Awareness / Blog / Freedom / Tips

The value of looking for solutions over looking for problems

Some people look for problems; others look for solutions. The problem, to me, with people who look for problems is that they can get good at it. When you're with them, you may find yourself surrounded by problems you never would have found otherwise. What I like about people who look for solutions is that they find them. When you are with them, you tend to enjoy yourself, unaware that problems even came up. They may not even be aware "problems" existed in the first place because they made them fun. Personally, I have less and less time for people who look for problems. I fill my life increasingly with people who look for solutions. It's a better life for me. Imagine you're approaching a…

0 Comments
April 10, 2011
Awareness / Blog / Creativity / Freedom / Tips

When polarizing helps

Here's another lesson from my stylist friend besides how fast even significant personal change can be, possibly obvious to people more stylish than me. He told me a major goal of how you dress is to polarize. At first polarizing sounded counterproductive. Polarizing in a discussion breaks down communication. Why would I want to polarize? Why would I want to repel people? He explained further. Many people dress to fit in, meaning they don't polarize. If you have a job where you have to fit in, dress to fit in when you're there. But if you dress to fit in you don't say anything about yourself. Dressing to polarize repels some people but attracts others. If you dress to express yourself authentically and genuinely the…

0 Comments
April 8, 2011
Awareness / Blog / Freedom / Tips

Personal development doesn’t have to take years

Myth: great personal change or development takes time. You have to understand where you are, your goals, and how to get from one place to the other. Myth: great personal change is hard. You have to overcome hurdles that take time, energy, and other resources. I believed those myths for a long time. I hear people counseling others with them all the time. Now it pains me to hear those myths because someone telling you it has to take time or be hard can be all it takes for them to be self-fulfilling prophecies. All the more so when the person saying it is a coach. Great personal change can be fast and anything but hard. It can be easy and fun. My great epiphany…

0 Comments
April 6, 2011
Awareness / Blog / Freedom / Tips

How insults can be calming, liberating, and informative

An insult says more about the insulter than the insultee. People usually look like the insulter is saying something about the insultee. Usually not. An insult expresses the insulter's emotions, directed at what brought them about. For example, if someone is insecure about their body and they see someone with a body they'd be insecure with, they might insult that person to try to feel more secure or deflect others from observing them. I came to that conclusion a while ago and it's amazing how calming, liberating, and informative the change in perspective has been. First, it's calming. When you have the perspective that everyone is responsible for their own emotions, you realize their anger, indignation, impatience, or whatever comes from their beliefs not fitting…

0 Comments
April 1, 2011
Art / Awareness / Blog / Creativity / Fitness / Freedom / Tips

A master speaks on creative expression

Martha Graham, one of the great artists of the twentieth century -- Picasso-level stature and influence in her field -- entered my life late, in my 30s, when recording Julliard dancers for my art at Lincoln Center. They were perfect people to learn from, dancers actively learning her, describing a "Martha Graham revolution" I'd never heard of before. I'd feel bad about learning about her so late, but since then I've met plenty of people who haven't heard of her either. I understand she allowed few recordings of herself and her work. Her voice-over in the only one I've seen captures some elusive yet essential points about creativity, expression, discipline, repetition, and freedom. When I heard these quotes the first time they resonated like only…

0 Comments
March 31, 2011
Art / Blog / Creativity / Education

My April creativity talk at Fred in Brooklyn

I'm speaking on creativity at the next Fred Talk, April 10. Please come! A longtime friend emailed me after she went to the last one (I was out of town) telling me my talk was announced. Fred talks are do-it-yourself Ted talks with the slogan "Your friends' ideas worth spreading." Who says you need some huge conference for thousands of people that costs lots of money? You probably learned more from your grandmother than most of your teachers, let alone famous people you don't know. Let's do it ourselves! Sharing locally can do things pristine, beautifully-produced things can't. Who isn't a fan of do-it-yourself community building? A big part of why I'm doing it is that the people behind it give me the feeling they…

0 Comments
March 27, 2011
Awareness / Blog / Entrepreneurship / Freedom / Tips

One way not to be manipulated

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 love or even like or don't like, the best you can hope for is to be lucky in what you choose to do bringing you reward. Or don't choose, if you end up blowing in the breeze through life. Even if you enjoy what you're doing while you're doing it, you won't know if you're…

0 Comments
March 22, 2011
Blog / Creativity / Entrepreneurship / Evolutionary Psychology / Freedom / Tips

My New York Academy of Sciences Seminar

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 popular pursuits outside the scientific community—for example, in business, sports, politics, etc. But why not in science? In part because their literature has shaky and often non- or even anti-scientific foundations. If the practices work, though, they are repeatable and amenable to study. Shouldn't we scientists should be able to understand and apply the material…

0 Comments
March 18, 2011
Art / Blog / Creativity / Education / Tips

Innovative technique

[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, they created 40 techniques, or "inventive principles," that would lead to those solutions. Using these techniques would allow you to use an existing solution to your problem. In your regular life you encounter specific problems, not general problems. Often the specifics of your problem are irrelevant to the solution and get in the way of…

0 Comments
March 16, 2011
Blog

When values collide I

I'll get back to my series on creativity soon. A post I put on one of my online communities seemed relevant here. If anyone here has comments, I'd value them. I just finished reading Making It All Work, David Allen's book after Getting Things Done. Then cleaned almost a meter of old books off my shelf that were dead weight. Feels great! I remember this community having some GTD aficionados. I have a question for you. I came across a few things that I couldn't figure out what to do with -- too valuable to throw away but not worth anything on their own. The two examples that come to mind are my high school diploma and my last remaining marathon medal. Also some old…

0 Comments
March 9, 2011
Blog / Creativity / Tips

How to get called a creative genius: when function follows form

[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 things depending on the person viewing it. Architecture and design often value form following function, as well they should, because clients tend to come to them with problems they need solved. The problem existed before the solution. You can go the other way, and when you do, people start calling you a creative genius. I…

0 Comments
March 7, 2011
Blog / Creativity / Tips

Productive alternatives to the genius myth

[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 it happens once I call luck, but after enough times I call the result of skills), and other things you can accomplish. That alternative means recognizing you've made choices that moved you away from recognizing your potential. If you chose for reasons you like, that recognition validates you living by your standards. If you chose…

0 Comments
March 6, 2011
Blog / Creativity

How the genius myth is counterproductive

[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.] The term genius sounds like a compliment. Virtually everyone values intelligence and genius implies extreme intelligence. Say the word genius and names like Einstein, Da Vinci, Mozart, and Shakespeare come to mind. Who wouldn't want to be like them? (The term also describes extremes other than intelligence, like athletic ability, for example, to which this post applies equally.) Today I'll talk about problems with the concept of genius; tomorrow some more productive alternatives. The term also separates and divides. It implies they are different from us. People use the…

0 Comments
March 5, 2011
Art / Awareness / Blog / Creativity / Tips

Why suggesting to think outside the box hurts you

[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.] Thinking outside the box is to think differently, unconventionally or from a new perspective. This phrase often refers to novel or creative thinking. Who wouldn't want that, at least when the situation calls for it? The question is how we achieve it, either in ourselves or in others, like in teams we're leading. The problem is that suggesting to someone to try to think outside the box doesn't help them achieve outside-the-box results. Jacob described an experiment on just this matter, documented in Weisberg's book. The term "outside the…

0 Comments
March 2, 2011
Awareness / Blog / Creativity / Education

Your understanding of creativity holds you back from creating

If you accept mainstream ideas of creativity, then your understanding of creativity is holding you back from creating things and being creative. Mainstream views on creativity sell books, movies, magazines, and so forth. They sell over-romanticized myths that, while entertaining, undermine your ability to create things and solve problems.Let's start with two contradictions to lay bare the counterproductivity in mainstream views.First, mainstream views value creative, original, so-called outside-the-box thinking, but when push comes to shove, we don't value it in practice. To illustrate, say you have a problem you don't know how to solve. You need someone else to create a solution. It could be anything -- a leaky sink, a managerial issue at work, what to make for dinner, a musical score you want…

0 Comments
February 20, 2011
Awareness / Blog / Tips

Improving on focusing on what rewards you

Focusing on what creates emotional reward is great. If it works for you, you can do better. When something brings you emotional reward, here are two things you can do more than just focusing on it to bring more reward into your life: overindulging in your emotional reward and sharing the reward. Overindulging in reward means if your manager pats you on the back and you feel good about it, find a way to feel great about it. If you finished a project and you'd normally feel great for a day about it, find a way to feel great about it for a week. Overindulging in reward achieves two things. First, reward motivates similar behavior. Bluntly, you train yourself to do things you find rewarding.…

0 Comments
February 18, 2011
Blog / Tips

How do you keep going in the face of adversity?

Here's a model for you: think of a baby learning to walk.No baby learns to walk right the first time. Not even the tenth time. So-called failure for them is not just figuratively painful, it looks physically painful. Yet babies learn to walk. They try and fail. And try and fail. And try and fail. For months they try and fail.This model alone shows how poorly the popular use of the term failure describes that part of the learning process. Failure is inevitable. Failure teaches. Failure is what experience means. Babies build experience when they fall. That's how they learn to walk so well.Can you imagine if after one fall a baby said, "Oh well, I tried my hardest. I just can't walk. I'm not…

0 Comments
February 15, 2011
Awareness / Blog / Freedom / Tips

Another way to reduce stress more

After yesterday's post, I thought of another little rule I made that makes something some people consider difficult into a game. I'm almost embarrassed to share it because of how geeky it is, but it makes something otherwise challenging into fun, or at least a way to make myself a better me. First, you should know, I love eating food that tastes good and chips are included. I can eat a big bag in one sitting, no problem. But I like to keep myself in good shape and chips have a lot of empty calories. So here's the rule: I have to take at least three sessions to eat the full bag of chips, counting no more than one session per day. One exception: if…

0 Comments
February 11, 2011
Awareness / Blog / Freedom / Tips

One way to decrease stress

Here is a simple way to reduce one type of stress. I used to get annoyed when people would show up late to meet me. I imagined them disrespecting me and such. One day I made a rule for myself: Everybody gets fifteen minutes. That's it. If someone shows up anywhere less than fifteen minutes late, it's fine. I don't ask questions, I don't ask where they were, I don't suggest anything. After practicing the rule enough, I genuinely don't care. It's fine. Before this rule I might have wondered if I would lose time, people would take more for granted, or other unintended side effects. The contrary has been the case. A huge source of stress and judgment disappeared. My feared unintended consequences never…

0 Comments
February 10, 2011
Awareness / Blog / Freedom / Tips

What do you never regret?

One measure of something worth doing is if you would ever regret it. I'm making a list of things that no one would ever on their deathbed look back and say "I did X too much."I doubt anyone looked back at their life and said, "I danced too much," "I sang too much," or "I played with my nieces and nephews too much." Can you add to the list?No one ever saidI danced too muchI sang too muchI played with my nieces and nephews too muchI spent too much time outdoorsI skied too muchI laughed too muchI played sports too much...What others?

0 Comments
February 8, 2011
Awareness / Blog / Evolutionary Psychology / Freedom

How much do you understand?

Want a liberating concept?Our brains and senses are limited. Our ancestors didn't evolve minds to understand everything or senses to sense everything. They evolved them to navigate their environments enough to propagate their genes. That's it. The ones that could had children eventually resulting in us. The ones that couldn't didn't.Limited senses mean we have limited access to the universe. The observable universe stretches for tens of billions of light years in every direction, yet from my chair I can see a few yards, hear a bit farther ... a bit more from other senses. In my whole life I've observed not much more.Limited processing power -- that is, brain power -- means of whatever we observe we can remember and understand a fraction. To…

0 Comments
February 3, 2011
Awareness / Blog / Freedom / Tips

Do you want to win debates or enjoy life?

Do you or people you know get stuck "winning" arguments only to find they've annoyed or alienated people around them? It's hard to do anything about it because when people aren't arguing they tend to feel they don't do it -- that only others do. And when they are arguing they're often least open to exiting argument mode into self-reflection mode. A scene in The Big Lebowski that illustrates the effect perfectly. Here is a version in not such great quality: https://joshuaspodek.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/Walther-Glock-freaks-out-at-bowling-alley-Big-Lebowski.mp4 Here's a version with cool typography. http://http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hq8mcAd9nlA It's overly dramatic to be funny and has a lot of cursing, but it covers most major points on the counterproductivity of "winning" arguments. People debate issues that can have multiple "right" answers depending on your…

0 Comments
February 1, 2011
Awareness / Blog / Evolutionary Psychology / Freedom / Tips

An alternative to truth and lies

An incredibly useful perspective in some half-baked notes to a friend. I'll develop them more in future posts. Feedback and criticism appreciated. --- You wrote about lying as an example of a "bad trait". I'd like to suggest another perspective (generalizable from just lying to other aspects of apparent lack of empathy): that the reason people communicate is not to convey truths. Evaluating people according to truths and lies holds them to impossible standards that hurts oneself in the long run by creating judgmental emotions and decreasing your ability to influence people who are hurting you. A perspective I find more helpful is that we, like all animals, communicate to influence others to help us in our goals. All animals communicate and all animals deceive…

0 Comments
January 29, 2011

End of content

No more pages to load

Newer Posts
Older Posts