. The system wasn’t flexible enough for that combination of subjects so they had separated the sciences and languages out. The school was obviously unaware that German was the language of physics (until the aftermath of the second world war), just as French had been the language of Chemistry a century earlier. So I chose the science route and amazed my fellow students and teachers by my magical ability to draw. It was almost as though their brains were shortcircuiting, ‘You can draw and yet you study science? That does not compute!’

This pigeon-holing is dangerous to our creativity. Creativity is a whole-brain activity. A truly creative person is both artist and scientist. The greatest scientific discoveries were made by individuals who thought visually, as an artist thinks and had the imagination necessary to push out the boundaries of what was possible. Harry Kroto who was awarded the Nobel prize in chemistry in 1996 loved graphic design. That helped him create two dimensional data into a 3D model of carbon-60. (Interestingly enough my degree dissertation was involved in analyzing a tiny, tiny bit of this work). Scientists who understand aesthetics, beauty and form have a creative edge. The greatest artists knew how the physical world worked for them to be able to create form from chaos.

So why can’t we be polymaths (person of wide ranging knowledge or learning)? If we want to be creative individuals with something to offer the world then I’d say that it is imperative that we become whole, both artist and scientist.

Click here to read more about creativity.

www.aydinstone.com

I'm Having a Laugh

2008-02-07T04:12:00.001-08:00

All humans in all recorded cultures have the ability to laugh, to find something ‘funny’ and have what is generally called ‘a sense of humour’, that is the faculty to perceive comedy. It's part of being human.

Some people are nervous about putting humour or comedy in their presentations. There's a joke in the public speaking world that says you should only use humour in your presentations if you want to get paid. This reminds us how important it is in a presentation to appeal to the audiences emotions. Comedic elements are more memorable than dry facts and that use of comedy in education aides retention of information. This could be borne out by the way teenage children are able to recall word for word comedy routines from television comedy sketch shows and sitcoms (like Monty Python, the Fast Show or Blackadder) but are not so able to do so with dry drama and struggle to remember anything from more formal presentations.

But comedy is totally subjective and its success depends on a variety of factors such as the setting, culture, language, delivery and context. This is why in most cases 'jokes' should be avoided as few jokes transcend all barriers to appeal to others without extensive translation or explanation. For comedy to work a shared history is also needed between the comic and the audience.

An excellent way of increasing your creativity and lateral thinking capabilities is to analysise what you find funny (or what you find unfunny where others are laughing!). Take a joke and break it down, see how it works, what does it play on, what information is needed to 'get the joke'?

There are a few key concepts that categorise comedy which include incongruity, repressed desires or fears and an establishment of superiority.

The concept of superiority is perhaps the most primordial form of comedy with humour derived from failures, weaknesses or deformities or either the comedian or another group. This also forms the basis of ‘slapstick’ (physical comedy and clowning) where the audience laugh from relief at someone else’s misfortune or idiocy. Repressed fears and desires have been a common feature of both the sexist joke (such as jokes about ‘the wife’ or ‘mother-in-law’) as well as homophobic and racist jokes which play on peoples fear of the unknown.

It's clear to all but an idiot not to use possibly offensive material in your presentations. The rule is - if it's possible an interpretation could offend - leave it out. The same goes for using profanity. Although a staple diet in most stand-up clubs, big business deals have been lost because most people do not want to hear rude words in a business context. One story goes that when a speaker was turned down for a training session he explained that he would obviously take out the swearwords from his material for that particular client. The client replied that they wanted to book a trainer who didn't have swear words in there in the first place.

Incongruity of either language or action involves the surprising, illogical or unexpected juxtaposition of ideas or situations which are often referred to as ‘surreal’. The comedian Vic Reeves is possibly the ultimate expression of this type in his UK 1990-91 television programme ‘Vic Reeves Big Night Out’ which was so incongruous that it divided the nation into those who gave him comedy god status and those that thought it was shoddy rubbish. Witnessing ‘Noodles the Comedy Duck’, an obvious glove puppet regurgitating prawns when one of the ten commandments was recited or listening to a man with a stick wearing a paper helmet covered in complaints to his local ombudsmen about coloured lights coming out of his taps requires a certain lateral thinking mindset in the audience. One of Reeves’ catch-phrases was the interesting “very poor” which confessed the obvious shoddy nature of the presentation which added an extra ‘in-joke’ to the faithful which drew them in even more.

Memory plays an important role in comedy. The comedian Harry Hill’s trademark routines involve setting up an enormous number of running gags with seemingly no point to them, only to refer back to them much later in the act. An example is he would mention that he saw three bunches of roses available for sale for a pound. Much later he would say, incongruently, in the middle of another story, “great big bunches they were” and then much later, again out of the blue, “three bunches for a pound? Where’s the profit margin in that?”. The comedy comes from the fact that the audience feel pleased to have been able to be ‘in’ on the joke, having remembered the references from earlier. This works because Hill is imprinting each chunk of gag using deep processing by getting the audience to question its meaning and look for a correlation with something he may have said earlier. He's playing on the shared history concept.

Humour is useful because it allows the audience to relax into behaving as a single unit were laughter can become contagious. In many ways the comic works a form of hypnosis on the audience. Being a group, the audience will take greater risks and may even feel comfortable ‘heckling’ or participating where they would not in a non-comedy or less collective group.

As mentioned earlier, humour enhances creative problem solving. Other claims have also been made of the physiological effects of observing or listening to comedy such as the strengthening of the immune system, increasing pain thresholds and reducing stress. It has even been found to reduce ageing.

All good reasons to look into livening up your presentations with humour or going to see some stand up yourself - for the sake of increasing your income and improving your health!

Click here to read more about creativity.

www.aydinstone.com

Business Unusual

2008-02-04T06:29:00.000-08:00

I started my own business on 12th September 2001. That’s right, a day after 11th September 2001. On that fateful day I was flying back from the Caribbean after a two week holiday and had just landed at Heathrow when the first plane struck the North Tower. The next day I went back to work to find the company had gone bust. Completely unrelated to 9/11, but certainly a very strange and un-nerving couple of days.

I was creative director of a mutimedia firm. Don’t let that title throw you, I wasn’t on the board and I had no insight into the accounts or general finances of the company. My job was mainly to manage and do the jobs in the studio. I did know, however, that the boss had recently employed a friend of his on something like £42k as a senior programmer for whom there wasn’t very much work for him to do. I knew that the value of the work coming in couldn’t possibly cover the salaries going out which had been propped up with loans secured against the boss’s house.

The company had been set up ten years earlier to build bespoke PC systems that were used for multimedia presentations. Most of that market had disappeared due to the advancement of PCs and the availability of straightforward software like Powerpoint which virtually did the job for you. Why spend thousands on a bespoke system when you could pay hundreds for an off-the-shelf one that was better?

I saw my role as attempting to guide this outmoded company into the much richer vein of design-led graphics. The company could easily pick up branding, print design and of course web design as well as still doing high-end multimedia such as CD-ROMS which were still in demand. My team created a new identity and marketing campaign along with a brilliant (if I don’t say so myself!) website, that I was sure could have attracted press attention, if not awards, if it had been launched.

But the boss had put the brakes on. He just wasn’t comfortable with ‘creativity’ and ‘design’. He wasn’t comfortable with newer technology, especially the new iBook that our programmer bought. It was able to do exactly the same job that the bosses hot-wired custom built editing suite could do, except that it was faster and didn’t take up half the office. The boss wanted to be fiddling with PCs with their cases off and discussing servers over a pint of ale at lunchtime.

While I was on holiday I had come up with more marketing ideas and the concept of a ‘sub-brand’ that could be used to sell the new design portfolio without appearing to impact on the more staid and traditional image the boss wanted to cling onto. I did a lot of thinking about creativity and how it can be used to solve companies marketing and branding challenges and came up with ideas for names such as ‘Ideas Workshop’ and ‘Ding!’.

So it wasn’t exactly a complete surprise that the company was no longer in business when I got back.

The next day I started my own company and began to put all the ideas I’d come up with into practice. Sometimes you need a kick in the teeth to actually take action and get on with things.

Why did that multimedia company fail? To an outsider it appeared to have everything going for it. Except for clients of course. Inflexibilty, stubborness and fear of change were characteristics of the boss. Not being able to see the bigger picture, to understand where the market was moving was another. The downfall came because of a lack of creativity and a fear of creativity and doing the same things and expecting better results.

Once, perhaps, creativity was a luxury, but not now. Now you have to be creative in business.

Click here to read more about creativity.

www.aydinstone.com

How to Play the Piano

2008-01-26T11:27:00.001-08:00

I've had a piano for seven years and a synthesiser for seventeen years and I've just learnt how to play. I'd been trying the play all that time but failed dramatically. Then as soon as I stopped 'trying', within a week I could suddenly play.

It came about because I wanted to retain the 'cool dad' tag for as long as possible with my fourteen month old son. We've been filling his day with music since he was born and when he expressed an interest in the large wooden piece of furniture covered in ebony and ivory keys I wanted to be able to play a tune for him. So I did. Was it as simple as that, you say? Actually yes. And I'm not saying all this to impress you, but to impress upon you a strategy for learning which can be, and should be, applied to everything you want to learn.

Let's have a look at what is going on here.

The first thing was that suddenly the motivation was there to learn. When I was at school my parents and the teacher were concerned that I was late in reading. The reason was that they had given me a load of old boring books to read. I wanted to be able to do it to please them and get away with it and I wasn't motivated in the actual reading of such dull stories. But when I got me hands on the Dalek and Star Wars annuals with their comic strips I suddenly 'got it'. Then I devoured the many Doctor Who novelisations of the television series, a couple I owned and the rest from the library. Remember these were the days before video recordings. A Doctor Who story was on television once and then never repeated so books were the only way of reliving the adventures.

Comic strips, pulp science fiction, novels of tv series and fantasy 'choose your own adventure' books were all decried by teachers and parents in the 70s and 80s. What they failed to recognise, as the author Philip Pulman has often pointed out, is that it's the reading that is important for children. It doesn't really matter what they read as long as they do read. (For Pullman it was the Superman comics). Children soon consume a range of books and then look to the next thing to satisfy their reading desires. It's often those who started on the lesser appreciated literary forms that move quicker onto more advanced works.

What was going on with my early reading was that I was getting a result straight away. I was learning as I went along, but I was getting the result which was the understanding of the particular adventure story.

I'd used the same approach to learning the guitar. I was self-taught. I learnt that I only needed the chords A and D to play 'Mull of Kintyre'. Add in an E and I could play Buddy Holly's entire back catalogue. My goal was to sing and play and within a week I could do that. After a month I was writing my own songs.

So it was this technique that I applied to the piano. The goal was to be able to play and sing some popular songs. I didn't need to start at the very beginning and learn the history and meaning of dots and squiggly lines on wires. All I had to do was to make a convincing sound.

All learning begins with self learning. A good teacher shows the way and needs to surround the student with the right motivation for them. The student then pulls themselves up, by themselves. The thrill of achievement then fuels the next stage; the desire to get better. This is where the teacher is needed as mentor, to guide the student through to mastery by showing technique and information.

So many teachers get this process back to front. They bombard the student with technique and information which goes over the heads of so many students who then feel disenfranchised and lose interest. There is a certain percentage of people who can learn this way but many will get quickly bored if the information is not relevant to their current goal. It's all about finding the right teaching strategy to match the student's learning strategy.

Now that I can convincingly play 'Hey Jude' and 'Let it Be' I can begin to expand my repertoire as well as going back to look at the technique and information for reading printed music. I now have the motivation to be able to get there.

You'll have your own learning strategies. They may be different to mine but they'll be the same in the one vital way: you will always need less will power to learn something you want to learn and that you will enjoy learning. If you have to use will power then you are more than likely to just give up and do something more rewarding at the first sign of hard work. Build the reward into the learning. This will work whether you want to learn Mandarin, Chemistry, salsa dancing or piano. Ask yourself 'why?'. If that 'why' is compelling enough you'll be doing it in no time.

Click here to read more about creativity.

www.aydinstone.com

Take it as red

2008-01-17T04:11:00.000-08:00

Have a look outside for a red car. Have a closer look at the body of it. Is it really red? The more you look the more you’ll see that it’s many different colours, few if any of them are actually red. You’ll see that areas are different shades of pink, grey, white, black. Perhaps other colours that are reflected slightly giving us murky greens and browns. “But I know it’s red” you may say. Well it isn’t red. There is unlike to be a situation where the car is entirely red.

We make assumptions, ‘knowing’ that the car will have been painted with one colour of ‘red’ paint. But to say the car is ‘red’ is a simplification, a minimisation or the truth. It is a reductionistic viewpoint. “But it’s still red!” you cry. Well, no, it isn’t. Colour is determined by the frequency of light which hits our retina. When white light bounces of the car, the microscopic texture within the paint diffracts the light and absorbs certain wavelength of the colour spectrum, reflecting only certain other colours. So if the ‘red’ car reflects ‘grey’, than that part of the car is grey from the observers viewpoint. As the viewer moves, the colour of the car changes. Only the ‘ideal’ car, the reductionistic abstract is ‘red’. Likewise, a tin of red paint with the lid on is not actually red. Only when the lid is removed and light shone in does it become red.

All of this has consequences relevant here as this level of reductionism goes on all the time, stunting our true perception of the world around us, blinding us to what is really going on out there.

Click here to read more about creativity.

www.aydinstone.com

Think Ahead for Glory

2008-01-17T04:09:00.000-08:00

At this time of year sensible people do some form of goal setting exercise. You can’t hit a target you can’t see, so set the target. An easy and fun way to do this something I do every year. Give it a go yourself.

Get a piece of lined paper and write ‘Glory list 20** (this past year)’ at the top. Then write a column of numbers 1 to 30 down the left hand side. For each number write something that you achieved this year that was glorious. Include personal and business, large and small things. You must do all 30.

Then get another identical piece of paper. This time write ‘Glory list 20** (next year)’ at the top and the numbers down the side. Referring to what you wrote on the other sheet, write a new version of it next year that’s bigger and better. So if one of your glories from this last year was “I had a weeks holiday in France”, put for next year: “I had two weeks holiday in France and a week in America” or whatever would upstage last year for you. Write each and every line as if it has already happened.

On a third piece of paper write “Glory List 20** (next year) extra” and write anything else that you missed out on here. This is what you will have achieved come this time next year. Just by doing that you’ve made it so much more likely to come true.

Click here to read more about creativity.

www.aydinstone.com

Don't be a generalist - be a specialist

2008-01-17T04:07:00.000-08:00

You can't please everybody all the time. If you try you actually end up pleasing nobody all the time. This is what television broadcasting companies and record companies have only just started to realise. ITV for example has tried for years to please the 'masses', the 'popular vote', the 'average viewer' only to find that now no such viewer exists. As a commercial television broadcaster their revenue comes from advertisements during the programmes. So they have to put on programmes that the demographic for the adverts would want to see. Recent viewing figures have shown that less and less people want to watch what ITV has to offer that many advertisers no longer want to invest in spending their money on commercial television. Last year Cadbury have ended their ten year sponsorship of Coronation Street.

The days of everyone in the nation doing the same thing are long gone. The 1977 Morecambe and Wise Christmas show was watched by 30 million people. That amounted to every home that had a television and 60% of the population. Now the most watched television reaches 15 million (Eastenders and Doctor Who) which is only 16% of the country.

The Sun claims to be the UK's most popular newspaper with an average of 7.8 million readers every day (twice as many and The Times). The Sun claim to be 'the voice of the nation' but the reality is that only 13% of the population actually read it, so it's not that popular after all.

When the BBC started releasing archive television programmes on video in the 1980s they made an assumption that the audience for the videos was a general one who would be interested in the old programmes from a general interest point of view. So they made compilations of long running shows such as Doctor Who and Monty Python, creating a 'best of' video series. What took them a long time to realise was that the potential Doctor Who audience wanted the entire episodes uncut, not edited. The Doctor Who audience was a specialist audience who would pay handsomely to have their favourite programme in its entirety. They even wanted the BBC indents, trailers, out-takes and behind the scenes interviews released. The BBC realised that they were now catering for a specialist market that was so much bigger than the general interest market they'd originally planned for. In the 80s and 90s Doctor Who made more money through merchandise for the BBC than all of the rest of its output put together and that was while the programme was off air for 16 years.

In marketing terms this is known as 'the long tail'. A bookshop in town with limited shelf space needs to stock the books that are going to sell so it stocks all the 'best-sellers'. Simply put it's a business model that relies on selling a few titles to lots of people. On the other hand, an internet specialist shop sells lots of obscure titles to a few people. Because of the internet, the people who love the more obscure titles can be reached, even though they are spread all over the world. In effect the specialist market for something obscure is now huge. This is how new bands are able to market their music more effectively than ever before. There may not be many glam goth teddy boy punk heads in your town but when you capture the one from every town you have a sizeable market.

This is how many business have made a lot of money out of internet marketing in recent years - by realising that the marketplace is fragmented. Everyone is interested in something and there's no common ground to reach them all on. There are no generalist customers out there. They all have specialist needs. We can meet those needs with our business by becoming specialists ourselves. The new rule is that it's possible to please somebody all of the time.

Click here to read more about creativity.

www.aydinstone.com

Avoid Cliches like the Plague

2008-01-11T05:58:00.000-08:00

A cliché is a phrase or opinion that is overused or displays a lack of original thought. When an audience hears (or reads) a cliché they unconsciously assume that the rest of what has been said and what else is about to be said will also display a lack of original thought and the message, if there is one, will be ignored. George Orwell said "Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print."

Using a cliché isn't clever and it isn't amusing. People often use them as they think that it makes their prose more professional or business-like. It doesn't. If you want your presentations to be heard or your articles to be read try using your own words to describe the thing you're talking about. Your message will then seem alive and real instead of false and dead. So instead of 'at the end of the day', say something that fits the context of what you're saying. 'Finally' may be enough. Instead of 'at this moment in time' try 'currently' or 'today'. Endeavour to bin such phrases as 'with all due respect' and 'I hear what you're saying' as well as that anathema '24/7'. Using default chunks of cliché is the opposite of poetry.

Some other dastardly favourites are 'on a weekly basis' instead of 'every week' or 'going forward' instead of simply a pause. A bad writer or speaker is always telling us everything is 'literally' or 'basically' something or that they are 'being honest' or even worse 'being perfectly honest' - so was everything you said earlier a lie?

My pet hate has to be the need so many people have to avoid personal pronouns (I, me and you) as if they feel they might offend. So they'll say, 'can I get this for yourself?', 'Speaking personally myself...' or 'Myself and John'. It's simply John and I.

Basically I bet now you're beginning to feel like you're caught between a rock and a hard place. It's time to literally wake up and smell the coffee. Using language creatively is not rocket science. Rocket science is the scientific study of propulsion using explosive chemicals. That is what rocket science is and we all know that. It is not anything else you may like to compare it to. So let's just say 'it's not complicated' instead.

Click here to read more about creativity.

www.aydinstone.com

When Jargon Replaces Thinking

2008-01-07T04:46:00.001-08:00

Many businesses find it impossible to run a meeting without lacing it with cliched jargon. Ridiculous phrases, odd metaphors and allegories seem to be increasingly used without a great deal of thought into what's really being said or any consideration for those present who may not have heard this nonsense before.

Investors in People ran a survey last year which found that a third of 3000 workers polled felt excluded when gobbledygook jargon speak was used. Two thirds felt it gave the impression that bosses were being untrustworthy or hiding something. All those polled felt that it was a sign of bad management and showed the bosses didn't really know what they were talking about.

There are also cases of male bosses using male dominated sports metaphors without realising that their audience is mostly women. Some of these are used without knowledge of their origin, eg. 'stepping up to the plate' means nothing unless you know baseball. (The UK version would be stepping up to the crease, from cricket).

Here are some of the most used and what you could say instead:

Blue-sky thinking: Think of some idealistic or visionary ideas - don't worry about their practical application
Get our ducks in a row: Have things efficiently ordered
Brain dump: Tell everything you know about a particular topic
Think outside the box: Don't limit your thinking to within your job description
Joined-up thinking: Take into account how things affect each other
Drilling down: Get more detail about a particular issue
Push the envelope: Improve performance by going beyond commonly accepted boundaries
The helicopter view: An overview
Low-hanging fruit: The easiest targets
Guestimate: A guess
Going forward: from now on
Singing from the same hymn sheet: talking about the same subject
I know where you're coming from: you are wrong

I'm all for metaphors and there's nothing really wrong with any of the above unless they are used when people don't understand them or used out of context. The most successful managers are those that recognise that communicating in a way that everyone can understand is the key to having an engaged, motivated and enthusiastic team. If you find yourself trapped in jargon land, print out the list and play Buzzword Bingo.

The Plain English Campaign have created a 'Gobbledygook Generator'. Click here to try it - You really can't fail with systemised organisational alignment.

Click here to read more about creativity.

www.aydinstone.com

The Colour of Christmas

2007-12-22T05:39:00.000-08:00

One of the most important techniques for being creative is the art of noticing. In fact this is perhaps the most important technique in sentience and consciousness: 'I think, therefore I am' is really prefixed by 'I noticed that I was thinking'.

It's nearly Christmas and I've noticed something. So many decorations are using a new colour, completely unknown to Christmas until very recently; blue. As we change from high voltage bulbs to low power LEDs, someone must have noticed that high energy (and until very recently, expensive) blue LEDs are the brightest.

Can we have (as Shakin' Stevens sang) a blue Christmas? What colour is Christmas? Most of us secretly want a white Christmas. The last one of those I saw was in 1980. Subsequent ones seem to have been more grey, if judged by looking out of the window. The archetypal colours of the Victorian Christmas were green and red. The green is brought into the house with the evergreen of the tree and holly, reminding us that life continues during the harsh winter. The red of the holly berries, robin red breast and mulled wine connects both pagan and Christian thoughts of blood and sacrifice. The outfit of the 'jolly old elf' has been fixed as red, with white trimmings.

One of the gifts of the Magi at the nativity was gold, in reality just a fairly uncommon heavy metal. It's next to platinum on the periodic table which is rarer and yet gold is the emotionally evocative substance. Gold is the standard the world agreed to base its finances on. There is something about the colour of gold. Christmas is also a festival of light, representing hope that the sun will return. We bring lights inside our houses, the gold of candlelight and the reflected sparkle from tinsel. In recent years foils and tinsels seem to have fallen out of favour, replaced by an enthusiasm for electric flashing lights.

Christmas uses all these colours to evoke within us some form of emotional response, of excitement, of hope, of wonder, of the possibility of magic. I'm dreaming of a multicoloured Christmas.

Click here to read more about creativity.

www.aydinstone.com

The Magic of Christmas

2007-12-21T11:52:00.000-08:00

“What are you doing for Christmas?” – a question we could be asked at anytime from September onwards. No other public holiday commands such importance in Britain than Christmas that it is planned and prepared for almost six months earlier.

Christmas’ critics make the mistake of worrying that either the religious aspect doesn’t apply to them, or that the commercialisation has diluted the spiritual significance. A woman in America, after seeing that her local Church was advertising a Christmas service was reported to have said “Even the Church is cashing in on it.” It seems that paradoxes such as these that give Christmas its fascinating nature. Even in the cynical wonder-less world of twenty-first century there is still magic to be had – if you know where to look.

Christmas has a power, stronger than Cromwell who had it banned, only for it to survive underground and resurface when the coast was clear. It is from those sixteen years when public celebration was outlawed that the concept of spending Christmas with the family became a new tradition, which continues today.

The myths and traditions surrounding Christmas have their origins going back thousands of years, way back before the birth of Christ. The first 25th of December as a celebration of Christ’s birth was celebrated in Rome in AD 336. (Further east the date had previously been set as the 6th January, giving rise to the twelve days of Christmas, from the official date to the older date). It became an official celebration in Britain in AD 567 when the Council of Tours declared the twelve days as festaltide. Ethelred ordained it to be a time of peace when all strife must cease in 991.

Christmas is as multi-cultural as you can get. Just think of the ‘traditional’ Christmas day: the turkey; an Aztec bird, a German tree, a pudding made from Asian spices, a carol about the Bohemian King Wenceslas to the tune of a Swedish spring song, pagan magic, mistletoe and holly, wood spirits dressed up as angels and a Russian saint. ‘Christmas’ has had many names and many traditions over the millennia and has proved notably stubborn to give any of them up.

The religion of the Kalands gave us our calendar which sets January 1st as the first day of the new year. Prior to this, in the Celtic year, November 1st was New Year’s Day and it was on the night before, All Hallows Eve, that people believed the souls of the dead would return for just one night. It is from the Celts that we have the concept of ‘eve’ as they considered the evening before an important day to be as revered as the day itself.

There seems to have always been a festival on or around the 25th December. In the age of magic it was the winter solstice and later with other pagan influences including Roman ones, the festival of the unconquered sun and the worship of Saturn, which was also on the 25th.

During the agricultural age the twelve days of Christmas were granted as a holiday, but in the industrial age of recent centuries, the holiday shrunk, and continues to shrink to the bare minimum. The erosion of Sunday as a day of rest in recent years and twenty-four hour shopping has reduced the communal rest to levels unheard of since the Victorian workhouses.

But the modern world has had an effect to balance out those changes too. With television and mass communication, Christmas is a shared experience more than ever. The ingredients of Christmas are not spoiled if you look selectively. It has lost the odd custom here and there, but after the setbacks of the Cromwell years, Christmas underwent a massive resurgence in the nineteenth century escalating to the phenomenal proportions of today.

Everyone is familiar with the image of the Victorian Christmas, mainly from Charles Dickens’ novels like ‘A Christmas Carol’, but why did the Victorian fascination with Christmas begin? Perhaps it was because of the nature of society that had become the take shape during that time. For the wealthy, times were good and people had time on their hands to be miserable while for the poor, times were bad. Both sections of society then began the concept of looking back to a Golden Age when life was easier and simpler than the harsh world of their present. In effect then, the Victorians invented ‘retro’, the idea of borrowing ideas and style from the past whilst wishing today was as rosy as the ‘Good Old Days’. It was this imagined Golden Age that they tried to revive in Christmas celebrations, a time so rooted in tradition that it has become tradition for tradition’s sake.

Let’s not make the mistake of thinking that we are at the end of time; Christmas is still evolving, still expanding. Some traditions fade away while some grow ever stronger. Take for example the jolly figure of Santa Claus, or to give him his British name, Father Christmas. There is an important difference between the two. Santa Claus is how he is known in America where he wears a bobble hat. In Britain, more so now in the North, he is still Father Christmas and wears a hood where his existence goes back long before Saint Nicolas, even back into pagan times as the god Saturn, the Scandinavian god of Yule and the Green Man. Until Victorian times his clothes were green and he wore a holly wreath if he wasn’t wearing his hood and cloak.

A popular Urban myth is that he was an invention of the Coca Cola company. This is not quite the case. What is true is that they used a more clean cut and standardised image of Santa Claus for their successful 1931 advertisements which was later adopted by other artists to form the definitive American Santa Claus, which America then began to ship back across the Atlantic back to Europe along with their version of Halloween which had all but died out in its native Europe.

New traditions of recent years have established themselves; the Christmas number one record, the Queen’s Speech, even the old tradition of telling ghost stories on Christmas night has survived in the Christmas feature film on television. Nowadays we are just as likely to hear Bing Crosby or Slade’s Christmas songs as any ‘traditional’ carol. ‘God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen’ is still in there but layer upon layer of the modern Christmas has been added.

Christmas is criticised for sentimentality and yet it is that sentiment that becomes good-will and charity at a time when those in need have greater need than any other time of the year. This Christmas sentiment is most notable in the phenomenal story of Christmas 1914 when the slaughter stopped in the trenches and enemies exchanged cigarettes and food and played a game of football. Christmas sentiment was the trigger, initially on the German side, to question the war. The truce lasted several days and in some areas up to a week. Only when the generals ordered fraternising with the enemy to be punishable with death did trust turn to suspicion and the guns started booming again. Alfred Anderson, who served with the 5th Battalion the Black Watch and the last surviving member of the Christmas Truce died in November this year aged 109.

Yes it is tacky and sometimes tasteless, but decking our homes in plastic trees, flashing coloured lights and silver tinsel is possibly the only way we know to rekindle the magic and mark the occasion as special, for a reason that is lost to most of us.

Christmas is the perfect marriage of our needs and desires, both ancient and modern. It is the ultimate festival, providing the greatest sense of occasion of all. It is an agreed, shared, communal lift. It is today as it was in ancient times: the festival of birth, of hope, of light, in the black barren darkness of winter. In our electric lit, atmospherically controlled world we have no obvious physical needs, but are there other needs? Does the festive season lighten the darkness in our hearts? Perhaps it does remind us of a Golden Age, the mythical Victorian Christmas or perhaps our own childhoods, if they were more tranquil than our current lives.

It is a celebration of the family and of friendship. A time of greed and yet of charity. A time, as in 1914, of questioning the world. It is a deadline, a marker, representing the achievements of the past year and all the hopes and dreams of the years to come, like standing on the edge of eternity.

Overall it is special, relieving us from the ordinariness of the rest of the year, so that for a very short time the leaden weight that oppresses us is somehow lifted to reveal our natural state of joy.

Click here to read more about creativity.

www.aydinstone.com

Are Art and Money the Same Thing?

2007-12-12T06:01:00.000-08:00

I used to think that we could abolish money in the future as part of some Star Trek style Utopia. Now I’m not so sure. I think if we didn’t have money, we’d invent it as it’s so useful in comparing and transferring value to one another. As far as we can tell, we’re the only animal to have a system of currency. We’re also the only animal to have art. The two, money and art, may have not evolved together but may be more closely related than we think.

If you have created a piece of art, you have created something of value greater than the raw materials the art is constructed from. So the painting you have created is worth something and has a value in the same way that a note of currency has value and is worth something. Both can be exchanged for something else of equivalent value.

This is interesting as during the Renaissance, when magnificent works of art were created and revered then and now as masterpieces, those works were created because of an entrepreneurial spirit and the beginning of the system of capital which drove cultural and intellectual changes. A painter or sculpturer’s reputation was based on his ability to arouse commercial interest in his work, through direct payment, commission or sponsorship and not through any abstract criteria of artistic merit. The same principles apply today, but are not understood or taught correctly to many of todays potentially great artists. That is why so many artists, be they painters, actors, dancers or musicians remain poor.

Think about it. If a piece of ‘art’ has no value, it is not deemed proper art. The problem is that so many of today’s artists find money ‘offensive’. That is why they are poor. They wait around to be ‘spotted’ or ‘discovered’. But in an age of abundance that is filled with real works there is very little chance of that happening. Van Gough was ‘discovered’ 11 years after he died penniless.

A great artist realises that he or she has the potential to literally print money by creating value almost out of thin air from their talents and raw materials. The same criteria must apply that applies to all business: potential customers must be convinced that your creations have value. Money and art are part of the same thing.

Have a look at this poem called 'But is it Art?

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www.aydinstone.com

Multitasking is for Morons

2007-12-07T12:23:00.000-08:00

People go on about multitasking. Usually they trot out the same old chestnut that women are better at multitasking. Usually that’s stated as an attack on men to ‘prove’ that women are better than men at something.

Why people are so insecure that they want to waste time pointing out differences between the sexes to gain some sort of tribal upper-hand escapes me. What people also seem to overlook is that all these things are ‘on average’. It doesn’t mean that because you’re a woman you are going to be better at such and such or worse at such and such. And it doesn’t mean that skills such as multitasking and reading maps can’t be learnt. There are plenty of women who can read maps better than the average man and plenty of men who are better at multitasking than the average woman.

But multitasking is not a ‘great triumph’, it’s a curse and a scourge to your creativity. Being able to do lots of things at the same time sounds like a great idea in our time constrained world. But when we look at what tasks multitaskers actually do concurrently they are all mundane left-brain tasks. The danger is that such an emphasis has been put on multitasking that it’s created yet another benchmark of left-brain prowess that people feel they need to live up to. People are given yet another reason not to concentrate on doing one thing well. People again fail to live in the moment and to take the time to enjoy life, instead packing in as many robotic tasks as possible.

Creative tasks demand full absorption. They require freedom from a mind that is worried about ‘getting things done quickly and efficiently’. A painter, sculptor, writer or composer needs to take as long as it takes to create their work. They are not clock watching, cutting corners or doing anything else while they are committed to the creative act. You're not going to generate that killer idea for your business while you run about doing a load of other stuff. Meanwhile your competitor may well have just come up with something wonderful.

My wish for you is to gain access at a conscious level to your inventive, intuitive and imaginative powers that normally go untapped, or only fleetingly accessed in our left brain dominated, verbal, technological culture and education system.

Save multitasking for mindless jobs and spend as much of your life as possible being mindful instead.

Click here to read more about creativity.

www.aydinstone.com

Stop the ‘Make Poverty History’ campaign

2007-12-05T01:14:00.000-08:00

I don’t like the ‘Make Poverty History’ campaign and I think it should be stopped with immediate effect. But before you click away in disgust, please read on for my reasoning here.

I’ve studied loads and loads of some of the best goal setting techniques. I’ve studied the techniques of some of the most successful business leaders and spiritual leaders. I understand the ‘law of attraction’, visualization and prayer. In all that stuff, when you want to achieve something, or change something or gain something, the thing you must do, at all times, without exception is to focus on the thing you want, not the thing you don’t want.

‘Make Poverty History’? What are we focusing on there then? On Poverty and on History! Ok, some clever so-and-so came up with this catchy title, I can hear them now (“It’s a play on words! It means ‘let’s end poverty by making it historical’ and ‘let’s make history within the concept of poverty’....”)

Sometimes you can be ‘too clever’ for your own good. We should not be telling everyone to wear the words ‘Poverty’ and ‘History’ on little plastic armbands to remind them of poverty and history all day long. We should be telling everyone what we really want.

In the 1970s in the UK there was a campaign that started with the aim to make sport available for everyone. What do you think they called the campaign? “Make Couch Potatoes History?” no, of course not, it was “Sport for All”.

So ask yourself, what do we really want? Have a think about it. Shouldn’t we really want to make everyone wealthy? Happy? Healthy? Shouldn’t we be focusing on happiness, abundance and the future? Shouldn’t we be focusing on not lifting people out of poverty but pulling them up into wealth and abundance? Shouldn’t our campaign be something like “Make Everyone Wealthy Now”? I know it doesn’t sound clever or flash. The truth seldom does.

The words we use are important. The words we repeat in our heads are important. The words we focus on is what we get. Make sure you focus on the things you want.

And don’t even think about getting me started on “The War on Terror”...

Click here to read more about creativity.

www.aydinstone.com

The Problem with Challenges

2007-07-21T12:37:00.001-07:00

The great stimulant to creativity is pressing problems. The problem is that in today's business world people are living in denial. (Sadly most people think that denial is a river in Egypt, as Zig Ziglar said). They are in denial that problems exists. 'Problem', is a dirty word. So you can't say to your boss, 'I have a problem', you have to say, 'I have a challenge'. The problem is, though, that you don't have a challenge, you have a problem.

Climbing Mount Everest is a challenge; you don't have to do it. You can rise to the challenge or let it go. So if you had a challenge you don't actually need to tell your boss, you could just let it go. But if your challenge is really a problem then you can't let it go. A problem is different. A problem needs a solution and like a mathematical problem, there is always a solution.

Softening words in this way doesn't help. People may think it's positive thinking but it's not. It's denial. Positive thinking is about seeing the world as it really is and acting accordingly. Real positive thinking does not deny that there are weeds in your garden. If the weeds are a challenge then you could simply decide that you don't really want to face them. If the weeds are a problem then you have to decide what the solution is.

Positive thinking lets you survey the reality of the weeds and plan the best way of pulling them up without dwelling on the fact.

'Problem' is not a dirty word. It is a proud and honourable word. Face your problems with pride, confidently, expectantly, with the attitude that there exists a logical, practical solution just waiting to be found. The most creative people have a relaxed attitude of confident expectancy that causes their minds to function in original and imaginative ways. Face up to the problem and focus on finding the solution.

Click here to read more about creativity.

www.aydinstone.com

Think the Right Way

2007-07-21T12:34:00.004-07:00

Some people think they’re a left brainer, “I’m a left brainer,” they say, “I deal with computers, I deal with numbers. I get things organised, I turn up on time. I’m always smart. I’ve always got a pen. I’m a left brainer. I’m not an art-farty right brainer, wasting everybody’s time.”

Some people think that creativity is purely a right brain activity. Some think they’re right brain people and say “Well I’m an artist, I don’t have to turn up on time, I’m not interested, I like being in a mess, I do what I like because I’m an artist and I don’t have to wear a suit. Just don’t ask me to add anything up.”

Well they’re both wrong because we use both hemispheres of our brain all the time. If you really did use just your left brain you would be autistic. If you use just your right brain you would be in a mental hospital. What is really going on is that one hemisphere directs thinking for a particular task (not for a particular individual). The left brain dominates logical thinking, the concept of time, names for things and processes in a linear way. The right brain dominates language and meaning, opertaing in a holistic way. But the two always work together – and must do for you to function.

It’s important that we understand the specialisms of the hemispheres so that we know when it’s appropriate to use left-brain or right-brain directed thinking for a particular task. Let’s have a more detailed look:

Left Brain = Linear, Logical and Sequential
Right Brain = Holistic, Intuitive and Random

The left-brain does things in straight lines (linear) with no deviation. It processes in a logical fashion. It does one thing after another (sequential), one thing at a time. This is exactly how a computer works. The left brain is perfect for knowledge based tasks and since we’ve just come through the Industrial and Information ages, left-brain thinking has, quite rightly, dominated business in the west for a century and a half.

The right-brain looks at the big picture (holistic). This is why a large proportion of successful entrepreurs are creative right-brain directed thinkers. You need to be able to think holistically and see the big picture to have a business plan. The right-brain makes unusual links between disparate ideas (intuition). It carries out processes in a non-sequential order. There may be a pattern, but it won’t be A to B to C. In fact the right brain is a pattern generating and pattern recognising machine.

The left-brain is interested in utility, the right-brain in significance. So the left-brain is ‘function’, the right brain is ‘form’. In business this has a wider implication. When anyone is taught how to sell they are told something very important: sell the benefits, not the features. Few people are interested in how ABS brakes work on a car or even what ABS stands for. They don’t care if they have got ABS brakes or not. But when you tell them that ABS brakes stop your brakes from locking and going into a skid, that ABS brakes will save their life in an emergency stop, that’s a benefit. You sell the benefit and leave the technical description of the features to the appendix at the back of the brochure. A benefit is really ‘so what does that mean?’.

This shows that it’s the right brain that we appeal to when selling, in most people. People want meaning and significance in their lives, in the products they buy and in the services they use. Does your offering appeal to this need or are you trapped in left-brain directed thinking all the time and wonder why your service doesn't connect with people or that you can't think of new ideas?

Many business tasks need to be directed by right-brain thinking in the new Conceptual Age: marketing, sales, brainstorming, product development, human resources, lean productivity and customer service to name but a few.

Click here to read more about creativity.

www.aydinstone.com

Oh No, Not the Paper-Clip

2007-07-21T12:34:00.003-07:00

How many non-uses of a paper-clip can you think of? Most people find this quite hard which shows they are not fluid at activating the right side of their brain. This is a lateral thinking task because you have to get off the track of thinking of actual uses of a paper-clip. This tests how random you can be.

The task is actually quite easy since there are actually very, very few uses of a paper-clip; to clip paper together and to eject stuck CDs from computers. Almost anything else will do, except people find it so, so difficult! You can’t fly to the moon on a paper-clip. You can’t marry a paper-clip. You can’t use a paper-clip to teach snails quantum physics. One of the reasons people freeze up and can’t think of anything, especially in groups, is that someone has said something clever, witty or particlularly good so now they have to compete with that. No. When generating ideas you do not compete with anyone. The point is not to outdo one another or try to be funny or clever. The point is to come up with ideas.

You cannot use a paper-clip to solve world povety.... hang on, perhaps you can. If we do this.... and this... and suddenly a brave new idea has been found that changes the world. And all because ‘judgement’ such as ‘that won’t work, that’s stupid’ has been turned off. Try it yourself.

Click here to read more about creativity.

www.aydinstone.com

Creating Brain Waves

2007-07-21T12:34:00.001-07:00

When the brain is most creative it is able to form new associations between disparate ideas. When you alter your attitude, what you do with your body and what you choose to focus on, you’re actually altering the frequency of your brain waves. There are several characteristic electroencephalogram waveforms, or electromagnetic oscillations, associated with various sleep and wakefulness states:

A gamma wave is a pattern of brain waves associated with perception and consciousness. Gamma waves are produced when masses of neurons emit electrical signals at the rate of between 26 and 70 times a second (‘times a second’ is frequency, measured in hertz or Hz). Research has shown gamma waves are continuously present during the process of awakening and during active rapid eye movement (REM) sleep.

Beta waves occur above 12 Hz. Beta states are the states associated with normal waking consciousness, mostly active, busy or anxious thinking and active concentration.
Alpha waves are in the range of 8-12 Hz and signify periods of relaxation, with eyes closed but still awake.

Theta waves operate between 4 and 8 Hz and are found during some sleep states, in states of quiet focus like meditation and memory tasks. They reflect the on-line state of the brain in readiness to process information.

A delta wave is a large, slow (2 Hz or less) brain wave and is usually associated with deep sleep.

So to summarise:
Gamma = perception, conciousness and dream sleep
Beta = concentration, wakefulness
Alpha = relaxation
Theta = meditation and creative thinking
Delta = deep sleep

EEG Biofeedback Training is a learning strategy that enables people to alter their brain waves by getting a feedback of their present state. Some psychologists have set up biofeedback specifically to enable patients to enter the much rarer theta brain wave state to utilise creative thinking. They do it by monitoring the brain using electrodes. The patient sits relaxed and wears headphones. If the machine registers alpha waves it plays the relaxing sound of a babbling brook. If it registers theta waves the sound changes to crashing waves which enhances the meditative state. The system forces the patient to relax further and enter theta wave thought.

What is happening in theta wave state is that the brain has slowed down. This slower thinking allows connections to be made between more distant connections in the brain that normal gamma and beta wave thought hasn’t got time to access. This really means that it allows the time for distant, perhaps long out of use memory to be brought to conscious attention allowing older unconnected images to be recontexualised with newer thoughts. This is the creative process.

How can you access your theta wave brain state? Is there something you can do or someplace you can go? In your creative state you will find the solutions to your problems, you'll be able to think of new ideas and better was of doing things. Can you find time during a busy day to meditate? Can you really afford not to?

Click here to read more about creativity.

www.aydinstone.com

A Place for Ideas

2006-08-15T02:36:00.000-07:00

People ask me, 'Where's the best place to think up good ideas?', hoping that in the answer I might reveal the secret location of a magic glade of ideas where the Fountain of Enlightenment bubbles up from the Spring of Genius.

Of course, there are really almost as many good places as there are ideas to be thought of in them. On first glance it would seem that everybody has their own different, special place, but when we delve deeper into the question we find a few interesting facets to their commonality.

Many people would put it simply that the best ideas come from a peaceful, relaxing environment, perhaps in solitude. Some of the best places for this could be in woodland, in a sauna or in your own specially constructed den. The author Philip Pullman built a shed in his garden in which to write so that he could have peace and quiet and be surrounded by his research. But if the shed was the best place to write why did he write most of his famous trilogy in a cafe in the centre of Oxford?

Perhaps the answer has to do with how the brain works. It requires some form of stimulus and it requires a structure (rules) within which to work.

So what about a library? I've spent many hours in libraries not thinking about what I was supposed to be thinking about and not being very productive at all.

Could this be because the stimulus of the Library is so much less than the coffee shop? Less people, no noise, no nice smells. But the library has structure - perhaps too much. Being in an environment with so many rules that consciously need to be adheared to isn't conducive to a free mind. That's why children mess about in the places in which they're most tightly restricted, like giggling at funerals. I feel faint and dizzy in delicate glassware departments in shops, 'don't knock the cabinet!' says the voice in my head. I start to sway as my subconscious interprets the instruction as 'smash all the expensive things'.

So we need a place that is peaceful (we're not going to be too disturbed), is stimulating (but not too distracting), is structured (but not regimented). All of these the coffee shop provides. You have structure - a table and chair and a drink and no-one is going to kick you out, push you around or ask you what you're doing (choose your coffee shop with care).

Don't overlook the fact that change is sometimes better than a rest - if you work in a busy office you may get your best ideas in a peaceful place but if you work in solitude and silence you may find your genius is unleashed at a crowd of noise.

I know where my magic glade is. But that would be telling. Find your own.

Click here to read more about creativity.

www.aydinstone.com

Thanks for the Memory

2006-08-15T02:33:00.000-07:00

A paradigm is a model or example that helps us understand something complex. I want you to consider re-thinking your paradigm of what you believe memory to be. The reason is that memory is the playing field where the game of creativity takes place. Without it you can’t be creative and neither can you know what being creative is. Let me explain.

There are two types of memory, long and short. Short term memory holds data for up to 30 seconds and can only retain it after that by constantly re-entering it. This is why you forget a telephone number just after looking it up (unless you keep saying it).

Long term memory is associations. Nothing can exist in your memory unless it’s connected to a multitude of other things: it’s colour, taste, time, sounds, emotions, history, people, places. You can’t have a thing in memory (a memorand) just floating around, it has to have a place with in the network of associations. But that ‘place’ is not a ‘pigeon hole’. This is the first part of the memory paradigm that we need to re-consider. Our memory does not work like a computer which stores lists of data which can be wiped. The memorands in our memory cannot be wiped, but their associations can be reconfigured.

Now, do you feel you have good or bad memory? Most people assume they have a bad memory, but in fact they don’t. That’s like saying you have a bad hope or a bad electricity in your mains. There is no such thing as good or bad memory - only untrained memory.

If you have ‘forgotten’ something you’ve somehow messed up the process of Recording, Retaining or Retrieving the information. Usually it’s the first one, Recording (you didn’t hear the person’s name) or Retaining (you didn’t put the person’s name with associations into your long term memory) or it could be Retrieving is your weak point (you didn’t store the name with relevant associations so can’t recall it easily, although it is ‘in there’.

Can your memory be full? No, since associations can be infinite. Experts on memory suggest that there is no limit to human memory apart from the paradigm that creates limitations. Memory is a process not a ‘thing’. In fact I would go as far as saying you do not even have a memory, you ‘do’ memory, it’s an activity. Experts have also done experiments that have discovered that supposed long-lost memory is actually still there, just temporarily inaccessible.

Where is your memory? This may start to sound a little metaphysical but hang in there - we assume our memory is in our brains, where we also assume our ‘mind’ to be. Think about this - there is no evidence to suggest this is the case. No really, there isn’t! We surmise it is there, we extrapolate that it’s there, we have a theory that it is there. Have a think for a moment where else it could be. (This is easier if you play a musical instrument - it app ears that your fingers know what to do.) Then think about this: if you smashed your tv during the news, would you assume that the newsreader was dead? No, the broadcast would continue but you wouldn’t be able to receive it, that’s all. It’s just a theory, but no better than the one we have. (If you have proof of where memory is or where the mind actually is you deserve the Nobel prize.)

So how about this for a new paradigm: You have an excellent memory, capable of unlimited storage and fantastic feats of recall and free association from your entire human experience. That’s much, much better. Thanks for the memory!

Click here to read more about creativity.

www.aydinstone.com

Why Would a Locust Watch Star Wars?

2006-08-15T02:16:00.000-07:00

This will test your powers of lateral thinking. Claire Rind, at Newcastle University showed Star Wars (Episode IV A New Hope - the original one) to locusts and in doing so won a 2005 Ig Nobel for her efforts.

Now why would she do that? The neuro-circuitry of locusts has been extensively mapped and Dr Rind was trying to track whether the locusts could detect imminent collisions. "We were studying the responses of visual stimuli. We found locusts have dedicated nerve cells specifically to detect collisions," says Dr Rind. So watching Tie-fighters and X-Wings fighting above the Death Star was just the thing.

But what is the point of it all? The research was part-funded by car-maker Volvo who plan to use the Star Wars research to design an artificial eye for its future cars. Who'd have thought it?

Click here to read more about creativity.

www.aydinstone.com

What Makes a Genius?

2006-08-15T02:07:00.000-07:00

When I'm doing my creativity workshops the biggest hurdle to overcome is people's belief that only certain people can be creative and only certain people can become genii. In fact people believe that certain babies are born genii. Unfortunately for this belief there is no evidence to back it up. There is no evidence that 'genius' is genetic. Certain tendencies are genetic but that's a very different thing. A tendency does not make a genius.

Look at children. They are rubbish at everything. They are no good at maths, they can't draw properly, they can't pl ay cricket or football very well and they certainly can't sing. I've even come across people who are shocked at that statement. But it's obvious! Children are rubbish at everything.... compared to adult standards.

I was the best artist in my primary school. I could draw better than the whole school. But that didn't make me a creative genius. If you were to look at my drawings from then they look rubbish. Good for an eight year old but appalling by adult standards. For some reason, when I first picked up a pencil I had a 'tendency' to be a tiny bit better at it than the other kids. Other kids had a tendency to be a tiny bit better at football than me. I am useless at football today but I'm a better player than the best kid in the school back then.

By having this tendency of being good at drawing and bad at football meant that I focused my attention on improving the thing I got praise for and avoiding the thing I got laughed at for. I knew I was good at art and I knew I was rubbish at football. That type of strong belief is powerful. Whether you think you're good at something or think you're bad at something you're always right.

We all agree Mozart was a genius. His father Leopold was one of Europe's leading musical teachers and a prolific and successful composer of instrumental music. When Wolfgang was about three years old Leopold gave him intensive musical training, including instruction in clavier, violin, and organ. Wolfgang had learned several pieces at the age of four and started composing at age five. Mozart clearly had a tendency, but not necessarily a 'talent' for music. He had a talent for concentration and learning. The environment was right and Mozart got better and better. So was Mozart born a music genius? We've no way of knowing. Had another baby been substituted without Leopold knowing would that baby have become a musical genius because of that training? Perhaps.

In the early 1970s in an underground bunker near San Diego, Robert Klark Graham set up a genius sperm bank. He collected samples from donor genii of the day and the women of America could pay up and then conceive a baby with half its DNA coming from a recognised genius. 217 children were conceived in this way. Now how many of those children, now in their 30s, are recognised as genii? The answer is the same amount that you'd find in any random sample of 217 people. Just having DNA isn't good enough. It may help you to be tall but it won't make you a basketball player.

Dedication and training is what makes a genius. Einstein said so. Leonardo Da Vinci said so. Since they are the people our society holds up to be genii in the first place we have no option but to believe them. We can all be genii. It's only our belief that we can't that prevents us.

Click here to read more about creativity.

www.aydinstone.com

The Piper at the Gates of Dawn

2006-08-15T02:00:00.000-07:00

Music fans around the world were saddened this month to hear of the death of Sy d Barrett, the founder member of Pink Floyd. The story of his rise to fame, mental breakdown, subsequent disappearance and life as a recluse is well documented, most notably in the excellent book 'Crazy Diamond'. Why is the world still interested in an artist who burned so brightly for only one brief year and then hardly engaged in anything else again? Pink Floyd went onto even greater success post-Syd, a large portion of their songs are about him, especially on the LPs 'Wish You Were Here', 'Dark Side of the Moon' and even 'The Wall'. On the Pink Floyd greatest hits album, Syd's material comprises 30% of the CD where in fact he only too part on less than 5% of their musical output.

In 1967, Syd Barrett penned and performed on The Pink Floyd's first three singles and first album, 'The Piper at the Gates of Dawn' (recorded at the same time as the Beatles' Sgt Pepper, in the adjacent room) and then due to mental instability and depression, possibly triggered by copious amounts of recreational drugs, he left the band. Apart from two solo albums produced by his old friend (and Pink Floyd replacement) Dave Gilmore, he would never perform again. It would be like the Beatles having John Lennon leave in 1963 even before 'She Loves You' was made. Syd's story is a story of unrevealed potential.

1967 was the year rock music was born. It was when pop music suddenly wasn't about boy meets girl anymore. Syd's music personified the psychedelic revolution that spawned Bowie, T-Rex, heavy rock and even punk. (Both the Sex Pistols and Captain Sensible attempted to track Syd down i n the 70s to produce their albums). Syd's music was utterly creative with the childish perspective of 'See Emily Play', the transvestism of 'Arnold Layne' and the science fiction and fairy tale fantasy of 'Astronomy Domie' and 'The Gnome'.

But it's the clever poetry and ingenious use of creative language that is most unique in his songwriting. How those unusual words fit the melody in a loose kind of tightness or a tight kind of looseness in a way that previously only the greatest Jazz players could do with notes. Syd did it with words and mental pictures. Click here to read the words of 'Octopus' from his solo LP, 'The Madcap Laughs'.

There's an excellent review here of Syd's life and music (thanks to Alan Stevens)

"Oh where are you now, pussy willow that smiled on this leaf? When I was alone you promised the stone from your heart. My head kissed the ground, I was half the way down, treading the sand, please lift a hand.... won't you miss me at all?" from 'Dark Globe'

And now you know why my name is spelt with a 'y'.

Click here to read more about creativity.

www.aydinstone.com

The Age of Ideas

2006-08-15T01:59:00.000-07:00

Why is creativity so important? Why are larger businesses spending millions on particular types of training and ways of doing business that they wouldn't have given time of day to less than ten years ago? The answer is that if you do the same thing over and over again, you'll get the same results over and over again. If you make a million every month, whatever you're doing, make sure you keep doing it! But if you're not earning your desired potential, doing the same thing week after week is not going to improve things. That's one definition of insanity, to keep doing the same thing and expect different results.

That brings us back to our definition of creativity from Edward De Bono (who coined the phrase 'lateral thinking'). He said that creativity was 'doing something in a better way' or 'doing something better'. So if you're not getting what you want, you need to be creative and improve what you do, or do something else.

There are three threatening and ominous words why being more creative is now essential in modern business. They all begin with the letter A: Abundance, Automation and Asia.

The 'threat' from Asia appears to be obvious. They can make stuff cheaper. But that is not where the real threat lies at all. There are millions of highly skilled graduates coming out of China, India and now South America that are all competing in a global market for our jobs. But it's not call centre jobs that they're going to take - it's any job that doesn't have to be done face to face. That means almost any business service. That means any technological service. That means any skilled or knowledge based job. They are probably more motivated. They are probably better qualified and trained and yes, for now, they are happy to do it cheaper.

Automation used to mean that a car factory worker lost his job to a robot. 'Well that's all right', you say, 'no robot can replace me'. Well think again. Computer systems are now so complex that within 5 to 10 years a large proportion of knowledge-based workers will be replaced with automated artificial-intelligence computer systems. This means jobs that we once thought were fairly secure: accountants, lawyers, doctors. In the same way that few people now go to a bespoke tailor, in the future few people will go to a bespoke lawyer. The computer system will be cheaper and quicker.

Abundance is the fact that there is so much stuff everywhere. America spends more money on bin bags than half the world spends on everything. That's one nation spending more on the receptacle for the things they don't want than 90 countries spend in total.

There is so much choice, there are so may options, so many suppliers, so many variations. There are hundreds if not thousands of people or businesses that do exactly what you do. There used to be a time when a prospective author, actor or musician could send their material off to a production company and it would be read. Not so now. Publishing houses call the mountain of letters that come through their doors every day 'the slush pile'. Record companies have a much stronger description. It would require a full time dedicated team just to wade through that stuff.

So it doesn't get done and the genius of tomorrow goes undiscovered. Getting your product noticed on the high street is a similar challenge. If you want to buy a shirt, how can you decide from the thousands available? Price is not a motivator. Think back to when you last bought a pen, a car, a suit, dinner, a drink or a hotel. Did you choose the cheapest? Of course not. So how did you decide? This is why we have seen the rise in the esoteric black art of branding in the last two decades. Branding gets the product ahead. Branding is a creative process - it is holistic, irrational and emotional and completely out of the comfort zones of most logical, rational, linear businesses.

Not long ago, about fifteen years or so, we were told that we were leaving the 'Industrial Age' and we were entering the 'Information Age'. Well the Information Age didn't last long. In fact it's all over. We now all have access to the same information. They used to say 'Information is power' well it isn't. Information is potential power. Taking action based on that information is power. We are now in the 'Conceptual Age'.

The future belongs not to those who know things but to those who do different things, differently. Those who do better things in a better way. Learn to be creative and get ahead. The is the age where creativity is going to be prized higher than all other attributes. This is the Age of Ideas.

Click here to read more about creativity.

www.aydinstone.com

Put Grandma in the Playpen

2006-08-15T01:58:00.000-07:00

What would be a realistic but unusual answer to this problem?

Grandma is knitting but her three year old granddaughter keeps playing with the wool. Father suggests putting the child in the playpen. Mother comes up with a better idea - what is it?

Some people suggest taking the child out of the room or telling Grandma to stop knitting. Better than that is to give the child a spare ball of wool. All these solutions are acceptable - but a bit boring, a bit obvious. The point of the exercise is not simply to solve the problem, but to solve it in a realistic but unusual way. A better answer is then to put Grandma in the playpen. Doing that would mean Grandma could carry of knitting without interruption and the child can be in the room with everyone but doesn't feel imprisoned. It works, it's simple, but something odd is going on.

Grandmas don't belong in playpens you cry! That's a convention yes, but not the law. There's nothing to say we can't do it. The point of this problem and the solution is that there are many answers to the problems in your life and in your business. Most are obvious - they are the ones your competition have already thought of. You cannot afford to be obvious.

So when you have a problem and you need a solution don't be concerned with convention. Don't be concerned with what's expected. Don't be concerned with what people will think. Don't even be concerned with what's possible. If you put constraints like these on your ideas or if you judge your ideas during th e brainstorming phase you might was well give up and join the legion of mediocrity because these things will prevent you from having the best ideas at best, but will more than likely totally kill the process at worst.

Working out what is actually possible and allowed is done later, in the planning phase, not in the creative ideas phase. Learn to play, to make new associations, swap things around, wonder, be silly, experiment. These are the attributes that will enable you to solve the problem with a unique solution and to think of that elusive winning idea.

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www.aydinstone.com

Laterally Thinking

2006-08-15T01:52:00.000-07:00

Lateral Thinking, Blue Sky, Out of the Box - we hear these phrases bandied about but what does it all really mean? The term 'Lateral thinking' was first coined by Edward De Bono who described it as the process to achieve pattern switching from one way of thinking to another. Ok, but what does that mean and why should we care?

All thinking is an associating process. We think of one tho ught and that leads to another thought and that leads to another and so on. If you could be bothered you could trace your line of thought back throughout the day and you'd see that you live in a continuous associative stream of consciousness.

Playing 'word association' is easy - if we had a room of people and I said apple, the next person may say tree, the next could be woodland... etc. It's very easy because that is how the mind works. If we were to play 'word disassociation', we'd find it a lot harder. The only way to do it is to associate to something else to get away from the word. It's like our mind has rail tracks on which our thoughts travel. We're essentially heading in a set direction which, like a train, is hard to deviate from without crashing.

This is why so many people do exactly the same things, say exactly the same things and come up with exactly the same solutions when faced with a problem. They don't have any new ideas because they're travell ing on the same straight tracks as they always have.

So when we talk about lateral thinking or pattern changing we're essentially talking about jumping off the tracks onto another railway line that is going in a different direction. This is only possible if the rail network of neurones (brain cells) in your brain is a complex network of intersections instead of a set of parallel tracks.

Einstein's brain is stored in a jar in Kansas City. It has been studied by many experts for decades. It is by all accounts a very average male brain, the same weight and size as most. But it differs from the average in one important respect. When samples were studied under the microscope it was noticed that the neurones had dramatically more connections to each other than in the average brain.

So how do you form these connections? Like a muscle, the brain needs to be exercised. To make new connections you need to make new associations between disparate things . You need to fantasise, experiment. Force yourself to change habits of action, speech and thought. Do things differently. Do different things. Connect the new experience back to something you've done before. Learn to disassociate! Break out of that pattern of thinking by being random. Play!

Here's a lateral thinking task to end with. What would be a realistic but unusual answer to this problem?

Grandma is knitting but her three year old granddaughter keeps playing with the wool. Father suggests putting the child in the playpen. Mother comes up with a better idea - what is it?

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A Different Perspective

2006-04-22T17:06:00.000-07:00

I grew up in Durham the North-East of England. I didn't go 'down south' to London until I was 13 but my Dad worked in London and I knew where it was. When I pictured where it was, I visualised myself standing in Durham, looking south with Wales on my right with Cornwall further beyond, far right, Scotland behind and London and the South East far ahead and left. France was way off in the distance, beyond the horizon.

It's an interesting way to see the country and makes total sense. My internal map of the country was what it looks like when you are looking in the direction you are go ing in. But that's not the 'map' that we're familiar with. In fact, many people would say that it's just plain wrong to view the country 'upside down'. But what makes it upside down? 'North and South!' I hear you cry... but what does that mean?

A compass will let us know magnetic north - but that's way off from the Earth's axis upon which it spins. But why should we align the globe with the axis vertical? As the Earth moves through the Solar System it is not vertical, it's not perpendicular to the rotation around the sun, it's on a considerable tilt. Anyway, who knows if we're picturing the Solar System upside down or not? Why put north at the top and not at the bottom? Why picture the Earth as a spinning top and not like a wheel with a horizontal axle instead of a vertical axis, with the equator vertical? Why not do that?

There's no worthwhile reason at all really.

Until recently the BBC weather map of Britain was not aligned north-south. It was til ted to make the shape of the British Isles sit up square on the map. Why did they do that? Convenience, that's why.

Why is Europe in the centre of most maps of the World (known as the Mercator map)? It the same reason that modern maps in America have America at the centre of the map: convenience. If you're sailing off from the coast of Spain you want to be able to see you're route clearly so you put Spain in the middle.

This is all very well from the perspective of Spain, but by choosing one way of seeing the world, having only one 'convenient' perspective is always going to mean that you're going to miss something. For example, the World is a globe, not a flat map. Try getting orange peel to lie flat, or try papering a football. The curvature will cause distortion which is sort of overlooked when you come to draw your map. That's why Antarctica looks like a really wide territory at the bottom of the World map. But it has other effects too.

By cente ring the map on the countries of the northern hemisphere it has given us a distorted view of the scale of countries in the southern hemisphere such as Africa. Poorer countries suffer enough without being made to look artificially small (and therefore less important?) on a map. In the 1970s the Peters map was produced which showed the continents to scale but they looked unfamiliar and stretched. Both maps are entirely wrong as well as being completely correct, each from a certain perspective.

We couldn't live our lives if we couldn't take most things for granted, but now and again it is extremely useful to question why we think a certain way, why a thing is done a certain way and why we look at the world the way we do. Whom does it serve to have things the way they are?

If you want to think new thoughts, new ideas and create new possibilities your perspective in some area must change. Look at the world differently, get your information from a different source, consider other points of view and find that alternative perspective.

Oxfam have produced a fascinating and fun web resource which explores the concepts of how we see the world.

Have a look at www.oxfam.org.uk/coolplanet/mappingourworld

Click here to read more about creativity.

www.aydinstone.com

Want to See Some Magic

2006-04-22T10:05:00.000-07:00

Did you see 'The Apprentice' where twelve hopefuls audition to work for Alan Sugar and a six figure salary? What a highly entertaining and illuminating television programme. I've been watching with a mixture of 'how could they get that so wrong' to 'I'm so glad I'm not there'. The fifth episode brought to a head a subtext that has been bubbling under for the previous four weeks. All of the tasks have demanded a whole manner of skills such as leadership, perseverance, management and negotiation. But in all of the tasks from selling fruit and veg, designing a calendar for Great Ormand Street hospital, getting good deals, running a themed restaurant to producing an advertising campaign, both teams, especially the losing ones, have been let down by a serious lack of creativity.

It was never so obvious than in the fifth episode when Paul's team had booked actors and studio time to film an advert for which they had no idea what it was. They actually spent five hours in the 'Blue Sky Room' at Satchi and Satchi only to come up with nothing.

Interesting then that after they knocked off for the night and went back to the house, Paul was visited by inspiration. It took a change of scenery and a more restful moment of silence and solitude for the idea to come.

A shame it wasn't such a great idea. It was a start, but they didn't have the time or inclination to think of anything else.

How come these so called 'top entrepreneurs' are so lacking in the ability to think of ideas? Creativity seems like an illusive mist to most people who think that having a 'divergent phase' with flip charts is what is needed. One of the reasons is that creativity is not a gift, it is a skill. Like any skill it has methods that need to be mastered. Like any skill the methods need to be practised. Just knowing the lines of a play aren't enough. It's the rehearsal that makes it work.

You can learn how to negotiate, how to project manage and how to sell. There are courses on all of those. You can practice those in your field of work. But as the Apprentice shows, don't leave out creativity from the mix. Learn the techniques and use them to get the ideas to get ahead.

Think new thoughts. Find better ways of doing things. Find better things to do. That's what people overlook. That's what creativity is and that's what Alan Sugar did to get where he is today.

And that's magic.

Click here to read more about creativity.

www.aydinstone.com

The Problem with Superstitions

2006-04-22T10:04:00.001-07:00

The problem with superstitions is that they aren't really clear enough. For example it's unlucky to open an umbrella in the house. But is it more unlucky to open a full-sized umbrella than it is to open one of those mini fold-up ones? What happens if you walk inside with an umbrella up and leave it up, is that ok? You get seven years bad luck for breaking a mirror. If you pick up one of the pieces and broke it, would you get an additional seven years or would you be covered by the original seven years? If you broke three mirrors in one day, would you get twenty-one years bad luck or would you have three times as much bad luck each year for seven years?

Some people say a black cat crossing your path is lucky (or unlucky depending on whether you learn towards medieval Christian superstition or Egyptian Pagan mysticism). Would a mostly-black cat with a white spot still be lucky, or does it have to be all black? Can we reproduce th is effect by dyeing a grey cat black? If you're blind does the luck still stand? What's more, what constitutes your path? If you change direction, forcing the cat to cross your path can you bring about good luck (or bad luck if you're a negative thinker)?

If you spill salt it's unlucky, unless you throw some over your shoulder (in the face of Old Nick, apparently). Doesn't throwing it over your shoulder constitute additional spillage or should you throw only the salt that you've just spilt? If you walk backwards under a ladder, does that make it lucky rather than unlucky? Finally would genetically-altered four leaf clovers still bring good luck?

The answer of course must be that all this is arbitrary and relative. None of these superstitions are documented in any credible source. Most of them contradict each other. So why not make up your own? Obviously don't bother making up unlucky ones, just lucky ones. Make them easy to achieve, "If I smile and a m pleasant to people I'll have great day" or "if I step on the pavement, I'll go somewhere worthwhile today", that sort of thing.

Think about it. You can choose whether you have good luck or back luck in your life. It's what we call 'attitude'.

Click here to read more about creativity.

www.aydinstone.com

Chaos and Creation in Your Backyard

2006-04-22T10:04:00.000-07:00

In December last year Paul McCartney hosted a special solo performance from Abbey Road studios and performed unusual versions of his Beatles and solo songs. He also gave demonstrations into how he wrote and recorded them. We were shown a rare insight into how the creative processes involved in those hit records didn't end with the writing and performing of the song but permeated throughout the recording sessions. Even the methods of recording and production were 'played' as an instrument.

Strawberry Fields Forever began as a simple acoustic guitar song from John. All four Beatles and producer George Martin worked as a team to give their creative experimental best to interpret it into possibly their greatest single track with dr um tape loops, the mellotron (the first ever 'sythesizer'), orchestral sounds and effects laden guitars. You can read more about the Beatles in this book.

It reminds us that the creative process should flow on long after the initial idea or spark of inspiration has occurred. It should turn into action, creative action that exploits the best interpretation of the idea.

It reminds us of the concept of experimentation and how out of controlled chaos come the best ideas. Creativity arises out of the tension between spontaneity and limitations. The limitations, such as time limits, budget constraints or even ability are often derided but they all act to force the spontaneity into the relevant form which is so essential for the finished work to be a success.

Creativity is like the chaos of a river, controlled by t he restrictions of the riverbank, guiding it through the countryside. Without the riverbank it would just be a flood plain, directionless, formless and flat.

What are the processes of chaos and creation that go on in your backyard? What are the limitations that shape your work? If you were to host an event like McCartney's Abbey Road performance to discuss your life's work, what techniques and serendipitous events could you reveal? When were the moments of experimentation that led to methods that have propelled your life and career onwards?

Creativity isn't just that eureka moment (we all have those all the time). It's the process that turns that moment into something new, something worthwhile.

Click here to read more about creativity.

www.aydinstone.com

Practical Brainstorming

2006-04-22T10:02:00.001-07:00

Previously we looked at the rules for setting up a brainstorming meeting. Useful if you don't want your meetings to descend into a embarrassing waste of time for some and an ego-boosting time for others that leave you with less ideas than when you started with. If you missed the rules click here. So what do we do now?

1. Choose a recorder: Someone must be put in charge of writing down all the ideas. The ideas should be written on a large board or somewhere where the whole group can see them. Big is beautiful here. In an ideal session, the recorder should be a non participant in the brainstorming session so they don't edit or influence what they write down. They write down everything. Most especially the bad ideas which are the most important. If this person knows how to Mind-Map, all the better. If they don't know what a Mind-Map is, send them on an Ideas Wo rkshop course.

2. Organise the chaos: For groups of more than three or four, have a chairperson to choose who will offer an idea next, so that several people don't speak at once. If necessary the chairperson will also remind members of the group not to inject evaluation into the session, to encourage and to stop nay-sayers (repeat offenders should be ejected from the meeting). Imagine the meeting as one brain that has one gestalt consciousness which flits easily from one spokesperson at the meeting to another like an ethereal beach ball. A person only talks when the 'ball' touches their head.

3. Keep the session relaxed and playful: Creative juices flow best when participants are relaxed and enjoying themselves and feeling free to be silly or playful. Bring snacks and drinks into the session. Seriousness is not permitted, no matter how serious the issues facing the group are.

4. Creativity games: Start with some irrelevant problems that bare no relation to the problem at hand. How could you light a house with a single light bulb? Name ten alternative uses for a brick. How could you improve a common object, such as a coffee cup. The idea is to open your mind to un-thought of possibilities. We're interested in making connections that haven't been made before. Get random.

5. Break through blocks: We all get blocks. The most common is the fixation block. This is where a person can't see past the obvious and the mundane. They may even be pre-judging. Get them to think of 25 uses of the tooth brush and 25 non-uses for a paper clip. You may be blocked by 'reality'. Reality plays no part in the session. Remember you don't want to just come up with the same old rubbish so you need to think in a different way. Reality will stop you doing that. Ask 'what if?'. Do not place reality blocks. What if we could see smells? What if all the iron in the world vanished? Think the 'what if' through to conclusion.

6. Limit the session: A typical session should be limited to about fifteen to thirty minutes. The idea is not to exhaust yourselves.

7. Make copies: After the session, neaten up the ideas papers and make copies for each member of the session. No attempt should be made to put the list in any particular order.

8. Add and evaluate: The group should meet again on a subsequent day. First,
ideas thought of since the previous session should be shared.

Then evaluation begins.

Click here to read more about creativity.

www.aydinstone.com

Who Do You Think You Are?

2006-04-22T10:02:00.000-07:00

Most of the problems of the people of the world today are caused by one thing, whether it's wars or suicide. It's not religion and it's not money. It's what we used to call 'inferiority complexes' but now call low (or lack of) self esteem. It's the job of a coach, councillor or motivational speaker to tackle this very modern problem. So many people feel they're not good enough, that they're not loved (or not worth loving).

So many things batter our self confidence every day. Is there anything we can do about it? Well yes there is and that's what we're going to be looking at. First though, can you spot if you or someone else has low self esteem? The obvious symptoms are perhaps an overt shyness or withdrawal from social situations.

That's what you'd expect but it's not always the case. Most people who are walking around out there with low self esteem may appear fine in most social situations - they may even talk too much, always about themselves, with no empathy or consideration for others. They may appear to have 'the gift of the gab' or be (as they say in the North East) a 'jack the lad' - but these too may be masks. They may be so helpful and considerate to others to avoid thinking about themselves. Or they may just be negative and miserable most of the time, not wanting to reach for their goals, or even set them, so convinced are they of failure.

This is simply not good enough. Marriages have been wrecked, lives have been lost, fortunes have been left unclaimed because of this unnecessary waste-of -time behaviour. I want to be coldly brutal here. You do not live in a soap opera. There is not a requirement for terrible things to happen to you to give your life a meaning or purpose.

There is no such thing as good or bad luck. There is only good or bad attitude. A positive mental attitude is nothing less than mental health. A consistent negative mental attitude is nothing short of mental illness. Most of us are fortunate that we have nothing wrong with our brains. This means we can choose what level of self confidence we have. That's right. You can choose whether you want to be a party-pooper, miserable low achieving waste of space or you can choose to be the real you.

All you need to do is to follow this one simple exercise. That's all. It's easy (the only challenge is not being so limp and weak that you won't even give it a go.)
So here’s the cure for a poor self image. This is the mechanism of how self image works. I dare you to try it.

Stand in front to the mirror and look yourself in the eye while you say out-loud, “I like myself”. It must be said eyeball to eyeball, out-loud, in the mirror. Twice a day: before you go to bed and just after you get up. Do it every day for 21 consecutive days.

I bet you don't want to do it? I bet you're thinking 'my self confidence is ok. I don't need to do this rubbish'. Think it's corny do you? Embarrassing? No-one else is around, no-one can hear you! You are not in a soap opera. Oh dear. The truth is that it’s hard to say out-loud to yourself something you don’t believe. Now isn’t that interesting?

Now what happens when you say that is this. Your subconscious starts to look through his notes, “What’s that he’s saying? 'I like myself', well it’s got ‘I hate myself’ down here. Are you sure?”

So you say, “yes of course, I read this article which said I’ve got to say ‘I like myself’ in the mirror. So, 'I like myself'.”
“Tut tut tut. Not what I’ve got.” said your subconscious. I’ve definitely got down here that you hate yourself.”
“No! I like myself! I’m going to say it over and over!”
“Sorry mate, I’ve got 30+ years of you saying you hate yourself and loads a documentary evidence to back it up.”

You see your subconscious is a jobs-worth.

He’s not at all interested in your self image, only in what he’s got down in the book. If it’s in the book, that’s what he’ll work from. The only solution to rewrite what he’s got in the book. To do it we need to do the exercise for 21 consecutive days. Eyeball to eyeball in the mirror and out loud.

Whoever designed the human brain made it 21 consecutive days. We don’t know why. 19 or 20 days doesn’t work, I’ve tried it. You’ve got to do 21 and if you miss one you have to start all over again.

So after 21 consecutive days this is what happens: “I like myself”
“Ok, have it your way. I, like, myself. Done. Happy?”

And then of course it’s in the book. Now when you have problems and come unstuck – you’ve got backup because your new self image had been saved. You’re not going to waste time wallowing in self pity – you can move straight on and get ahead.

Now you can continue doing the exercise but add a new phrase to the book. How about, "I'm always on time", "I am wealthy", or "I am loved". Make sure all your phrases are personal, positive and in the present tense (i.e.. not "I will be happy" or "I am not sad" but "I am happy"). Your subconscious always ignores "nots" and any tense other than the present.

We create the world in our own image. We find what we are looking for. All around us is a 360° mirror. Wherever we go, wherever we look, there we are. We colour the world with our beliefs. This is why so many people run into trouble when they realise after many years of fruitless labour that they cannot change the external world.

We can’t change the external world except by changing our internal perception of it. The good news is that we have total control of our internal world. We own the exclusive copyright to our individual internal worlds. No-one is going to know (or care) how we change it. We could believe that the world is a grim and lonely place, full of meanness and evil. That could be our internal perception of it.

There’s a lot of external evidence to suggest that the world is that way, but confusingly there’s a lot of external evidence that the world isn’t that way at all. We can choose to focus on different things. Our task here is to decide what would be the most useful and productive things to focus on. Don’t fall into the trap of thinking ‘Well that’s just denying the facts. There is suffering in the world’. Well yes there is but there’s also joy. When you were having a good laugh watching that comedy television programme you weren’t thinking, ‘it’s wrong to laugh at this with all the suffering presently going on in the world.’ You chose for that moment to focus on something else.

As we’ll discover the more and more we look at this, you’ll find all around you what you are focusing on. If you want the world to be free of suffering you must focus on the joy, the ideal outcome, to tackle the problem efficiently. Focusing on the suffering will cause an overwhelming downward spiral that will help no-one.

You are driving you. Don't drive yourself where you don't want to go. Don't drive yourself off the road. Put yourself into top gear and cruise along in the direction of your dreams.

Click here to read more about creativity.

www.aydinstone.com

Wot? No! You must me joking. Would you believe it?

2006-04-22T10:01:00.000-07:00

Can you believe that some people say they don't have any beliefs? Don't trust these people, they'll lie about other things too. Of course we all have beliefs otherwise we'd have no certainty in our lives at all - we wouldn't be able to function. So what do we believe? The truth? You must be joking. People don't usually believe the truth, people believe just about anything.

Where do these beliefs come from? The human brain is a pattern forming device. If anything appears to be non-random the brain forms a pattern. If I do something and get a certain result and then do it again and get the same result, that's enough for a pattern to form and a belief to begin as to what will happen next time I do the thing. The brain doesn't wait for you to use the scientific method to test the theory (which is what a formed pattern is). If it was in the newspaper that's en ough - it must be worth believing (because other things in the newspaper were worth believing before).

What's interesting about all this is that your behaviour is always in accordance with your beliefs. In fact, it is impossible to consistently behave in a manner contrary to what you believe. And as we've just seen, a great deal of what we believe is weak pattern formed and not based on empirical evidence at all but on superstition and received wisdom.

This is so important to understand because many of us say to ourselves "I can't" to a thing that we very well could because we believe a pathetic limiting belief in our own ability based on flimsy half observed hearsay and superstition.

This is why people don't achieve, because they have stopped believing in themselves and their abilities. Stopped following their dreams. Stopped learning new skills. Stopped doing anything that might take them out of their comfy zone.

Note that I s ay 'comfy' zone. By that I mean fluffy pink lovely comfy zone like a little yummy cosy nest where each of us live our lives most of the time. I'm not calling it 'comfort zone' because that sounds acceptable, rather like the side impact protection system on a car. We live in our comfy zones where we are weak, soft, fluffy pathetic bunnykins.

Where do you think all the solutions to your problems lie? That's right. Outside your comfy zone. If they were in your comfy zone you'd already have solved them.

So step up and step out and don't believe a word of it until you've got where you want to be.

Click here to read more about creativity.

www.aydinstone.com

An Introduction to Brainstorming

2006-04-22T10:00:00.001-07:00

Brainstorming (or mindstorming) is the process that everybody thinks they understand but very few people do. There are two reasons is for this. The first is that it is best used for attacking specific rather than general problems and where a collection of good, fresh, new ideas are needed. This means not going over old ground or asking too open 'what are we going to do now?' type questions. The second reason is that it is not the place for analysis, judgements or decision making. You must not have these within a mindstorming session - it simply won't work. So here is a quick guide to the rules of running your mindstorming session:

1. Suspend judgement - this cannot be overstated. It's the most important rule. When ideas are presented absolutely no critical comments are allowed. None at all. This is so hard for most people whose brains only operate in a critical (non-creative) manner. Filtering ideas will shut down the creative process and create an atm osphere where people won't be willing to submit their ideas. This is why most sessions fail.

2. Write ALL ideas down - there are no bad ideas in a mindstorming session. Remember, no filtering. It's quantity not quality you are interested in. Think along the lines that you need to get 100 or so ideas (not caring if they're good or bad!) before you're allowed to come up with something useful.

3. Think Impossible and Ridiculous - if you think only about sensible ideas and search only for the perfect idea then you'll also fail to come up with anything new. The route to genius does not lie on the often travelled path. Deliberately think of stupid, preposterous and truly ridiculous ideas (and write them all down). These open up new routes for your mind and others to explore and find answers.

4. Enjoy it - be silly and playful. Seriousness kills the process. This is why boring people remain dull and serio us people never come up with anything new. The session is sacred. You are allowed to relax your guard.

5. No ownership - the ideas belong to the session not to one individual. If you don't stress this people hold back, not wanting to give too much away in case credit is stolen. Everyone in the group gets credit as every mind will have contributed to the process.

For infomation on running a brainstorming meeting click here.

Click here to read more about creativity.

www.aydinstone.com

I decide, Therefore I Am

2006-04-22T09:56:00.000-07:00

I always had a problem with sweet trollies. Which pudding should I have? The chocolate gateau looks nice but so does the meringue. But what if I chose one of those and they weren't that good after-all? What about that treacle tart? The fruit salad should be a safe bet but I'd be missing out on that delightfully rich rumbaba.

In most areas of our lives we have far too much choice. This had has a curious effect of our decision making powers. We've gone soft, just like the biscuit base of the cheesecake that's been waiting on the sweet trolley for people to decide. Our decision making muscles are weak.

The word decision means to ‘cut off from’. Once you’ve made a decision, a real decision, there is no going back. This is what a true decision is. If you give up smoking and count the number of days you’d gone without a fag you haven’t truly committed to giving up - think about it - why count? Just so you can say how long it lasted? If you give up smoking it’s got to be forever or you haven't given up at all, you've just increased the time off between cigarettes.

All of this is very important because our lives are shaped by the quality of our decisions. People don't make decisions because they don't want to commit, which means they don't want things to change, or they're frightened of failure, of making the wrong choice. But there is always going to be change in life. That's what life is. And change equals stress. It's handling that stress that makes our lives what they are. Making a decision is the method by which we control that change in our lives and therefore the stress in our lives. Making a decision is like a magical cure-all. Try it, if you're worried, make a decision. If you're frightened, make a decision. If you're depressed, make a decision. If you're unsure, make a decision!

"But I'm frightened of making the wrong decision" people say. Making any decision means you've participated in your own freedom. Not making a decision usually means you want to wait and see, which effectively means leaving the decision to someone else. Look what you've done! You've relinquished humanity's greatest gift, the gift that only sentient beings enjoy, the gift of free will.

What are you frightened of? Failure? Have a think about this:

Success is the result of good judgement
Good judgement is the result of experience
Experience is the result of bad judgement

Therefore: Success is the result of failure! So what exactly is stopping you? I'll have the treacle tart.

Click here to read more about creativity.

www.aydinstone.com

I'll Do it Tomorrow

2006-04-22T09:55:00.000-07:00

"I'll do it tomorrow" - the greatest labour saving statement ever uttered, because as the cliche goes, tomorrow never comes. We've all been in that situation. We all have things we need to do, things we must do, even things we actually want to do and yet we don't do them? What's the matter with us? The prognosis is that we're suffering from a deadly brain disease called procrastination. So what is it and what's the cure?

Firstly, it is not laziness. Procrastination does not mean inactivity, quite the opposite. It requires a great deal of exhaustive effort directed at any, usually irrelevant, task other than the pertinent quest at hand.

Secondly it's not through ignorance or lacking something. It is not through lack of a good plan. It is not through lack of good advice. It is not the lack of ability. It is not lack of intelligence. Neither is it lack of time nor money.

Thirdly, and most oddly, it is not because we don't want the outcome.

Why, when we know what to do, do we still not do it? Why do we fall short? Why the sabotage?

The answer is quite mundane. We all operate on a basis of taking a course of action that leads to the least hassle. We're all familiar with the scenario: if today is Monday and we're aware of a certain job that is needed to be completed by Friday morning it would be quite likely to be perceived as a lot of hassle to do the job now. However come Thursday night something interesting happens - we're suddenly aware that they'll be more hassle if the job isn't done. So we do it.

If we break down our motivation even simpler it leaves us with this conclusion: every action we take is designed to lead us to pleasure or to move us to avoid pain. The avoidance of pain (or hassle) is usually stronger than the desire for pleasure. This is why we tend to fight stronger to hold onto something we already have rather than to strive for something better. We associate more pain to acting than to not acting.

So what can we do about it?

If you're not acting on something and you know you need to or want to but simply don't, you need to change one of three things about yourself. First you must accept the concept that if you keep doing the things you’ve always done, you'll keep getting the things you’ve always got. Something's got to change and it isn't an external thing either. We have to take responsibility for our in-actions as well as our actions.

Your life is your emotions. There are three forces that control your emotions. The first is physiology that is your biochemistry and the movement of your body. The second is your language, the questions you ask, the metaphors you use, the stories you tell yourself and others about yourself which all re-enforces the third force which is your beliefs and values.

Change one of these three emotion controlling areas, your emotions will change. When your emotions change, your life will change. If you can't control your emotional state then you must be addicted to certain emotions. You literally could be addicted to the hormones and neurotransmitters that are released when you're in that particular emotional state. In fact that's all any addiction is, only instead of an artificial stimulus to trigger the endorphin release such as a drug, you're doing it with your physiology, your language and your movement.

It's possible to be addicted to depression, to negativity and to sloth. The good news is it's just as easy to be addicted to joy, to optimism and to positive action. The choice comes to what you do with your body - do you sit around slouching or get up and move around? With your language - do you repeat the same phrases, use negative terms and dismiss things? Do you believe 'it can't be done' or 'this always happens to me' or other global self-defeating phrases?

Just change them. It's easy to change them. If you're dismissive of that fact and think it's hard to change them - watch out! You may have to consider that you might be addicted to cynicism. Consider what affects that addiction may have on future opportunities.

The only thing that prevents you from having what you want is the story you tell yourself which says you can’t have it.

Click here to read more about creativity.

www.aydinstone.com