Hacking Your Passions

Urban Monk has an amazing summary post of the year gone by on his amazing blog. It reminded me a bit of something I wrote about a lesson I learned on the subject of loving and caring for my fellow man.

 ”My instructor challenged us to spend one entire day being completely honest in every conversation. If someone asks you how you are, tell them the truth…”

What is safe for you to do at your work? Are you safe to spend some time thinking about innovation and experimenting with an idea? Can you “run it like you own it” in your current role? Is there encouragement to get involved in clubs, networking groups, events celebrating diversity? Can you be yourself at work?

Whatever seems like the safe way to act in order to stay employed and collecting a paycheck at your place of employment will likely have a pretty strong influence on the behavior of employees in that organization. Consider the effect that introducing Six Sigma as what the leadership of 3M wanted to push its people to follow as a rule, and the struggle to innovate that followed.

If you are in a company that makes you feel safe to innovate, a place that is more people oriented than task oriented, a place that lets you be yourself – take advantage of it (while it lasts)!

A while back I mentioned a separate blog I was keeping to organize my thoughts and efforts as I work on the book I am writing, Harness Your Passions (working title). Recently, this article on sparking your creativity through creating lists of 100 prompted me to start another blog (because that’s what I do lately – start blogs). On the newest blog, my goal is to create http://100lists.blogspot.com/, in an effort to brainstorm and keep the creativity flowing as I nurture the part of my brain responsible for wanting to take on this whole book writing thing.

Don’t want to lose this link to an article about Mirror Neurons and Happy People – it’s one of the biggest pieces to the jigzaw puzzle of hacking one’s passions I’m working on that I’ve found yet. It also explains… me, better than any attempts I have previously struggled through, particularly the part on happy people.

“Remember the flight attendant’s advice… you must put on your own oxygen mask first.”

Thought this was a pretty good article on soliciting (and then handling) feedback, harsh as it may be sometimes. It makes a good clarification too – feedback is a gift, but it is only so if it is about specific behaviors or concerns and not intended or worded as a personal attack (because then it’s not constructive, it’s destructive).

Generally speaking, I tend not to shy away from trying to accomplish new things, even when I think I’m probably going to be bad at them. The line for me is usually drawn when being bad at something new might result in physical injury to myself or others (which is, for example, why I have never gone skiing – physical strength I can do, but agility and dexterity are not necessarily my strong suits).

 Anyway, here’s an article from Scott Berkun regarding the joy of doing things you’ll be bad at. I especially like the three steps he lays out toward the end -

1. Pick up a new activity that I’m bad at.
2. Spend time enjoying my badness at that thing while trying to learn it.
3. If I somehow get good at that thing, go to #1

I lacked a name to call it, but I have been doing a version of Gratitude Sessions almost every night for a while now. As I lie in bed thinking about things before I go to sleep, I look ahead to the next few days and identify at least one aspect of each day that I am particularly excited about and grateful for. I don’t know how large a part it plays, but I definitely wake up excited about each day, and I have to believe being consciously aware there is something to look forward to each day, be it big or small, helps.