It was a really nice feeling. My worklife seems have become an extension of my natural likings.

• Highlevel daydreaming
• Strategy making
• Drawing and scetching

I found this drawing from my childhood. It's a representation of a game I played with my friend Steen at the age of 11. It is a detailed plan of my future house. You can se the annotated version on flickr by clicking at the picture.

Steen and I could spend hours hunched over our drawing pads planning all kinds of elaborate schemes. We were always building - making prototypes - of imagined worlds. So I seem to be right back where I started. :)

It's a nice feeling to be running on your preferred fuel. Mileage is a lot better. But best of all... your head is clear.

Only problem right now is to refrain from working all the time.

What did you like doing when you We're a kid?

• Jens Poder

It explores the connection beTween being playfull and the ability to be creative.

Key points in the talk:

• Go for quantity: You need to be able to suspend judgement when you generate ideas. This is difficult for adults. We tend to edit a lot of ideas away, because we worry about the opinions of our peers.

• Think with your Hands: Building prototypes is the best way to get a good discussion about ideas. How will this work? Make a crude prototype, and pretty soon you'll be able to get a sense of it.

• Roleplay: Act how users will use your product. This works great. Good design is based around user needs, immersing yourself in these needs will make you able to build a better product.

• Jens Poder

Related Posts: - Play your life may depend on it! - Begone Curse of Greyface

Principia Discordia is the holy scripture of the Discordians. I can't quite figure out whether it's a religion or a happening. Perhaps it's both.

Most of the Principia is jibberish, but then there's a couple of interesting ideas in there to. Take for instance the Curse of Greyface.

The Curse of Greyface refers to, what discordians believe to be, a mythic transformation of society in which order/disorder replaced creative/destructive as the primary positive/negative polarity. This curse has created a society in which man tolerates destructive order, and frowns at creative disorder.

To choose order over disorder, or disorder over order, is to accept a trip composed of both the creative and the destructive. But to choose the creative over the destructive is an all-creative trip composed of both order and disorder. To accomplish this, one need only accept creative disorder along with, and equal to, creative order, and also willing to reject destructive order as an undesirable equal to destructive disorder. - The Curse of Greyface and the introduction of Negativism

It resonates perfectly with my blog motto "work & play creatively". The Principia Discordia is creative disorder taken to the extreme. And as such quite an amazing read.

Most of it was useless, but in the Curse of Greyface I found a wonderful concept. A beautiful mythic way to describe a grave threat to creativity and well-being that I encounter everywhere, especially in the workspace.

Now, anytime I feel the urge to be less noticeable, be more like the conformity crowd, I will recognize the influence of the curse, and counter it. Begone Curse of Greyface! :-)

- Jens Poder

Related Stuff:

- Play, your life may depend on it

My colleague Simon sent me this presentation. It's from a presentation done by Katie Rutter from Adaptive Path.

Learn how to do all kinds of idea generation and idea sorting using nothing but Post-It stickies.

It's very detailed and full of practical tips and tricks.

- Jens Poder

This is a must-read article! It's from LifeDev.net. It shows the very unique working routines of powerful thoughleaders and creatives. Here's a clue. They don't sit all day staring a the computer, waiting for the next mail, to tell them what to do.

The lives of great people give us interesting clues about how to organise our days. All of them attached great value to their daily routines. This is because they saw it as being part of ‘becoming who they are’, as Nietzsche puts it. For the same reason they were also highly individual in their routines. They had the courage to go against popular opinion and work out often strange daily plans that suited them.

link: 10 Ways History’s Finest Kept Their Focus at Work | LifeDev

Key Findings:

• Get a lot of real mental rest
• Work less
  
• Do a variety of things

I love the way talking long walks figures extensively in this list. Recently I find that going out for a no-purpose walk is my best way to regain focus.

Link spotted on Zenhabits.

- Jens Poder

Nobody really wants the "1 person per project" situation. It just seems to happen. The office is filled with people. But they work alone. When they communicate, it's just talk, or a meeting where they tell each other about the lack of progress on their solo-projects.

It's not that anybody really believes, that "1 person per project" is the most efficient way of doing things. It just gravitates towards this situation, slowly, but relentlessly.

I think we need to appreciate the fruits of teamwork more in knowledgework. Although teamwork is highly praised, it's also cumbered by an air of excessiveness.In to many workplaces the model of efficiency is: Sitting at your screen frowning & typing. In such a climate teamwork will be considered wastefull... a lot of hours.

Here's my 4 power-reasons why working together will get you further:

Teamwork reduces waste from errors

I hate spending time correcting errors and doing rework on something that entered my desk already flawed. When working close together, teams will be able seek out and eradicate errors faster. Also, misunderstandings, fromwhen a project is passed on from one person to another, will be fewer if the persons working on project, sits in a team, and keep an eye on each other.

Teamwork allows for Faster Execution

When you have a bunch of people working together all day long at the same project, the project is always moving. The project isn't sitting in some mailbox waiting for the next person in line, like some poor schmuck in the airport, always standing in line to achieve even the slightest task. You probably know the situation. You need some minor job done by someone in another department. It's really just a 10 minute task. But in calendar time it ends up taking 2 weeks! A tightly lead team will be able to set a goal, and discuss how to get there fastest! Fast is good!

Teamwork leads to better Knowledge Distribution

"Ohh.. this is a system A job. It can only done by John. Because he made it." You know this situation. It sucks! Because John is always busy. He's the bright one. Everybody wants John. He is a real bottle-neck in your production flow. Everything slows down around John. Well if John worked on system A with someone else for a period, then this bottle-neck could be widened. And the value of John's coworkers would be hightened. Everybody has valuable information. In a team they get to share this with others.

Strong teams have Better Morale

This is perhaps my favourite reason to introduce more teamwork. It's good for morale. When you perform in a team you get instant appreciation from your colleagues. What you did meant something for your team. Together you build a foundation for pride in your work. I love this quote by Dennis Kinlaw:

Work and self-worth are the two factors in pride that interact with each other and that tend to increase the strong sense of pride found in superior work teams. When people do something of obvious worth, they feel a strong sense of personal worth. - Dennis Kinlaw

These are powerful reasons to start doing more together. It just takes a lot of focus. And this is perhaps the reason why it fails so often. Leadership needs to be in place. If you don't guard this way of working, it's destroyed. Lack of priorities will let your list of projects grow longer and longer forcing you to split up teams. And pretty soon you'll see the four horsemen of ineffectiveness riding through your halls.

• Suboptimization
• Knowledge Hoarding
• Priority Politics...and the final and most fearsome rider
• "Who gives a shit"

Happy teamworking!

• Jens Poder

A question is a powerful thing. It guides us to find the relevant answers. And knowing what questions to ask is a skill that can earn you a lot of money as a consultant.

A new batch of ChangeThis presentations have been released and one of these is "Questionating" by Corinne Miller.

Questionating is a process to develop, use and improve QuestionBanks. QuestionBanks are organized collections of thought-provoking questions, conveying expert—as well as diverse—thinking on a particular topic to inspire innovative solutions. QuestionBanks can be used anywhere decisions need to be made: new products and services, leadership, meeting and event planning, sales and marketing, strategic planning, etc.

Building a Questionbank is a 4 step proces:

• Identify question sources: Where can I find questions relevant to my goal
• Collect questions: For example; write to 30 project managers and ask them what to ask before you start your project.
• Sort
• Refine: When you have used your questions a couple of times, then cut out the non-effective questions, to get to the core selection of important questions.

I really like this approach. I reminds me of the zen-idea of starting with a beginners mind. I will try this out soon.

- Jens Poder

Changing my computer platform to a MAC has rendered my existing license on Mindjets Mind Manager software useless (UPDATE: Mindjet wrote to me yesterday and told me that they actualy would let customers switch from Windows to MAC for free!). Instead, I have been trying out some free online mindmapping tools, and the one that has caught attention is a cute little one called bubbl.us.

Nice graphics and Super Fast

The cute thing about Bubbl.us is of course the graphics. I love cute, simple, “hug me” graphics, with low level of complexity in the user interface. And Bubbl.us certainly delivers on this.

Every idea has it’s own little cute glassy round-edged box. If you delete one it dissappears with a little animated explosion and a pow-sound. That’s the sort of thing that makes smiley wrinkles around my eyes.

It’s very simple to drag and drop to reposition ideas, and you can change the color of boxes.

Making new idea bubbles is very fast. As you type you just hist ENTER or TAB to start typing in a new box. This can be quite confusing, but it certainly lets you produce a lot of idea-nodes in a short time. Great for brainstorming.

I get a lot Ideas into Bubbl.us quite fast, but the result tend be a bit messy. But you can rearrange them later.

They should though consider supporting a wider range of keyboard shorts. Navigating around your mindmap with the arrows and being able to delete nodes would be nice.
I use the mouse a lot when I use Bubbl.us.

Save mindmaps online and share

You save your maps online. This means you can reach them from any computer, and you can share them with friend to do collaborative maps. You can also get a piece of code to embed it in your blog.
This is standard web2.0 features, but I haven’t really found much use for it. My mindmaps tend to be pretty personal and not very easy to share.

Compared to Applications

Compared to an application like Mindjet Mindmanager, there’s a lot of features Bubbl.us doesn’t provide.

This isn’t necessarily a big problem. A lot of features can really be a mixed blessing for an app, but there’s range of tasks that Mind Manager does that won’t be effective with Bubbl.us.

• Outlining and exporting to Word
• Handling tasks
• Very big and complex maps. Bubbl.us has a limitation in the screen-real estate. Also hierarchies between things tend to be les easy to visually comprehend

And then there’s the keyboard interface. The basic keyboard navigation is much better in a rich application.

Great for Outlining & Brainstorming

What Bubbl.us is really suited for is brainstorming and outlining.
An this is probably why I like it so much. It’s the way I start almost any creative project.
Just get a load of ideas of your mind into bubbl.us, sort them, and then switch to another app, and start producing your content.

PNG - export

One thing I really love about Bubbl.us is the export feature. You’ll find It in the lower right corner under the “menu”.

The specific feature I use is the “export to PNG file” feature. Why?

Well first of all… It’s just really convinient also to have an offline copy lying on your desktop to instantly check out.

But on top of this Bubbl.us exports your map as a beautiful PNG with a transparent background. This means, that you can use it on top of other pictures.

If I need to make an illustration for Powerpoint or Keynote, this feature will let me put a mindmap on top of the background image or other images without. This is really cool. Check it out here:

Conclusion

So all in all I’ll really recommend Bubbl-us as an online mindmapping tool for fast creative brainstormy mindmapping.

It’s not the most tooled-up mindmapper out there. My old favourite Mindmanager from Mindjet.com certainly has a lot more bells and whistles.

But the point is… most of the time these features aren’t really needed, and then they just get in the way.
Happy mindmapping.

- Jens Poder

Related links:

• Mindmeister.com - another online mindmapper. Resembles Mind Manager from Mindjet a lot. Has a couple of cool dashboard widget you can download.
• Mindomo.com - Also a Mind Manager wannabee like Mindmeister.
• How to make a mindmap - Introduction to the technique by mindmap-inventor Tony Buzan
• Mindmap Ressources Compiled - By Diyplanner; a long list of mindmapping ressources.

Tags: mindmapping, bubbl.us, tools, creativity

Have you ever failed miserably when trying to pitch an idea? Felt your energy draining away with every word leaving your mouth? And getting only halfway through your presentation before your boss started pummeling you with skeptical questions? Well… perhaps you should have prepared an elevator pitch.

Most of us rely on other peoples support to get our work done, whether we work in an organization or as freelancers. Sometimes you need to sell or get funding for an idea. In that case you have to convince some decision makers.

But you’ll also need the support of other people around you besides the boss. You’ll need the support and passion of people participating in your project. And on a broader scale you’ll need a lot of people knowing about and accepting your project, to keep them from getting in your way.

To do this you need to convince everybody that you know what you’re talking about, and that it’s of outmost importance. This is what well designed elevator pitch will do for you. It's the essence of your idea told in 60 seconds.

It’ll let you catch peoples attention, convince them of the importance of your project, and it’ll build their confidence in you. They’ll believe that you know what you talk about.

Here’s how to do it...

Get your listener hooked

Why should I care about your idea? I’m busy! And so are most of your colleagues probably. So catching their attention won’t be easy. You need a great start for your pitch. A great hook.

A good hook will be something surprising and unexpected. “Do you know we’re about to lose our largest customer to the competition? Well I have plan!” Is a basic one. It grabs the listeners attention. But please feel free to be more creative.

Know your Value Proposition

To be able to make an effective elevator pitch you need to get a firm grib of your value proposition. You can’t explain something in a short time, if you don’t know exactly what you are talking about.

I use a simple framework called an NABC for this. This is the method I learned at Stanford Research Institute in Menlo Park California, one of the world leading research and development firms. They have used and developed the NABC as way to ensure that all projects have considered the four basic parameters of value creation:

Need: Tell about the user need for your service. Be concrete and specific. What is the problem you're solving? Who has this problem? Real people with real problems are at the core of every value creation. You need to know these NEEDS to convince others of the relevance of your idea.

Approach: How do you solve this problem specifically? What is your take on solving it? Don’t get to specific. You’ll get a chance to tell more later. Right now you just need the general concept.

Benefits: What are the benefits of using your approach? What value does it generate for the users. Wat value does it create for your company. The more specific the better.

Competition: What is the alternative approaches in the market for solving the problem. How does your solution stand out? Is it better, faster or cheaper? This is a big one with corporate brass. Idea people tend to talk at length about their solutions but forget to tell anything about competition. This is suicide. Make your listener sure that you have a new approach that isn’t already solved by someone else.

Use storytelling

The trick is to tell it like a story. So the more concrete and human the better. Great communicators often excel at telling relevant stories, when they are giving a talk on a subject. And this very clever, cause stories are in their nature memorable.

Paint pictures with your words. Make it about people instead of numbers. What horrible conditions are these people struggling under, and how will your idea make their lives better?

And be passionate when you’re telling your story. Make other people care by caring yourself.

What are you asking for?

And finally, and very important, know what you want to achieve with your pitch. An amazing number of people forget this, and it’s quite embarrasing to see someone passionately promoting a cause, but neglecting to suggest a concrete action to be taking. So now it’s up to the listener to figure out what to do.

What are you asking for? Support? Funds? Attention? Point it out to the listener.

Often you just want the opportunity to get some time to tell about your idea in more detail, before making a deal. But sometimes you just want your listeners to think your project is cool and important, that’s ok as well.

If you have prepared the basic framework of your elevator pitch you’ll often be able to adapt it on the spot to a variety of listeners just by having a different “I would like you to” In the ending.

Preparing a solid elevator pitch will let you benefit when these opportunities suddenly appears. And as a byproduct it’ll force you to understand the essence of your idea.

• Jens Poder

It's a strange thing really... Where I work we produce television, internet and radio. But our offices are really high tech, and strongly regulated. You don't put anything on the walls. You must use furniture chosen by the architect. And in the name of what? To look cool? I can't really figure it out.

I like the approach taken here in these pictures. It reminds me of David Kelley, the boss from Ideo design firm, showing a camera crew around the place. He pauses in front of a door, and with a smile beneath his Grouch Marx moustache and a hint of glee in his voice he says,

This is where the crazies live! This is where we do all our work.

I like it. It sends the signal to the workers, that weirdness is wanted and conformity shunted.

Check out the gallery and see the workplaces of Firaxis, the designer of "The Sims" and many more. Beware! It is different from the Unclutterer Workspace Pool at Flickr

- Jens Poder

Tags: play, work, IDEO, design, creativity