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Tag Archives: Brainstorming

Daily Ramblings – Motivation Monday – Small Things Turn into Big Things

07 Monday Feb 2022

Posted by Dave Gardner in Motivation Monday

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

Action Steps, Analysis, Brainstorming, Overwhelm, Planning, Procrastination, Small things, tasks

We had some friends over on Saturday. They took Mom and Dad out to lunch. When they got back, we all congregated in the living room and talked about all kinds of things. One of the topics was overwhelm and a lack of time. Interestingly, we all came to the conclusion that taking a complex set of tasks and reducing that down was the best option. When you do that, time decompresses.

Think about the last overwhelming task you had to do. How long did you procrastinate because you did not know where to start. With each moment of procrastination, the pressure increases, and you begin to think you have no time to do anything. This is the time to decompress time by pulling apart that big project, whittling it down to individual tasks, and attacking those individual tasks one-by-one.

When you begin knocking out these little tasks, the bigger task they are a part of begins to get easier. You begin to see how the project will be finished. This occurs when you can break it up into smaller tasks. The project is no longer daunting. It is simply a collection of small tasks that must be completed in a particular order.

Steps

Look at your project

What has to happen to finish it

What phone calls, people, places, and materials are involved?

Make a list of every single thing you can think of to get this project completed.

Each “single thing” are the tasks you have to complete in order to finish the project

If you run across a “single thing” that is still too complex to deal with, break that down too!

Once you have all these things written down, take some time to organize these tasks by time and category.

What tasks have to happen first?

Once you come up with a semblance of order, begin to knock out these tasks

Re-evaluate

If you take the time to do this, you’ll find your “big” projects are just a collection of little tasks–tasks that are done easily and without any stress. Take the time to go through this exercise, particularly when you get the feeling of overwhelm. You’ll find that this exercise simplifies the project, and will help you overcome feelings of overwhelm.

I hope all of you are having a great day! Here’s to Monday!

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Spiritual Saturday – Creativity

02 Saturday Nov 2019

Posted by Dave Gardner in Holidays, Spiritual Saturday

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Brainstorming, Calm, creativity, decisions, Emotions, Freakout, Mistakes, Planning

“Creative people who cherish the gift of life often slip into the secret chambers of the creative mind. Their solutions are well-rounded, more sensible than those of people who rely solely upon reason as their mainstay. Gratitude unseals fountains of creativity, because a grateful person is relaxed. This allows him to take stock of his circumstances with an objective mind. A creative person often gets three-dimensional answers to his problems.” – Harold Klemp – The Language of Soul

Have you ever tried to solve a problem when you were emotional?

The emotional states, lock up our ability to tap into our intellect and creativity. Anger, fear, sorrow, or any number of emotions will circumvent our creativity and ability to think through a problem to its successful conclusion.

How do you fix this? Patience. Emotions pass. Relax. Brainstorm possible solutions in a non-judging way. After you’ve calmed down a bit and your emotions have subsided, you can now evaluate these solutions and pick the one that makes the most sense. Then you’ll have to decide all the steps that get you from where you are to the final solution you decided upon. Then, you’ll put the steps in logical order and determine how long each step will take. Then it’s nothing more than working through the steps.

Trust me. I’ve been in situations when I’ve been emotional and made the mistake of jumping to a conclusion. This mistake leads to more decisions and the whole thing will spiral out of control. You literally create more problems than you started with–all because you didn’t take the time to calm down and plan with a clear head.

I hope all of you have a terrific Saturday! I’m stoked that it’s November. This is my favorite time of year.

 

Until next time…

Dave

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Daily Ramblings – Ted Talk Tuesday – Building Fictional Worlds

08 Tuesday Oct 2019

Posted by Dave Gardner in Ted Talk

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Brainstorming, Cartoon, creativity, Fiction, Fun, TedEd, Video, World Building, Writing

I’m almost done with my non-fiction book on technical recruiting (first draft) and beginning to explore writing a fiction book. World building is one thing I’ve thought about. Here’s a quick video that discusses some things authors should consider when creating their own worlds.

 

Until next time…

Dave

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Daily Ramblings – Wisdom Wednesday – How to be wiser

28 Wednesday Aug 2019

Posted by Dave Gardner in Wisdom Wednesday

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Brainstorming, Changing Viewpoints, decisions, Disassociate, family, Friends, journal, Learning from the past, wisdom

How to Be Wiser

Today’s Wisdom Wednesday post was inspired by an article I read over the weekend. It discusses how all of us can become wiser. Interestingly, it involves a few mind games you can utilize to invoke your inner wisdom.

The first step is to imagine you are advising a friend. Think about that. It is always easier for us to tell a friend what they should do if they ask us for advice. Why? Because we aren’t directly involved.

Another tactic you can use is imagine you are staring down at yourself from above. At the ground level you are blinded, you can only see what you see in front of you and behind you. You can’t see far enough ahead to see if something will actually deliver the best results when you make a decision. Now, imagine you are on top of a mountain and you can see what lies ahead. In this elevated position you can see what is up ahead.

You can also disassociate from yourself and make believe you are a friend giving you advice. When you are giving a friend advice, it is always easier and you will always provide them with better advice, then they could come up with on their own, because you can see their blind spots.

One technique I use is my journal. If you take the time to document what you are thinking about, including the decisions you make, you will find that you will see where you went wrong in the past. You can see the mistakes you made and avoid them in the future. By keeping a journal, you can review what went wrong and think about other solutions that were available at the time. You can ask questions like, why didn’t I do this instead? Or, you could see the options you were weighing at the time and see a better solution you can use in the future.

When you go back and review your journal, it mimics the suggestions in the article, How to be wiser (Hammond, 2017). When you are reviewing your journal, you can separate from yourself and become more objective.

Finally, you can brainstorm when you are tackling a new problem. You can write down all the potential solutions to a problem you have and weigh each one against the other. You can game out potential results with each solution you come up with. If you’re still stuck, you can take all of your brainstormed ideas and bounce them off a trusted friend or family member. In some cases, they may have already experienced what you have and may have a solution that worked for them.

Wisdom is gained over a lifetime. We can increase our wisdom by separating ourselves from our problems and attempt to view them from a higher vantage point. We can seek out advice from our friends and family. We can review our journal for previous problems we have faced and use the learning gained in our past and apply it to our present difficulties. Each of us has the ability to become wise and make better choices. We just have to become more aware of our circumstances and use all the tools that are available to us to make the best decision we can make with all the information at hand.

I hope all of you have a great Wednesday!

Until next time…

Dave

Reference

Hammond, C. (2017). How to be wiser. Retrieved from: http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20170124-how-to-be-wiser

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Daily Ramblings – Motivation Monday

01 Monday Oct 2018

Posted by Dave Gardner in Motivation Monday

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Tags

Brainstorming, Exercise, Persistence, Reading, reflection, spirituality, Thomas Edison, Writing

“Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time.” – Thomas A. Edison

Happy October!!

Here we are again at the beginning of a new week. I use Sundays to reflect on my life, reflect on the weekly goals I set the week before, and examine all my projects to determine where I am at and what I have left to do.

I realize where I made progress, realize where I messed up, and think about new ideas to move my projects and goals forward. I do what many call a weekly review. This allows me to look at my calendar, my mail, my email, my project lists, my to-do lists, my bucket lists, anything that I have some interest in. This one day a week I label my “do nothing day” but this is a misnomer. I really do things on Sunday but do less than I normally would and use the day to re-charge, re-focus, and restart stalled projects.

I think this is what Edison is driving at. If we learn that something we are doing isn’t working—we re-tool. We try again. If we realize we haven’t been doing this or that—we re-tool. We try again. If we catch some inefficiencies, we can re-work the game plan we have for a goal or project. We can try again.

If you are stuck, not motivated, and frustrated, take some time on Saturday or Sunday and re-think what you are doing. You’ll get new ideas, you’ll see potential opportunities to try something different, you’ll find avenues to travel you haven’t been down yet. Try them, explore them, take them.

This week:

Still plugging away at the Kris Gethin 4-week-to-shred workout. Still plugging away at my books and working through a 7-week course on Coursera. I’ll also be working on my non-fiction book. Spiritually, I’ll be meditating daily and reading my Bible and other spiritual works.

Have a great week everyone!

Until next time…

Dave

Reference

Thomas A. Edison Quotes. (n.d.). BrainyQuote.com. Retrieved October 1, 2018, from BrainyQuote.com Website: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/thomas_a_edison_149049

Daily Ramblings – Spiritual Saturday

22 Saturday Sep 2018

Posted by Dave Gardner in Spiritual Saturday

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Tags

Brainstorming, change, Contingency planning, Harold Klemp, Planning, The Language of Soul

“The cycle of creative action begins with the concept we carry in our minds of what we wish to do. The next step is to outline on paper some plan of how to accomplish this. The final step is action in carrying out the plan.”—Harold Klemp The Language of Soul

What’s Holding You Back?

I have found that simplicity is in everything if we look for it. It is so easy to go overboard on the things we wish to accomplish. The trite expression “paralysis by analysis” comes to mind. We “overthink” what we want to accomplish and take more time thinking about doing something than doing it.

Some folks call this activity resisting change or just plain resistance. Where does this resistance come from? Much of the resistance we feel when we want to change something in our lives comes from us.

Our brains love routine. The neural pathways that are responsible for our habits, good and bad, are built out of repetition. The more you repeat something the more you reinforce the neural pathway that supports the action and so on.

I have found that just jumping in and taking one small step toward our goals works. Regardless of how minuscule the action is, just taking that step can be the one thing that gets us moving in a dramatic way. Take, for example, writing a book. A book is literally a collection of words oriented around a broad topic and organized into chapters, paragraphs, and sentences.

When I was at the peak of procrastination on starting my book, I glimpsed at the number of postings on my blog. This examination brought about an epiphany. This epiphany was simply this: “If I can write 200+ words per day on my blog, I can surely do the same thing with a book. Subsequently, I began the book and currently at a 10,000-word count. Is the book perfect? No. But it has the solid beginnings of a good rough draft that I’ll edit and edit and edit again until I get my words down in a way that satisfies me. Taking a big task and doing little pieces of work on this task each day is one way to begin to solidify the change in your life and move forward on a project that you may have been staring at for the longest time. We begin to form a neural pathway, we reinforce that neural pathway, and over time, that neural pathway becomes strong enough that our actions toward a project are internalized—they become automatic.

Taking the Time to Plan

Think about something you want to do. It can be anything. Maybe you want to clean out your closets or the garage, maybe you want to start an exercise routine, maybe you want to set up a budget, or start eating better. Regardless what the project is there are action steps you can take to get this thing moving along.

Think About It

Before creating an action plan it is important to think about what it is you want to do. Visualize in your mind what the end state is. Where do you want to be? What does the finished project look like? What must be satisfied before you can say you’ve completed it? Do you see the way that garage or basement will look when you’re done?

Write it Down

The next step is writing down all of the things that must be done to reach the end state you visualized. The best way to begin this type of work is to brainstorm or free write about the project. Just collect a whole list of things you need to do in order to get project A from start to end point. Some folks use mind mapping techniques to do this. Others simply write down as many ideas or steps they believe need to be accomplished to get the project done.

Organize

Once you have all of your ideas or action items to complete your project, you’ll need to organize these action steps. There will be obvious first actions, secondary actions, and still other actions that must be accomplished in some order that makes sense and will move you forward in a fluid manner. If you still have no idea where to start, you can work yourself backward from your visualized end state to the beginning of the project. I learned this “backward planning” technique while I served in the Army.

Backward planning is nothing more than looking at each of your items and placing them in a timeline that starts with the finished picture of where you’ll end up when you’re done with a project. That point that you know that you are completed and there is nothing left to do.

You could put your final step as “clean garage”. Then start organizing items on this timeline that work back from the clean garage to your initial step, which may be something like pull all items out of the garage. There may be other items on your list like give this away to charity, put aside for future garage sale, or throw this item away. You may even have tasks that involve getting some items from the local grocery store before you start. Maybe “buy garbage bags”, “buy a broom”, or “buy a leaf blower” are on your list.

Some tasks depend on other tasks to be completed before you can begin working on them. For example, you can’t clean the floor of the garage while your car, snow blower, or lawn mower are in the garage. Subsequently, these “dependent” tasks require that another task is completed prior to engaging them on your to-do list. Once you have all of your items on your list in the order they need to be accomplished you are ready for execution.

Scheduling the Time

Some projects you will tackle will be large enough to eat up a few days or months of work. These projects will have action items that will take a few minutes, while others may eat up an entire afternoon. Now it is time to decide where to start and how much time you have to accomplish the task. Since you may have only a limited time to dedicate toward a project, given your other responsibilities, you may need to break some of the items on your project list into even more discrete steps. If I only have an hour or two hours to get something done on this project, I’ll need to ensure that I only tackle action steps that allow me to get these things done in the allotted time.

Making Adjustments

Many of us will allot too much or too little time toward an action step. This is common. Plan for it. If you begin working through an action step, you may discover that you need another tool, or you need more time to get this thing done than originally planned. That’s ok. Look at your action items and either break that task down into smaller tasks or adjust your schedule to accommodate the work you know you’ll need to get it checked off your list.

Completion

If you keep knocking items off of your action list, you will finish the project at some point. When you finish the project, reward yourself for a job well-done. You did it! Now, you can begin work on your next project(s) using the same process above. These steps are listed out below for your convenience:

  • Visualize
  • Brainstorm
  • Organize
  • Schedule
  • Adjust
  • Complete

Well, I hope this helped some of you. Have a great Saturday everybody!

Until next time…

Dave

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Daily Ramblings – Daily Quote – Ideas

16 Monday Apr 2018

Posted by Dave Gardner in Quotes

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Tags

Brainstorming, Capturing your ideas, ideas, Organizing your ideas, Recording your ideas, Your internal Muse

“Take a simple idea and take it seriously.” – Charlie Munger

Have you ever had an idea that you just blew off?

I used to do this quite a bit, but then I read about the importance of capturing your ideas and have been doing so ever since. In the old days, we needed pen and paper. Today, with the capabilities of our tablets and cell phones, we can simply record our ideas. Now, if I have a pen and paper I will write the note down because it’s actually more efficient. It’s more efficient because you still have to transcribe the recordings or figure out how you will store them or find them for easy retrieval.

So, what’s the big deal about all of this? What I discovered was that over time, after developing this habit, I got more ideas, and more ideas, and more ideas. It’s like a garden hose with increasing pressure. Don’t get me wrong. This doesn’t happen all of the time. This “voice”, if you will, needs to be prompted. You have to ask it a question or present it with a problem. Once you do, particularly if you’ve been doing this a while, it will deliver.

Here are a few examples:

I had to give a public talk a few months ago. I started doing some research and asked, “What are the best things to talk about?” and “How do I organize the talk?” Then the ideas began flowing. I started preparing for the talk about a month in advance and by the time I began finalizing things, I had over 3 pages of notes, quotes, and ideas. As I began going through these notes and ideas, the format for my talk literally built itself.

I had a financial problem. I didn’t know where to turn, so I asked the question. How do I fix this? Again, the ideas and answers began coming. This is almost like an internal brainstorming session. You ask the question and all kinds of ideas come. Write all of them down. Do not judge them. Why? Because if you refute every single thing this inner voice gives you it is the same as not writing your ideas down. Have you ever been in a situation where a friend asks you for advice and then, every idea you pass along they reject? Frustrating right? I think the same applies to this inner voice.

I would also recommend giving this time. Typically, when I ask a question the ideas will come in spurts. Some within a few minutes; others over the next few days. Ask the question and collect. Once you’ve collected a good chunk of ideas, start going through them. Which ones seem to be most aligned with your goals or tasks? Once you’ve decided on which ones are most relevant to what you need to do, then it’s time to organize them in a cohesive order. Like I mentioned before, this tends to take care of itself, once you start reading through your collected ideas. The format or way you organize the ideas begins to take shape and a form begins taking shape. Then you’re off to the races.

Random Ideas

You’ll also get ideas about any number of things. Maybe an adjustment to your diet, a new way to organize your office or home, a better way to track your bills. It could be about anything. Capture them. If I’m on the road and I don’t have a trusty pen and paper, I used the recorder on my phone. If I am at my desk, I grab my journal and write it down. If I’m in my journaling app online, I can even jot it there. The trick is to write it down and remember where it is for capture.

When and where do I capture all of these ideas? My to-do app. I currently use a to-do app called Toodledo. This app is pretty versatile. It has a list section, task section, notes section, outline section, and habits section. All in one. I put all of these ideas into the lists section. In this lists section, I have all kinds of categories, like my bucket list, my someday/maybe list, my next actions list, my projects list, and so on. My to-do list is the area that I put everything new. The key is to process this list!

Well, that’s how I handle the ideas that pop into my head. How do you handle your ideas? Have you discovered the same thing I have?

Until next time…

Dave

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