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Lateral Thinking and Simplicity
Please visit new url and update your email subscription.
Here are some of my latest blog posts.
Ok I got it.
There are two possible ways to channel your energy:
I keep hearing complains all day and I am tired of these people. Please don't be one of them.
Black hat is not enough. You need to use yellow and green hats too.
But in our day to day life, we keep thinking over and over again about small issues. Thinking time can span days or even months. This has one huge problem: we keep postponing the real action.
The time discipline of thinking tools liberates you from this thinking rut. You are asked to practice a particular tool (PMI for example) within 1-5 minutes. With some practices, you brain adopts this discipline for your day to day thinking and helps you become a doer rather than a philosopher.
I have been using readability tool by Arc90.com since it was released in early 2009. This tool removes all clutter from the web page you are reading. This tool is also available as a firefox addon and google chrome extension. See the screen shots of a web page below before and after applying the readability tool.
Safari browser by Apple, a company built around design and usability, now has this functionality built into it.
Hey, web developers! Do you still need proof people want simpler and readable websites?
Are we really helpless? I thought. "Client executive" (whatever that designation means), and then his manager, tried to calm me with all sort of false statements.
I then insisted and proceeded to see the department head and recorded my protest. This respectable old man tried to look courteous but could not offer anything concrete and used his intelligent mind to confuse the matter.
I am not sure my protest will have any dent on the company practices; may be some; may be a lot. But I do think we have the right and we should protest respectfully and peacefully. It can make a difference sometime somewhere. I used to argue with faceless call center operators but that is probably close to useless. Higher the authority you protest to, the better.
Old advice. Yes it is. But it still works.
I came across this small booklet, "a brief guide to world domination" (pdf, 29 pages) which might help you to identify your passion and work for it.
This booklet is based around two most important questions:
#1: What do you really want to get out of life?Here is a direct download link for the pdf.
#2: What can you offer the world that no one else can?
There are times when, despite all your intelligence and experience, you make a really big blunder and then keep regretting it for a long time. You are just bewildered how on earth you did that. But it has happened and now get over it. And you have a big company. :)
Why this happens? This is not stupidity. This is due to the way our brain works as a pattern making and pattern matching system. All new incoming information is matched to existing brain patterns. A particular sequence of events can trigger a potentially unfavorable pattern in our brain. A con artist can use his skills to make our brain's pattern matching system work to his advantage.
Edward de Bono's thinking tools can help you to cut across existing brain patterns instead of matching these. The three important tools to help you in tricky situations are APC, CAF and PMI.
APC stands for alternatives, possibilities and choices.
CAF stands for consider all factors.
PMI stands for plus, minus, interesting.
To apply each tool, you list as many points as possible within 1 - 3 minutes without bringing your judgment into the thinking process. Spend some time on practicing these tools with a paper and a pencil. Simplicity of these tools and few days of practice will make it possible for you to use these in real life situations without much effort.
Let us avoid the next big blunder.
(Photo credit: lolsnaps.com)