Mindmaps and mindmapping software are awesome! I rarely like using computers for what I can use paper and pencil, but mindmaps and mindmapping software help organize complex ideas better. They’re simple, effective, and, best of all, fun. I can only speak for the software I use, Freemind. Besides basic mindmapping functionality, it has some bells and whistles but I haven’t used them yet. It’s also free software that runs on[…] Keep reading →
If you know what you love and you do things you love, you may not be able to succeed by other people’s measures of success, but you’ll know you’ll never look back at what you did with regret. It’s difficult to imagine looking back and saying, “Darn, while everyone else was [doing whatever they do], I wasted all that time doing things I loved.” If you don’t know what you[…] Keep reading →
April 5 and 7, 6-10pm at the New York Academy of Sciences I will be giving my seminar on Leadership and Personal Success — the best seminar you’ll ever attend. It’s similar to the leadership seminar at Columbia Business School in December, but more science-y and less business-y. Here’s the background from the NYAS web page (where you can register): Leadership and personal success through self-awareness and emotional intelligence are[…] Keep reading →
[This post is part of a series on creativity. If you don’t see a Table of Contents to the left, click here to view the series, where you’ll get more value than reading just this post.] I haven’t gone into any detail about Altshuller’s 40 principles. The main reason is I found that others already have and did a great job, so I’ll just link to them. The other reason[…] Keep reading →
[This post is part of a series on creativity. If you don’t see a Table of Contents to the left, click here to view the series, where you’ll get more value than reading just this post.] Here are some basics to TRIZ. After the basics, I’ll interpret them. After examining all those patents, Altshuller and his team found that about 1,500 generalized solutions described all the specific solutions. Even simpler,[…] Keep reading →
[This post is part of a series on creativity. If you don’t see a Table of Contents to the left, click here to view the series, where you’ll get more value than reading just this post.] Altshuller called his ideas the Theory of Inventive Problem Solving, or that’s what the Russian gets translated to, which is generally called TRIZ. People pronounce it to rhyme with ease or is. As best[…] Keep reading →
A friend posted on another forum about “feeling weighted” about a few recent relationships in which women felt hurt afterward. Since he had asked for advice, I gave him some, copied below. Sorry it’s out of context, but that forum is private. Some background: this response came after a couple posts stating and clarifying the issues. Not everything resonated with him, but he said he found the two paragraphs preceding[…] Keep reading →
[This post is part of a series on creativity. If you don’t see a Table of Contents to the left, click here to view the series, where you’ll get more value than reading just this post.] When you have a problem to solve, the problem defines the solution. When the solution solves the problem we say the form followed the function. Such solutions can appear elegant, creative, obvious, or other[…] Keep reading →
[This post is part of a series on creativity. If you don’t see a Table of Contents to the left, click here to view the series, where you’ll get more value than reading just this post.] Yesterday I wrote some points of how the concept of genius is counterproductive and inaccurate. So what are the alternatives? My alternative to calling them geniuses is calling them accomplished, dedicated, in-the-right-place-at-the-right-time (which, if[…] Keep reading →