Communicate
Maya Angelou called this her “Piddling Time”.
The Communicate phase of this formula is by far the most important. This is where you have to allow and provide an environment where your subconscious right brain can communicate with your conscious left brain. This part is extremely easy to do if you are willing to allow. Just give yourself an environment of quiet. The nearly impossible part of this task is to give yourself an environment of quiet. Seriously.
When teaching top executives from around the world. I challenge them to do this on the way home from the Masterclass. I tell them this is a homework assignment. An assignment I am going to check on in the morning. The task is only NOT turn on their radio or iPhones, or any noise producing device from the hotel to their homes and back again in the morning. They all smile at me. They’re thinking to themselves, “This is easy, I can do that!”.
The very first item of the following morning is to ask them, by a show of hands, who completed the homework assignment. Out of every class of say 100, 2, maybe three completed this assignment.
This tells me the difficulty in turning off the phone, to remove the mental clutter and distraction from their lives. We all need to just spend some quality time with ourselves. If you got to know yourself a little better, you might just like who you meet?
And, you will definitely learn new things about yourself and most likely have a flood of ideas you just couldn’t hear with all the background distraction. I think you know what I am going to ask you again to do.
TURN OFF YOUR PHONE. You or no one else with die. The President will not call you. Your company will not shut down. Trust me! There is not one thing your phone will distract you with over the next 30 minutes that is more important than becoming more innovative!
Lon Safko
Serial Innovator, Keynote Speaker, Trainer, Innovative Thinking
Tags: innovative thinking, creative, creative thinking, Innovation, critical thinking definition, innovation definition, critical thinking skills, creative process