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Action man vs Ideas man

7/8/2015

 
Today I will receive some chest of drawers from Ikea and I will mount it.  And that´s it, a change in my home with something that will be very useful to organise my clothes.

It is one of these things that it will take a little bit of time and effort and at the end you feel satisfied to have achieved it and then you can enjoy it.

When thinking about what to do there are different ways to decide it.  There could be goals on the long term that require objectives to be achieved in the short term and actions on a daily basis.

There could be things to do that are more urgent and important or less urgent but even more important (or those other ones that can distract us that are urgent but not important or event neither urgent nor important).

Pareto´s law help us to think about the actions that produce a bigger impact.  The 20% effort that produces 80% outcome, the 20% of clients that buy the 80% of our products and services, the 20% of customers will account for the 80% of profit, the 20% of products will generate the 80% of income... more or less.


Going back to mounting the furniture of Ikea, the thing I love it is how in one day there is an important change in the home, a radical change.  Some times I have heard about The One thing, that action that makes the biggest impact.   It seems to me it could be related to Pareto, but thinking just about one single objective, one single action that has the greatest impact, that provokes an important change.
I also relate this type of thoughts to the creation of habits, as there are things, like losing weight, that cannot be achieved in one day.  Leo Babauta, mentioned in this blog, explains simple ideas that help with this in his books (ie. The Power of Less) or in his famous blog: Zen habits.

How to combine thinking and doing? It can happen that somebody likes thinking about things but does not advance very often (paralysis analysis), or the opposite: somebody that like pushing the things forward without stopping too much to think.  There is a very interesting video (in Spanish language) that highlights the importance of discipline ("The discipline sooner or later will beat the intelligence").  Son of a Colombian and a Japanese, is a very interesting person to compare the two cultures.
It might be argued, but changing the way of expressing it, it is very clear that without discipline ideas can not be implemented.

Trying to become a more active person, I think it could be useful to implement the simple habit of questioning my actions.   There are always a potential long list of "to do" things.  However, often we overlook which is the thing to be done that produce the biggest impact.  Usually we do the things that are urgent or easy, but delay the ones that are more uncomfortable.  That´s why usually is recommended to divide the "heavy" activities into simple steps that are less challenging.  "What is the smallest step I can do?"asks Leo Babauta. He suggests to link new habits to other activities we already do.  This new habit can be started by planing it to be done in a very small period of time, so that it seems easy to start.  It make sense that it is easy and motivating to do something that is going to take a couple of minutes... and then, once you have started you feel like doing it during a bit more time... feeling happy with your achievements.  You can read a very interesting blog post on "Sticking to a Habit"

James Altucher suggested to write 10 ideas every day, what seems to me an easy habit with great benefits. 

Should habits or goals direct your life? Should you focus on achieving goals or in implementing good habits in your life (an eliminate the bad ones)?  "It depends" Click the link to read an interesting article about it.


When you think about actions that can create changes in your life, which are the ones that can be executed in one day?  There is some special sense of achievement and satisfaction in completing things.  Some times I have done things that once finished (or almost finished) make me feel great.  Even if later I can improve them.  This Action man can be combined with the ideas man in a very useful way.  All of us we can have both sides.  It is interesting working with complementary people that together can dedicate time to think and act.    At the same time, when making decisions after generating ideas to improve any business, it can be useful to decide which actions that are easy to be implemented and with the greatest impact. 

Iron man is a movie that combines very well an action man with an ideas man.

"Don´t work harder, work smarter"

Don't just "work smart", work smart on the right things.

Work less using the 80/20 rule





Pareto principle, energy and this modern life:

Sweet networking 

5/8/2015

 
Yesterday I went to the British Library and attended an event organised by Enterprise Nation titled "Go and Grow Online" to encourage more businesses to get online and support existing online traders to grow.

It was a very friendly environment in which I spoke to a couple of people.  Before the presentation where 3 businesses answered some questions about their online business experiences, a sweet young lady who was sat next to me with her mum, introduced to myself and then I learnt she was Geraldine Black, the owner of besprinkle the business that provided the cakes for the event.  Later I ate one of the nice cupcakes she had brought and I saw some of the cupcakes she designed showing the logo of Enterprise Nation.  The neighbour on my other side had eaten 4 cupcakes!!!  These cakes were very healthy and tasty.

During our conversation, besides our respective businesses, we discussed about other topics, such as networking...  and then an idea came to me!!!

I am a passionate about creative thinking and how to use it to help different people such as students, employees, self-employees or businesses.  Usually is being said to focus on a specific target market and then design the product or service that you can focus to market it with maximum efficiency.  However, in my case, I am always thinking about products or services that can help all type of people, employees, unemployees, families... and businesses.

As mentioned in other blog posts, I have attended some business seminars and networking events in which you can find different ways in which people network.  Generally, the creativity workshops I provide are very simple and effective, showing examples using some techniques and inviting people to use them on their own, supporting them, as well as discussing any issues to increase the benefits of using these techniques.

After speaking to Geraldine, another idea came to me:  the possibility of converting a creative thinking seminar to a networking event of ideas or on the other side, to improve the benefits of networking by organising an event in such a way that there are some simple tools to be followed when two people meet, using each knowledge-experience to suggest ideas to the other person by sharing each business pitch and looking for their respective analogies, in which ideas used in a specific type of business can be applied to a totally different type of business. 

When talking about networking, there was something that Geraldine said: "When talking about cakes, I can talk for hours".  Take somebody that has this type of passion for her/his business to speak about it to you and think how to use their ideas applying (adapting, suggesting) them to your business.  Besides the benefits of having a passionate conversation between two people about their respective businesses, you will have ideas with meaning, that can impact the creativity you can add to your business.  For example, thinking about a "cake business" like besprinkle, I could relate it to my business "Creative thinking products and services" and ask myself what would mean to produce workshops that are with the futures of the cakes: bespoke, gluten free, milk free, sugar free, standard, luxury, with natural flavours...

Thinking about something very unrelated to, for example, "Creative thinking workshops", I could think about the meaning of creating "gluten free sessions".  This would inspire me to think about gluten free, like something that make the food or the training easy to digest.  So maybe introductory sessions, short sessions, simple techniques, memorables, etc.

Even it could be used to create a type of publicity in which the different type of workshops are named based on type of ingredients or condiments:

"Gluten free creative thinking seminar"
"Sugar free creative writing"
"Spicy problem solving techniques"
"Natural innovation
"

Thank you for the inspiration, Geraldine!!!


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