Idea Surplus Disorder #73
In this week's edition, a Filament pre-brainstorming tool, asking better, playing more, writing by hand, Likert scales, papercuts, Foolish Fests, photobooths, immortal hamburgers, birds singing, and more.
Good morning, and happy Monday!
In this week's edition, a Filament pre-brainstorming tool, asking better, playing more, writing by hand, Likert scales, papercuts, Foolish Fests, photobooths, immortal hamburgers, birds singing, and more.
I'm Matt Homann, and I'm glad you're here!
Filamental Thinking
We had a great SuperCollider Friday, and we shared a new tool that helps introverts (and everyone else, too) prepare for a brainstorming meeting by prompting them to consider the challenge you're giving them.
It works great when you share it 15-30 minutes before you begin your group conversation – but it works even better when you send it out a few days before you gather. Here's a link to download a fillable .pdf of the sheet.
Next month at SuperCollider, we're sharing a dozen ways to "hack" your culture to make work better. Join us on September 6th!
Ideas + Insights
Need help? Learn to ask for it better:
Start strong. Avoid phrases like “I hate to bother you.” Instead, begin with a clear purpose. For example, “I’d like to get your thoughts on a challenge I’m facing,” or “I’m working on this project and would like to bounce some ideas off you.”
Acknowledge their expertise. Rather than putting yourself down, highlight the other person’s knowledge or abilities. Say, “Your background in this area is exactly what this project needs,” or “I know you’ve handled requests like this before, so you came to mind as the perfect person to reach out to.”
Be precise and concise. Make your request clear and specific. Instead of “I’m having trouble with this presentation. Can you help?” try “I’ve prepped content for the board presentation, but I’m not sure about the order of slides five through 10. Could you take a look?”
Explain what work you’ve already done. For example, “I’ve mapped out three potential scenarios for the project timeline. Can we chat about which is most realistic?” This will demonstrate that you’ve done your due diligence and help narrow the focus of your request.
Be like LEGO and play more at work:
Our leadership model, we call the leadership playground, because we also believe that play is important in leadership, and we've actually modelled it after kids. There are elements of how kids behave that are really beneficial for leadership. We've distilled it into being focused; you can see your kid sitting down on the floor being really focused on building a Lego model. Also being curious about what could be done differently and asking all the questions to get wiser. And then being brave, because learning is about being brave and getting better.
Now, we also really play, and that revolves around our Lego campus. It's a very playful environment. I think it's important if you want to create these fantastic play experiences. It must be part of us to also allow play and have that as part of who we are. If we didn't do that, we couldn't serve kids in the right way.
Even in our boardroom, there are Lego bricks on the table, so people will be building throughout. Every year we allow every employee two days fully paid when they actually go out and play. So, we have many initiatives that foster play.
Related to play, we think better (and learn more) when we write by hand:
Both handwriting and typing involve moving our hands and fingers to create words on a page. But handwriting, it turns out, requires a lot more fine-tuned coordination between the motor and visual systems. This seems to more deeply engage the brain in ways that support learning.
Both handwriting and typing involve moving our hands and fingers to create words on a page. But handwriting, it turns out, requires a lot more fine-tuned coordination between the motor and visual systems. This seems to more deeply engage the brain in ways that support learning.
"Your fingers have to each do something different to produce a recognizable letter," says Sophia Vinci-Booher, an educational neuroscientist at Vanderbilt University. Adding to the complexity, your visual system must continuously process that letter as it's formed. With each stroke, your brain compares the unfolding script with mental models of the letters and words, making adjustments to fingers in real time to create the letters' shapes, says Vinci-Booher.
Apparently, Nike is dying a death of a thousand papercuts. Made me think about what "papercuts" might look like in my business. What about yours?
This is a science-related post, but I do love the idea of the Simplest Valid Analysis:
A significant and pretty common problem I see when reading papers in social science (and psychology in particular) is that they present a fancy analysis but don’t show the results of what we have named the “Simplest Valid Analysis” – which is the simplest possible way of analyzing the data that is still a valid test of the hypothesis in question.
I want to do a stupid hackathon in St. Louis:
A "hackathon" is a social event where people come together for a short period of time to make a project, like an app or hardware device. A "stupid shit hackathon" is an event where people come together to make projects that are terrible, useless, horrifying, and probably should have never been made. There are no prizes and definitely no winners. It's really fun.
We're going to call ours Foolish Fest.
On a scale of 1-5, how likely are you to recommend this article about the Likert Scale to someone else?
I think "And what else?" is the best coaching question in the world. It does two things: It extends the period of curiosity, and it tames your advice monster.
Use 10-10-10 questions when you're making a personal decision:
How will I feel about it 10 minutes from now? How will I feel about it 10 months from now? How will I feel about it 10 years from now?
These will encourage you to go beyond first order consequences and to consider the complex and sometimes unwanted effects of your choices. By cultivating this habit, you’ll end up making smarter decisions in the long run.
To think better, embrace boredom:
Boredom is a filter. Common ideas come before it. Uncommon ideas come after it. Sit with a project long enough to get bored with it, then sit a little more. The most useful insights bubble up after you get bored.
Fun Finds
- A website full of fun, offbeat finds.
- Loved this Lego Tower destruction.
- Early bookcases (like dark-ages early).
- How analog photo booths work.
- Dawn Chorus has birdsongs from around the world.
- A McDonald's Cheeseburger turns 15!
- Why only one side of aluminium foil is shiny.
- What happens when you read 100 self-help books and do absolutely everything they recommend?
- The visual history of color charts.
Words of Wisdom
"When you are finished changing, you are finished." — Benjamin Franklin
"Good news takes time but bad news tends to occur instantly." — Morgan Housel
"You have an unlimited number of future opportunities, which means there are an enormous number of them that you don’t have to take." – Dan Sullivan
"Being creative is not so much the desire to do something as the listening to that which wants to be done." – Anni Albers
“Vulnerability doesn’t come after trust—it precedes it." – Daniel Coyle
“Courage is knowing it might hurt, and doing it anyway. Stupidity is the same. And that's why life is hard.” — Jeremy Goldberg
"The way to greater confidence is not to reassure ourselves of our own dignity; it’s to come to peace with our inevitable ridiculousness." – Alain de Botton
"Learning is a gift, even when pain is your teacher!" ― Michael Jordan
“Change the way you look at things and the things you look at change” – Wayne Dyer