Be A Thermostat, Not A Thermometer via Lara Hogan [Shared]
As I’ve learned more about how humans interact with one another at work, I’ve been repeatedly reminded that we are very easily influenced by the mood of those around us. It’s usually not even something we do consciously; we just see someone using a different tone of voice or shifting their body language, and something deep in our brain notices it.
If you’ve ever attended a meeting where there were some “weird vibes,” you know what I’m talking about. You couldn’t quite put your finger on it, but something about the energy of the room was off—and that feeling affected you, even if it was super subtle.
We’re wired to spidey sense this stuff; this gut instinct is part of what’s helped us stay safe for millenia. Our amygdalas are constantly on the lookout for threats in our environment that could be bad news. Plus, we tend to infer meaning from those weird vibes. Our brain is trying to make sense of the shift in behavior, so we’ll make some (often subconscious) guesses about what’s truly going on. We often even jump to the assumption that those vibes are about us.
Read this entire article – Be A Thermostat, Not A Thermometer via Lara Hogan
Building a Creativity Kanban via Will Patrick [Shared]
To get more creative work done, think like a car manufacturer. A system for optimising the creative process and breaking through your barriers.
Have you made anything lately?
Have you published anything? Shipped anything? Finished something and put it into the world? Your answer will lie somewhere on the spectrum between ‘Yes – today!’ and, ‘No. Never.’
Your answer is important.
Tell me how often you ship, publish, or show the world what you’re doing and I’ll tell you where you’ll be in five years. In short: you’ll be doing incredibly well and far, far better than the person who said, ‘No. Never.’
If you are someone who is in the business of creating anything – whether it’s code, books, photographs, videos, lessons, physical products – the importance of regularly shipping what you make cannot be emphasised enough.
It is vital.
Employees Are Sick of Being Asked to Make Moral Compromises via Harvard Business Review
Summary.
Moral injury is experienced as a trauma response to witnessing or participating in workplace behaviors that contradict one’s moral beliefs in high-stakes situations and that have the potential of harming others physically, psychologically, socially, or economically, and it could prompt people to leave a company. It was first studied in veterans who’d witnessed atrocities of war. More recently, this research has been extended to health care, education, social work, and other high-pressure and often under-resourced occupations. The past two years have made it increasingly clear that moral injury can occur in many contexts and populations, including the workplace. As a new world of work unfolds before us and the pact between employee and employer gets rewritten, leaders have to learn and evolve to keep pace. The authors present six things leaders can do to ensure their actions aren’t unintentionally injuring the moral center of those they lead.
Feeling unfulfilled or stuck at work? 3 ways to help you get unstuck via Ideas.Ted.Com [Shared]
Today, so many of us are wishing to safeguard ourselves — and our careers — against uncertainty. But how do we do this in a world where the waves of change keep coming and it can take all our energy just to stay afloat?
By thinking long term, says Dorie Clark, consultant and keynote speaker. “Long-term thinking protects us during downturns (of all kinds), because it keeps us moving toward our most important goals … It’s the surest path to meaningful and lasting success in a world that so often prioritizes what’s easy, quick, and ultimately shallow,” writes Clark in her new book The Long Game.
If we want to play the long game, one of the first things we must do is identify those goals so we’re able to make the adjustments needed in our lives to move towards achieving them. In this excerpt, she shares some strategies to assist people in pinpointing their goals.
Get her book:
Aloneness, Belonging, and the Paradox of Vulnerability, in Love and Creative Work – The Marginalian
“A great interview does something else, too. A great touches the nucleus of being and potential, untouched by the forces of time and change.
One January afternoon several selves ago, I entered the corrugated black walls of a snug recording studio at the School of Visual Arts to sit at a microphone across from a woman dressed entirely and impeccably in black — a woman all stranger, all sunshine. I didn’t expect that, over the next hour, the warmth of her generous curiosity and her sensitive attention would melt away my ordinary reticence about discussing the life beneath the work. I didn’t expect that, over the next decade, we would become creative kindred spirits, then friends, then longtime romantic partners, and finally dear lifelong friends and frequent collaborators.”
Get the book mentioned in the article
Why Design Matters: Conversations with the World’s Most Creative People by Debbie Millman