Monthly Archive for June, 2006

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A great way to look at books…

Published on 5 June, 2006 in Cool friends and ideas. 0 Comments

In looking at my friend Tom Peter’s website, I came across this cool way of noting and reviewing books. It’s simple. It’s elegant. It gets the message across.

Just take a photo of the spines of a couple of books – maybe that you’ve read, maybe that you just want to comment on… then make some notes over them, summarising what you think about them.

I was just rereading the course book for Train Your Brain. I wrote it a few years ago as part of the study skills courses that I was conducting at the time; there were several versions that I published between 1998 and 2001. What really struck me was how different my approach is today from when it was then.

Then, I focused on techniques. I taught students how to read faster, apply accelerated learning techniques and use mind mapping to give themselves greater access to the information that they had. Sure, learning skills techniques help students make more of themselves than they might otherwise have done; yet, to me it’s only the tip of the iceberg. The real challenge is helping people go beyond their talents to focus on realising their dreams.

This afternoon, I had the honour of spending some time with a young engineering student. We ran through some techniques and strategies – mostly aimed at helping him cram for his upcoming exams. He has talent; he is interesting and very intelligent. What made our time together so much fun for me was the way that we were able to explore how to go beyond the ordinary… not just to read faster, not just to draw a mindmap, and not just how to better answer MCQs. It’s going beyond the ordinary and helping people get access to that part of themselves that is uniquely suited and adapted to living the life and fulfilling the purpose that only they have… for me, that is where the real excitement lies.

I’m preparing for a new range of courses and products now… it’s going to be fun!

Making a difference – a REAL difference

Published on 2 June, 2006 in Creativity and genius and High performance. 0 Comments

Mihaly – the Chicago psychologist who popularised the concept of “flow” – has come up with a concept that I really like… it’s “Creativity”. Not “creativity”, the generation of novel ideas or connections, but “Creativity”, innovations in some domain of science, economics, or ideas that are both daring enough to generate excitement and sound enough to command respect from acknowledged experts in the field.

Flow, in case you’re not familiar with the concept, refers to the experiences of intense pleasure during periods of focused attention… the ‘zone’ that you get when you’re doing something that you love and that you’re good at, whether making love, playing tennis or taking an exam.

Mihaly suggests that one of the ways to cultivate Creativity is for experts to communicate to novices the joys of successfully practising a difficult skill set. Unless you can go beyond the drudgery of practice and reject the easy victories of imitation and passive entertainment, few will master the skills in the first place and fewer still will go beyond the established norms of excellence necessary to achieve eminence.

High achievers do this…

Published on 2 June, 2006 in High performance. 0 Comments

As I looked a little further into motivation, I came across Greissman’s interviews of highly successful people. He found the following commonalities:

  1. They love their work.
  2. They become highly competent in a speciality.
  3. They commit themselves to their work, giving it their time and even their life.
  4. They meet most of their needs through work.
  5. They long for recognition and self-fulfillment.
  6. They focus on their work to the point that they ‘flow’ with it, loosing themselves in the work.
  7. They have few regrets.

This is a post-hoc analysis, rather than being proscriptive, but I have to wonder how long it would take you to become highly successful if you were demonstrating these behaviours.

Talent matters… but not as much as determination.

Interesting note on Lincoln… whereas most Presidents since have chosen their supporters to be on their cabinet, Lincoln chose his rivals. Seward became Secretary of State, and had been governor and Senator for New York; Chase later became Treasury Secretary and had been governor of Ohio; Bates became Attorney General and was an accomplished judge. But to do this, he had to keep his ego out of the situations by focusing on the real goals…

McClelland on motivation

Published on 2 June, 2006 in High performance. 0 Comments

High performance is fascinating to me. A few hours ago, I was reminded of an explanation of high performance related to the fulfillment of needs, a model with great scientific validity, and one that I believe we should each consider or at least be aware of; McClelland’s theory of needs. He argues that there are three categories of needs that we each strive towards: Achievement, Affiliation and Power.

Achievement: The motivation to excel. High achievement oriented individuals will tend neither towards high risk nor low risk activities, since high risk activities have their results based on chance, while low risk activities do not provide the opportunity to shine.

Affiliation: The motivation to connect. High affiliation oriented individuals tend towards participating in activities that entail contact with others, striving for harmonious relationship and acceptance. These people will tend to conform with their groups.

Power: The need to disconnect. High power oriented individuals either want to control others or to organise the efforts of others for the benefit of the organisation. As intuition would suggest, managers tend to be more effective if they are motivated to organise than if they are motivated to control.

We can shape our motivations over time; each of us is motivated by the sum of the factors for a situation. When we are dealing with people, we are well served by using mechanisms that work through the most important motivational factors for our team.

When I started high school, I was motivated strongly by achievement. By the time I finished high school, I was more motivated by affiliation than when I began. Today, I greatly appreciate the opportunity for me to make a difference. The challenge is to align our motivations behind our objectives…

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