From The EarthAsylum Leadership Circle Newsletter
March 1, 2007
Volume 2 - Issue 3
in this issue
Improve Your Concentration
Concentration is a high-payoff mental skill. Once mastered, an enormous amount of high quality work becomes possible and easy to come by. Here are some tips for improving your concentration:
1. Set the stage for concentration. Make sure you are in a comfortable, well-lit area. Block all distractions, like phone, TV, people. If you need to change your physical location, then do so. Go to a secluded place where you won’t be interrupted.
2. Start with the lighter tasks, or if you have a complicated task, break it to sub-tasks. Choose the sub-tasks that you can finish in the time available to you so you can achieve a portion of your total goal.
3. Once you are going full steam, don’t allow yourself to leave the task, not even momentarily. If you do that, you’ll find that upon returning to your task, you will need more time to reach the mental state you were at when you left.
4. Be prepared. Many good ideas come at odd moments. How many times you get an inspiration while waiting at your doctor’s office or in the train on your way back home? Always have a pad and pen handy to write it down before it slips away.
5. Set special time and make it a habit. Plan an hour a day for concentration time. Better set it at the same time and same place everyday. This way you condition yourself to release the concentration mood by associating the time and place with concentration.
6. People who love their work are more capable of producing quality work while they are having a good time. If you don’t love what you do, consider changing it. You’ll never reach your potential otherwise.
Twenty Words On Creativity
1. ALLOW for differing views and competing concepts. Let a thousand flowers bloom.
2. BREAK all personal and organizational habits.
3. CHANGE arrangements, conditions, routines, designs, forms, people ..
4. DESTROY rigid structures. Create more flexible systems.
5. EXPAND your universe. Add music, books, films, love, learning, travel, fun, and many other colors to your life.
6. GET out of the box. Break out of self-imposed mental blocks.
7. HAVE big dreams, then work to make them come true.
8. INITIATE and stir things. Be proactive.
9. KID around, use humor, laugh, have serious fun.
10. LEARN something from every failure, and start again.
11. LISTEN to others’ ideas, views, and experiences. No person is so ignorant that you can’t learn something from him or her.
12. QUESTION assumptions, systems, and constraints around you.
13. REINFORCE a positive attitude in yourself and in others.
14. SEEK knowledge, never stop learning.
15. STAY hungry for new ideas, new concepts, and new ways.
16. TAKE advantage of your freedom to think and act in a unique way.
17. TEAM with others, work with them, consult them, compete with them, enjoy them. People are what make life a joy and a pain. They help us live creatively.
18. TREAT obstacles as stepping stones, problems as opportunities.
19. TRY new things, experiment, take risks, dare to venture.
20. USE your whole brain to generate better ideas and solutions.
Here's an Idea: Form an "Idea Exchange"
Want to stimulate your creative juices with a constant stream of new ideas?
- Get a dozen or so of your colleagues and form an “Idea Exchange Network.”
- Each member sends one idea every month to all members of the exchange.
- The ideas could be about how to improve work, how to work smarter, new products or services, new marketing techniques, new initiatives to create a better work culture, etc.
- Each member should be assigned a different target date for sending their ideas.
- This way you receive a new idea 12 times a month.
- Your mind will stay stimulated and you’ll end up with over a hundred new ideas at the end of the year. Implementing a few of these ideas that are applicable to your area may pay off handsomely, and you and your organization can reap the rewards.
How to Coach Your Staff to Do a Better Job
1. Do not assume that your staff will come to you whenever they have difficulty. People fear that admitting the difficulty might reflect badly on their perceived ability to do the job. However, the best time to deal with such difficulties is before the work is undertaken.
2. Define the task. Spell out what is expected and when it is to be accomplished.
3. Inform the person/people doing the job of whatever resources and help is available.
4. Offer your help. When and if the employees feel they need you, offer to come in on the project.
5. Provide training workshops/programs and encourage employees to participate in them.
6. Keep lines of communication going, but do not try to micro-manage. Give your staff enough space and discretion to apply their own choices.
7. Give encouragement and recognition. Be specific in praising good performance, specify the exact project or task that was done right.
8. Criticize in private, and praise in public.
Coffee Break - Growth
“Of all our human resources, the most precious is the desire to improve.”
-- Anonymous
“Man is not a being who stands still, he is a being in the process of becoming. The more he enables himself to become, the more he fulfills his true mission.”
-- Rudolph Steiner
“The important thing is this: to be able to give up in any given moment all that we are for what we can become.”
-- DeSeaux
“It's not where you are today that counts. It's where you are headed.”
-- Arthur F. Lenehan
“Many people want to improve themselves, but not too many are willing to work at it.”
-- Anonymous
“There is only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving and that's your own self.”
-- Aldus Huxley
“Learn what you are and be such.”
-- Pindar
“If we did all the things we are capable of doing, we would literally astound ourselves.”
-- Thomas Edison
“The only thrill worthwhile is the one that comes from making something out of yourself.”
-- William Feather
“If wrinkles must be written upon our brows, let them not be written upon our heart. The spirit should not grow old.”
-- James A Garfield
About The EarthAsylum Leadership Circle
The EarthAsylum Leadership Circle is a business networking, support, and educational association started in January 2006 by six friends and family members who wanted a way to develop their own and other's leadership abilities.
We strive to understand and develop leadership skills and talent in a way that transcends trends and looks beyond short-term goals. We see our mutual role as supporting individuals and organizations in achieving effective and transformational leadership through life affirming and supporting practices.
Find out more at www.EarthAsylum.org...
Also, discover the EarthAsylum Fusion network -- an on-line, interactive forum for news, articles and discussions.
Find out more at www.EarthAsylum.net...
The EarthAsylum Leadership Circle has a lot to offer to its members, and each new member adds to that offering. Please consider joining us. We value your knowledge, insight, and participation.
