Singapore Kindness Movement

laelene Posted in general blog，Tags: ,
04 April 2009
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April is, apparently, now deemed Kindness Month and thus the Singapore Kindness Movement was launched today, the first weekend day of the month.  If nothing else, just being at event about kindness really makes you much more aware of it.  I definitely was much more conscious of how my actions could be interpreted and affect others.  I made sure I walked around with a soft expression on my face, if not an outright smile.  I made sure I was courteous to others, saying sorry if I bumped into them and thank you when they were nice to me.  I even asked for some napkins to help clean off some chairs that had gotten stuff on them and made sure the people sitting in them were aware of the gooey drips of cotton candy that had gotten stuck on their seats before they sat down and dirtied their pants.

I was also much more aware of how the people around me were or were not polite to each other.  We all glanced over to hush these old women in the row behind us when they showed up late and loudly greeted their friends as the minister present was giving a speech.  I sighed when the children in the surrounding area were screaming and shouting in the background, oblivious to the racket they were causing those trying to listen to the speeches.  I noted the celebrity there, who graciously and patiently signed autographs for, took pictures with, and chit-chatted and joked with his fans, young and old.

Sometimes it seems that these types of campaigns are worth it if only to bring light to a problem.  I don’t think it is that human nature is bad at all; I think it is just that we just need gentle reminders of things as we get overwhelmed with the details of life.  Or, sometimes is it just the ignorance and lack of exposure we get to certain issues.  After all, we can’t all know about and be experts at everything.  So, every now and then we just need to be informed and other times we just need to be reminded.  Plus, we can get people to look at an old issue a new way and give them the support and encouragement they need to go do something about it.  And that is exactly what this month is all about – reminding everyone how a little positive gesture can go so far, showing them things they may not have considered to be outright kindness before, and encouraging them to go forth and spread the joy.

So go!  Be a nice person, hold a door open, say thank you, smile.  Be humble, be grateful, be KIND!

My blue, blue brain

laelene Posted in general blog，Tags: ,
03 April 2009
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Today I really felt the effects of having what is dubbed a “blue brain” in Emergenetics terms.  Blue-brained people are the thinkers who sit there, rationalizing things and using logic to solve problems.  Learning is done best by mental analysis.  And that, is exactly how I am.  I’ve been laboring over a project this past week, trying to turn all the information for our training branch into a simple, comprehensive slide show.  I had originally written a script for it, typing out what I thought should be spoken and what images/words could coincide with that.  I sent that out to the boss to look over and got back his edits, showing me the type of language he prefers to use and the style he was looking for.  From there, I changed things up as needed.

However, Marylin then told me about the time she made a Powerpoint of what she wanted and then turned it over to our creative head to edit and touch up as needed.  So, of course, I decided to give it a try and make his life easier.  Little did I know the ensuing headache that I would encounter.  First of all, this type of thing takes a very yellow brain.  What do I mean by that?  Yellow-brained people are conceptual learners, with vivid imaginations, reliance on their intuition, and a penchance for the unusual.  They are the groundbreaking visionaries who try out new things and don’t mind experimenting around to find what they like.

I amnot very strong in this area.  AT ALL.  Though I have some ideas for certain transitions we can use and ways we can display the words and pictures, I am far from the artsy creative type.  No, in fact, my creativity is more in terms of words and thoughts.  I also don’t like to make mistakes.  So you can see, there’s a bit of a clash here, between my learning and working preference and the nature of the project I am trying to produce.  Marylin is very much a yellow brain, which probably has something to do with why she was able to whip up a presentation.

Instead, I have spent days first figuring out how to cut down the message yet still convey all the information.  It’s still not enough!  On top of that, I have all these ideas for images I’d like to use, but I don’t know where to find them in past event photos.  I also have very few new ideas on how I can display the pictures once I do find them, so they sit lamely on a page, surrounded by text.  Not exactly the eye-catching presentation I was aiming for.  So today, I started to get rather frustrated with all the things I wanted to do but couldn’t and all the things I knew I should do but didn’t know how.

Thankfully, I took the issue over to the green brain in the house and he put his practical, structured way of thinking to work.  Green brains learn best by doing and that is exactly what he set out to do, helping me explore the options I had and how I could go about creating the effects I was looking for.  He also asked me a lot of questions to figure out what I want to convey (but still, I had the issue of HOW to do it nagging at me).  With his help, I have planned out more of what I need to do.  Now there’s the issue of getting that out of the way so I can get back to how, how, how!

I have always appreciated people with great artistic abilities, from dancers to pianists and interior designers to graphic designers.  My respect was built off of the simple fact that I just don’t have a knack for that!  My deep appreciation for skills such as video editing stem from a certain intimidation though.  Because it looks so daunting to me and something so out of my reach, I put it on a pedestal and call it a day.  When I do go about trying to tackle that task myself, it takes painstakingly long, but I can do it.  I don’t think I do it very well though; there are certainly people who have a natural talent for those things.

So, with this work sitting here, waiting to be done, I am trying not to get too discouraged at the prospect of all the effort it will take me.  Instead, today I got to distract myself by helping Marylin edit some material she was writing.  I have a near anal tendency to pick out grammar and spelling errors and it comes quite easily to me, so it’s almost fun for me to read through documents over and over, picking out all the typos and awkward sentences.  I was quite happy to have some “mindless” work to do as I took a break from the video/slide show haunting me.  Sadly, it seems that I am quite good at the very work that people get interns to do.

Thankfully, I am also a brainstormer, constantly getting little epiphanies about random ideas that have been floating around in my head for awhile.  That is why creative consultant work sounds perfect to me!  I get to sit around and analyze things like I prefer to do and also tap into my red brainedness – the social part that is sympathetic, empathetic, and socially aware.  This part of me learns from others by interacting with them.  But for the life of me, I cannot get my yellow brain to come to the forefront, much as I need it now.  That’s a pity.

Twitter craze

laelene Posted in general blog，Tags: ,
02 April 2009
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For some reason, I suddenly got followed by a good dozen people on Twitter today.  I’m not really sure why or how they found me, but it was quite the mix of people I know, people I don’t know, and organizations I’ve never heard of.  Up until now, I could usually understand why someone would happen upon me, because I’d have a recent post that was related to something they are interested in.  However, today’s follows don’t quite make sense to me and I’ve been trying to find some sort of a pattern to it.  Is it because I posted a bunch of Twitpics yesterday?  Is it because of all the random links and resources I’ve been “tweeting” about?  What is driving traffic to my page?

I’ve been getting more and more into Twitter, happily sharing a slew of websites and articles of interest with my small audience.  Through the various outlets that I get my information from, I have so many things to share with the world at large!  I talk about anything from all the free offers at various stores to the cool new resources that are popping up left and right.  I have about twenty tabs open currently, with the sites that I want to share loaded so I can start putting them up one by one.  I am trying to space out my tweets so as to not overwhelm people with a whole page full of them, then stay quiet for a few days.  However, it does seem that I sometimes manage to accrue more to share by the end of each day than I manage to get out to the world.  I will have to start increasing the frequency of my updates!

With all this new activity, I have been slowly acquiring a larger follower base, with a stray add here and there.  For each user that follows me, I will go check out their profile to see what they are all about and usually pay their website a visit to decide if I’m interested in following them too.  I’m sure a lot of people follow people just so people will go see who they are and hopefully follow them back.  This is a great way for users to spread the word about their existence and try to lure people to their page in the hopes of catching some of their visitors’ interest and gaining another follower.  Every now and then I will get a few people who will stop following me and I know that it is because I was not intrigued by what they had to offer and decided to opt outof adding them to my growing list of people/groups to keep track of.

The powers of viral marketing are alive and well, but it seems that the social media outlets themselves aren’t faring as well.  Hmm.  Now there’s something to think about.  Nevertheless, the powers of grassroot marketing really do amaze me.  Just look what it can do for raising money for the homeless!  I’m still trying to understand how it works, why it works so well, and how I can maximize my desired exposure to the big, big world.  I tried sending out a message asking how people stumble upon me awhile ago when I was still fresh and just started to get random adds, but nobody responded, so I am less than enthusiastic about doing it again.  Perhaps I should give it a go anyway, since the numbers are greater now and there’s a better chance someone will reply to me and explain how they chanced upon little old me.

Peace and quiet

laelene Posted in general blog，Tags: ,
01 April 2009
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Today was the first time I stayed in the office rather late unaccompanied by Marylin.  It was just me and Goof, working away at our given tasks.  I quite liked the atmosphere, which was much more conducive to working for me than most.  For one, there were fewer distractions around – during the day, people are bustling in and out and random spurts of stories and sharing will interrupt the flow of work.  A lot of people are also online to distract me (namely, Panda, who I now get to sit and watch working as I do my own work) and the light outside makes the world itself a distraction.

After everyone else left tonight, however, it was very quiet at our little corner studio and the dark outside provided nothing to attract my attention.  I had my music playing, contributing to the background noise.  Other than that, I didn’t pause to do anything else, like check e-mails or browse links or look things up online.  Instead, a sense of calm overcame me and I just worked away.  I always knew that I perform better at night, but I think a lot of that has to do with the simple fact that I have time and space to myself.  No other people, no other sounds, and no other light to make me lose focus.  I come alive when the world around me puts itself to rest.

I really like that feeling of actually being productive and efficient, rather than sitting around all day slowly getting work done.  I do enjoy the vitality of our interactions though, so it’s a difficult balance between wanting to get stuff finished and wanting to enjoy the company I have.  I certainly don’t expect work to be a powerhouse unforgiving of human interactions and breaks and distractions.  Yet, I still can’t help but feel guilty when at the end of the day I have taken longer at a task than I could have, merely because I had fun with everyone.  So, it’s nice to have more productive days here and there, to even things out.

Five Minds

laelene Posted in general blog，Tags: ,
31 March 2009
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I just finished the book Five Minds for the Future, so I thought I’d give a little summary of what it was about.  Basically, it outlines five types of skills and ways of thought that Dr. Gardner feels are important to develop in this changing world.  As technology changes the way we live, it also changes the way we need to think about things.  Gone are the days when it was crucial for knowledge to be retained through rote memorization, for in the real world, we have search engines to help our memories.  However, the ability to process large amounts of information is increasingly important as we are bombarded with more and more entries to the world’s database.

The Disciplined Mind
This one is talking about discipline in the sense of an area of study as well as in the sense of the attribute.  Not only is it important for people to master a general breadth of knowledge, they need to specialize in something later in life that they will delve into deeply.  Their subject matter should be examined carefully, from as many angles as possible, to get the best understanding of the ideas held therein.  Comprehension and ability to apply the knowledge learned to new situations is what truly mastering this discipline means.

In addition to that, there should be a pursuit of knowledge with persistence and care.  A diligent attitude towards studies in the chosen profession would lead a disciplined mind to continue learning and improving beyond typical educational standards.  It usually takes at least a decade of studies to truly master any given discipline.

The Synthesizing Mind
This type takes knowledge from different disciplines and is capable of compiling it in a way that is useful and understandable.  To truly do this well, there needs to be a goal in mind, with a starting point and strategy to go from there.  After drafting and feedback, revisions can be made all along the way until the goal is reached.  This requires the ability to pick out the important information from everything that is available and arrange them in a way that makes sense of all that knowledge.

In businesses, this is important to be able to do in identifying where the company is going.  It can be accomplished a number of ways: consulting experts, doing studies, or running focus groups.  New information that arises must be recognized if important and then incorporated into the previous database of knowledge.  Professionals need to constantly be adding to their repertoire in meaningful ways.  This taps into the organizational and categorizing skills.

The Creating Mind
This one comes from someone who has had a certain mastery of material and now takes that knowledge a step further by adding something novel to the equation, whether new questions or new solutions.  It is affected by the cultural surroundings and social field, i.e., what is recognized as a good creation and who judges that?  Creativity needs to be taken in context, as unappreciated creations will not do much to contribute to society.

True creators are far and few between and though there are plenty of people who have the depth of knowledge needed, very few actually innovate.  This type of creation requires a certain dissatisfied state of mind that drives innovation.  Creators are not afraid of failure, for they are motivated more by the need to affect change.  It requires space and flexibility that may be at odds with established regulations and often, rules need to be broken.  The curious mindset of a child should be preserved and encouraged, so things are considered from all angles.

The Respectful Mind
This is the one that requires people to be sympathetic to each others’ differences.  There needs to be an effort to understand each other and not just tolerate, but accept and appreciate differences.  Acting that way is not enough, but actually feeling that way will lead to positive, supportive results.  This means that working with others, despite whatever their personal backgrounds and histories might be, can be effective and productive.

This should be seen in all aspects of life, in dealing with every single person.  There should not be a bias towards certain groups of people and tolerance or even avoidance of others.  It is a state of mind that transcends boundaries and looks beyond initial categories and groupings.  This is what allows us to fit into society and truly grow and learn from each other.

The Ethical Mind
This one is the most abstract and requires a lot of thinking and reflection about the role we play in our lives at work and as a citizen.  They should always be striving towards good actions and good deeds.  Good in the sense that is of high quality, good in the sense that it is responsible to the community, and good in the sense that it is meaningful and of value.  Of course, personal standards of what is “good” vary, so it is difficult to measure.  To truly exemplify this quality, a person would stay true to their personal ethics even if it is not beneficial for themselves.

An understanding of the values of the profession is also paramount and adhering to them is crucial, even if others are not.  This is, of course, much easier to do with good role models throughout life.  Support should be both horizontal and vertical, coming from friends and peers as well as parents and leaders.  Society works best if it is moral and the institutions within it uphold certain standards.  The biggest threat are trends that deviate from ethical work.

A few other notes:
~Sometimes it is not easy to identify someone who is truly disciplined or creative because there can be convincing fakes.
~Creativity is like chaos and synthesis is like order.

And there you have it, my interpretation of what this text was preaching.  It pretty much boils down to what you are going to need to arm yourself for the new world and thrive in it.  I generally agree with the concepts, though I am certainly open to there being even more minds that we will need to cultivate in the future.

Aches and pains

laelene Posted in general blog，Tags: , ,
30 March 2009
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I had an appointment with a Chinese masseuse today it was at once a soothing and painful and tickling experience.  I have had a rather weak and very tight back for 15 months now, occasionally feeling like a 60-year-old woman with the type of soreness I would get there.  I threw it out back in late 2007, early 2008 and it never quite got better.  At first, I would just avoid doing anything that required me to bend or twist in ways that my back would not allow.

When I got back to school, I started going to the Ashe (Student Health) Center for physical therapy sessions.  It helped a bit and I started to gain more strength in that area, but I wasn’t very good with keeping up the exercises that were given to me.  My insurance only covered so many sessions, so I then decided that I had plateaued and had enough.  I stopped going and gave acupuncture a try.  I don’t know if it did anything since I only did it once, but yet again, I didn’t want to continue so long as I had to pay.

This summer found me in Beijing, with massage services aplenty.  My dad got me a membership card thing at a local place and I started to go there every couple of days for the month that I was there.  My flexibility was improving a lot, but then I had to fly off again, to a place where such services are far too expensive.  For months, I have not been doing anything for my back and it has only given me scattered bouts of grief.  I’ve been meaning to take care of it and go try more variations of help for it, but between not having the time and not wanting to expend the money, I tend to not get it done.

Well, I finally got around to getting another massage and it was a lot different from the last series I got.  This one involved a lot of poking and pressure in the crevices of my spine and some pressure points.  I tried my best to stay still and breathe normally, but I found myself clenching and holding my breath more than a few times.  I came out of it all a bit tender (and hopefully not bruised), but feeling good.  Not excellent and through the roof, but less tense, for sure.  I’ll wait to see how I feel tomorrow.

At one point, my loose shoulder was kind of sliding around in its socket (yes, I know, gross imagery, but it’s not that bad and doesn’t really hurt), so I’m sure the muscles around there will be very unhappy with me in the morning.  I can feel it already.  That area has never been very strong, so all this shaking around will have that joint all riled up.  I’d really like to soak in a sauna right now.  Nice and hot and wet.  My skin would thank me.  I just hope my right arm doesn’t get too weak tomorrow, or else it’s going to quite the task shouldering my heavy purse, writing, and typing.

One of these days, I want to go try out the chiropractor as well; I hear they work wonders.  Maybe when I get insurance.

Detailing experiences

laelene Posted in general blog，Tags: , , , , ,
29 March 2009
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I feel (and have often felt) like I should write more like I am storytelling, relaying the details of my life.  From the feelings to the specifics of names of places, these are all things that I tend to leave out.  I usually write what I did, plain and simple, in my daily journal.  I’ve been making an effort to include more of what I think and feel for a couple years now.  It’s getting a lot better, but there’s still a lot more to be done.  Then on the blogging side, I tend to only write about what I think, but not really related to a certain event.  Granted, an event may have triggered my idea, but it’s usually something that I’ve been thinking about for awhile or have at least considered before.

Part of the problem is the trade-off between the time spent in using so much detail and the time I could be spending out, living a life to write about!  This is a very familiar tug-of-war for me, after thirteen years of keeping a personal journal.  I’m afraid that I am slowly drifting away from maintaining it, just because the quality that I want to have takes far too much time to fit into my life.  Yet, I still can’t quite put it down.  After all, I’ve been faithful for a good twelve years and some with little faltering!

This struck me as I was replying to an e-mail from one of my pledge brothers, asking for advice from anyone who had traveled to Europe before.  I can still recall all the places I went and most of things I saw, but what was that website I used to book my hostels?  What airline were those cheap flights taken on?  These are all details that have started to escape me.  Thankfully, a quick search and refresher took me back to the information I wanted, but can things always work out so well?  I’d much rather have solid entries I can refer to from that time, with all those details in there for me.

I don’t have a very good memory and those are one of the most precious things to me, so it’s sad to realize what I have forgotten.  It’s the very reason why I stubbornly continue to document my life, despite the time that it takes.  Between all the things that I have recorded, I think I have a good database of my life.  I want to be able to look back on my life and actually know what happened.  I don’t just have trouble throwing away physical things – memories and knowledge are the same for me!  I hate that my French and Chinese language skills have deteriorated so much over the years and that I probably can’t remember the way to get from my house to the local library back in Topeka.

So, I love to have all this information.  Plus, it will all be very useful for writing my autobiography!  😛  I’m going to have to get the nearly 50 volumes of handwritten journals to be transcribed.  The benefit of electronic copies is the searchability and accessibility they offer.  Though most of my entries aren’t very exciting, there are definitely some jewels hidden in there that could be really great material.  I’d also need my thousands of pictures and videos to be consolidated and put into some sort of a timeline corresponding to my written entries and life events and experiences.  How cool would that be?  Then I could virtually relive my life (to some extent)!

For now though, I will take to my friend Ninja’s philosophy: live a life worth writing about!  (Or, in his case, worth making a movie about.)

Earth Hour – a reflection personal passions

laelene Posted in general blog，Tags: , , , , , , , ,
28 March 2009
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It was 8:05 PM when I opened up my planner to pen an event into it.  Suddenly, a reminder of Earth Hour was staring up at me.

“25 minutes!” I gasped.

“What are you talking about?” asked Marylin as Zen peered at me quizzically.

“Earth Hour!  We’ve got to turn off our lights for Earth Hour!”  I looked over at Zen: “You signed us up!”

And so, we all changed our plans to meet this commitment we had made by pledging our support for Earth Hour.  Rather than continue to work in the office as we had thought we were going to do, we headed out to eat some dinner.  Ok, so we cheated a little and didn’t confine ourselves to the dark.  But hey, we did turn off our lights!  We just went to take advantage of lights that were already on, that is all.

Being that recycling and conservation are the very things I want to build a company around someday, it was important for me that people are aware and care for causes like these.  Lately I’ve been going to a lot of informative sessions about various organizations in Singapore that are meant for the betterment of people.  There are the various divisions of the People’s Association, like Family Life, which is meant to promote the quality and importance of family life.  There is the Urban Redevelopment Authority, with plans to add infrastructure throughout town and expand and improve nature areas.  There are the efforts of the Yellow Ribbon Project to bring awareness and acceptance to ex-offenders, offering them a second chance at their lives.

And then, there’s Marylin’s passion for people with disabilities, which I’ve heard a good bit of lately.  Let’s not forget Zen’s love for the people in his life, which is pervasive in all that he does.  All this makes me wonder: for all the love I feel I have for people, why am I more interested in volunteering with animals and the environment?  Perhaps it is because I see it as my time to connect with the world and, in a sense, meditate.  It’s much easier to do that when your interactions don’t require conversations.  I’ve also always felt a huge connection with nature, finding the most peace in getting away from people and society.  I want to preserve that aspect of this world.  The things that live by their own rules and not ours.

So, sometime down the line, I want to create an environmental consultancy.  I don’t have the background to really go into air and water pollution stuff or how infrastructure can be built to be most efficient, but I can definitely become an expert in the types of materials and processes that are environmentally friendly for building with.  Mostly though, I want to advise organizations on how to create an effective recycling program, ways they can conserve on energy, alternative sources of power that can be employed, and also provide training for their members to promote awareness of these issues and show them why they should care.  I can also have seminars explaining how everyone can reduce their carbon footprints and offer easy solutions to greener lives.

As for the interest in animals, I absolutely adore cats (though I do like all creatures), so I think that will just be a personal pursuit for now.  I’m still trying to convince Panda to let me raise at least one cat.  Katana and I always used to joke that we’d grow old and be “crazy cat ladies” living next door to each other.  Though I don’t want to be stepping over them at home, I wouldn’t mind two or even three.  For now, I’ll have to wait it out and then find a shelter nearby with cats to volunteer at.  I’d really like to start a cat shelter myself, but I’m afraid I wouldn’t be able to give any of them away.  Ever.  Maybe I’ll look into championing spaying and neutering and adopting from shelters.

I’m not confused; I just like everything

laelene Posted in general blog，Tags:
28 March 2009
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I have struggled time and time again with a proper theme for this blog.  It started off as documenting my life after graduating, began to lean towards professional observations, lingered on personal life details, and now is floating around somewhere in between all things I wanted it to be.  I guess that’s what happens when I write about whatever is on my mind!

All along it has included my perspective on the topics I chose to write about.  Though there is no good way to summarize all the things I have and will write about, I have finally come to terms with this (again).  I am not confused about who I am or what this blog is about.  In fact, it’s quite clearly about my thoughts, opinions, observations, and experiences.  The only reason it may seem all over the place is because, well, quite frankly, my interests span a wide range of topics.  There are so many random thoughts that creep up on me in my daily life that I can’t just throw them into a basket and call it a day.

I don’t think this mental battle is over – in my desperate attempt to make sense of how to describe this to a stranger, I have realized that nothing in my life has ever been so easily summed up.  Yet, why should I force it?  It can be a conversation starter, after all.  So, though I know I will come back to this issue periodically, to revisit it and ensure that I am still on the right track (or recalibrate so I will be), for now I have found my peace with it again.  But true to my belief that things change, I always like to adapt to make sure my writing is in line with my thinking.  Just in case I go astray.

Creativity as a way of life

laelene Posted in general blog，Tags: , ,
26 March 2009
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In this line of work, it really feels like creativity is a way of life, not just a skill you have or a thought process you must endure.  Being creative consultants for a wide array of clients requires flexible thinking, curiosity, critical analysis, and understanding the market.  These skills are all a part of the lifestyle of becoming a creative person who takes everything around them and can draw connections that others may not, be able to adapt quickly based on new developments, and be able to dream in ways that others may not dare.

It’s really cool to be in such an environment that nurtures you to think in so many different ways.  I always knew the learning curve would be steep, but only now do I really get to appreciate what it is like.  I remember when I was still back in LA, trying to ask questions about how things work over here.  Perhaps I never got any fully satisfactory answers because it boils down to the story of my life: it’s complicated.  In fact, on a day to day basis different challenges arise, from clients who are requesting more thoughts from us to coworkers who are getting sick (and infecting the lot of us).  I find that even in my way of dealing with something like avoiding the flu or cold, there is leeway to be creative in my own right (aka the types of new things I try out to prevent from getting sick).

I really enjoy living and breathing creativity like this.  It could be just in how I choose to organize my ideas one day or it could be in how I decide to manage my time.  Everything I do allows me the freedom to think critically about what would work best in that circumstance, with my type of personality and preferences.  So much thinking also requires a lot of time away from the issues, to let them incubate before I come back to developing them.  I really wish I had some sort of mindless work to do in between major thinking sessions, like updating the website or sketching/molding random images that could be a new mascot.  I think I wouldn’t even mind handling some number problems, now that my life is consumed with words!

Recently I’ve been reading Five Minds for the Future by Howard Gardner (my interest in his thoughts began back in middle school) and I’m at the chapter where he talks about creativity.  He mentions some companies that have taken unconventional approaches and also mentioned skunkworks a few times, which really captured my attention.  Throughout the rest of the day, I found my mind wandering to how I can run a company that fosters creativity.

Things I have considered are no designated work hours, time off each week for a personal development activity of your choice (whether it’s crocheting or taking a class), no dress code, customized work spaces (You want toys?  Ok!  You want a beanbag for a chair?  Sure.  You want a clear desk?  Alright!), and pretty much just more flexibility all around.  I would totally get a kick out of themed job titles, so rather than say you are a manager or blah blah blah officer, you’d be something completely arbitrary – Bamboo or Venus Flytrap.  Or, alternatively, titles could really just be evolved nicknames, so someone in the office who may love to tidy can be Feather Duster while someone else who sleeps a lot can be Sloth or Zombie or something.

I don’t know if I can ever implement measures like that and still find quality people who won’t use that as an excuse to slack off – “oh, I’m just being creative right now” – you know?  But hey, it’s something to look into and consider.

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