Ho‘ohana Aloha

Excerpt, with an Einstein quote I have always liked:

The connection between perspective and creative thinking has to do with habituation and over-familiarization. Over-familiarization with something ( an idea, a procedure, a system ) is a trap. Where creative thinking is concerned, that is the irony of the skill: the more adept you are at something, the less likely you are to look at it in a different way; the greater your skill of a particular discipline, the less you will be tempted to experiment with different approaches. Einstein put it best when he once said, “An expert is a person who has few new ideas; a beginner is a person with many.”

Talking Story Archive Aloha for the weaving:

• Book Review: Where Good Ideas Come From
• Are you able to discount your own certainty?
• What your Big Ideas do best
• Don’t get New Ideas caught in the ASA Trap!
• An idea is a fragile thing

On Talking Story today:

There’s an interesting idea which keeps popping up on my radar these early days of our new year, and I love it. It’s an inventive call to action:

Let’s shift what we value in society today, by shifting to the 20-hour work week.

The argument behind this proposal, is that our 40-hour work week has been our convention, but convention isn’t unquestionable fact. Convention isn’t necessarily right, and it may not be that good for us anymore — Was it ever?

Brief stories and their nutshell principles from Leo Babauta

This is slanted toward social media (the author’s tagline is “half marketing, half geek = 100% social nut) but she makes a good point in how the world [and thus, our habits] have changed, and joiners need tribes to commune with.

Tony Schwartz of The Energy Project offers some good, common sense advice with this Master Plan. You’ve likely heard this stuff before, but has it become your habit? As we often revisit on Talking Story: You are Your Habits, so Make ‘em Good!

Schwartz:

Here’s the problem we face, every day of our lives. Nearly everything that generates enduring value requires effort, focus, and even some discomfort along the way.  At the same time, we’re deeply wired to avoid pain, which the body reads as mortally dangerous, and to move toward pleasure, the more immediate the better. We’re also exposed to more temptation than ever. The world is literally at our fingertips, a few keystrokes away. It’s forever beckoning us, like the Sirens singing to Odysseus, who lashed himself to the mast of his ship to resist their call.    

The sirens sing to us, too: Have the dessert. Skip the workout. Put off the hard work. Surf the web. Check your email. Indulge your whims. Settle for the easy way out.

So how do we take back control of our lives?  What follows are the key moves we can make. It’s not all or none.  More is better, but each one will help… (click to blog)

He then ends with that values-based Managing with Aloha message we love!

Above all else, it’s critical to ground yourself in deeply held values. Knowing what you stand for is a uniquely powerful fuel for behavior, especially when the going gets tough, and the temptation is to take the easy route. If you’re clear about who you want to be in any given situation, non-negotiably, the songs of the Sirens aren’t so alluring.

Taking stock of my digital reading:

You don’t curl up with a Kindle compared to a book, at least I don’t, but it’s still great reading. It’s a different experience, one which is more lightweight-mobile and focus-efficient for me, and I now shake my head at the scarcity thinking when I hear the separate camps of those who defend the timeless honor of “real books” versus those who delight in being completely ebook savvy: Why not enjoy both?

“When the only tool you own is a hammer,
every problem begins to resemble a nail.”
—Abraham Maslow

More on Talking Story today…

C.J. Chilvers shares why he’s shedding some of his digital habits now that he’s learned of “a scary summary of the decades of studies that have revealed how hypertext measurably alters pathways in the brain.”

Within his post is a mini-summary of The Shallows, and though I hadn’t heard of it before, I wasn’t at all surprised to learn it was written by Nicolas Carr, author of The Big Switch.

Chilvers’ post alone makes a lot of sense to me, but having read Carr’s books before, I’m very interested in reading this one too.

Want to develop a new study habit with non-fiction books? Want to simultaneously work on your strengths as you do so?

Marcus Buckingham continues to write books that are very useful to his readers IF, —and this is a big ‘if’ —you’ll go the distance with taking his advice and make his book a study, not just a passing read. You must be willing, and disciplined enough, to become your own work in progress (something you can do privately, don’t worry) while diligently following his coaching-in-a-book.

Unfortunately, many of us don’t do that. We finish a book, and the moment we reach the last word on the final page we feel just that – it’s finished. And so are we; we’re finished with it.

Sorry, not good enough.

We talk about habits a lot within MWA3P [our Managing with Aloha 3 Palena ‘ole capacities for best productivity] and this posting offers up several good tips to revisit what works for us and what doesn’t.