Making Your Gray Matter

July 2009

Contents This Month

· Surfing for Your Brain

· A Whole New Pink

· Fiddling Around with Quotations

· Quotations

· Update Your Email Address

· Refer Madness

Surfing for Your Brain

According to research by America Online and Salary.com, the average worker wastes about two hours each eight-hour workday. You can probably guess the most popular time killer – “surfing the internet (44.7%)” If you ever find yourself idly surfing TMZ’s website to find out the latest on Michael Jackson, redirect your attention to a brain-enhancing site – www.fitbrains.com.

I heard about this website from a Dallas-based health and fitness expert. The site has many different brain-training games that are both fun and challenging. I’ve tried several of them and check them out a couple times a week.

There’s also a very insightful and research-based blog at that site about all things brain. Along with the new Star Trek movie, this website is my “must see for the summer!”

A Whole New Pink

I have long intuited that right-brained thinking was valuable and important for business. However, I’ve not seen a good business case for it like a video I saw online about six weeks ago. Daniel Pink, Author of A Whole New Mind; Why Right-Brainers will Rule the Future, delivered a keynote speech to the Texas Music Educators Association earlier this year that sets forth “A Hard Headed Case for Arts Education” http://www.tmea.org/2009keynote/

During the speech, Pink theorizes about three A’s that reinforce the importance of arts education/right-brained thinking.

· Asia – because of the large numbers of educated, English-speaking workers in Asia many jobs will continue to go there.

· Automation – a large number of the jobs that will go to Asia are routine and have one “right” answer and have been or will be automated. This means that the jobs that stay here will require non-routine ones! These are the jobs and skills that require empathy, artistic, and unconventional thinking.

· Abundance – many items that are now commonplace didn’t exist just a few years ago. When I was a child, almost no one had a colored television, but now the average household has 2.5 people and 2.7 televisions! Pink also mentions the iPod as another example of abundance. The next new idea won’t come from someone perfecting a routine, but from someone who can think “artistically.”

Pink’s book is in my reading list; I’ll have a book report for you soon! (By the way, did you notice how very few PowerPoint slides Daniel used?)

Fiddling Around with Quotations

I particularly like the two quotations I included in this month’s newsletter. The first is from Malcolm Forbes, “It’s so much easier to suggest solutions when you don’t know too much about the problem.”

I think Forbes was saying that too often we feel free to offer solutions to problems we know little or nothing about. In other words, our solutions are naïve and uninformed. However, this quotation could easily be interpreted differently. It could also mean that sometimes we are encumbered with too much knowledge about a problem and that encumbrance could eliminate potential solutions because we “know too much.” The first hotspot-free light bulb was developed by an engineer who didn’t know that it couldn’t be done! The person who first came up with how to make that light bulb was new to his job. The people he worked with had tried and failed to create a hot-spot free light bulb before and “knew” it couldn’t be done.

I like the second quotation, because it allows room for re-working. I could easily substitute a word to change the quote to, “Innovation is not reinventing the light bulb, but using the heat it gives off differently.” I could also change it to “Innovation is not reinventing the light bulb, but redesigning it.” I challenge you to come up with three ways to change this quotation. (By the way, substituting words/phrases like this is another technique to bolster the number of ideas generated in a creativity session.)

Quotations

“It’s so much easier to suggest solutions when you don’t know too much about the problem.” – Malcolm Forbes (publisher)

“Innovation is not reinventing the light bulb, but using the light it gives off differently.” – American Society of Training and Development (ASTD) Benchmarking Forum project

Update Your Email Address

Don’t miss an issue of Making Your Gray Matter. If your email address is going to change, let me know about it.

Refer Madness

Share the good experience you had in my workshop or seminar. Tell people in your company, organization, professional association, or non-profit organization about me. Have them get in touch with me or you can send me their contact information. If you give me a lead that generates new business for me

· Your colleague/friend will get a powerful and fun learning event customized to their needs. I’ll deliver a session that will build skills and create positive change in their organization.

· You’ll get a check for $300 (or your favorite charity) $300 (less if it is less than a full-fee engagement). Several people have asked that the referral check be donated to a charity.

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