“Nothing is more dangerous than an idea. . . especially if it’s the only one you have.”

Ideas are like wrench sets. If you have too small a set, you can be sure that you’ll never have the one you need when the lawn tractor breaks down. Obsessive people buy huge wrench sets with every possible size, imperial and metric, just in case. Smart ones buy an adjustable wrench or two.

Ideas are much the same. When you need one, it’s usually too late to take the time to find it. And, unlike that vast case of wrenches, your mind can’t hold that many ideas or random bits of information without forgetting most of them. You need the mental equivalent of an adjustable wrench.

That’s a concept: a way of looking at something that can be adjusted to provide the precise answer you need in specific circumstances. Human minds are bad at holding lots of disconnected ideas and bits of learning, but first-rate at recalling and using concepts. Continued

Are happiness and achievement truly a case of cause and effect?

Photo credit: D B King

For all the people out there who strive constantly to increase their productivity and add to their achievements (and they are legion) there’s no more challenging question that to prove the link between what you get done and whether or not you feel happier afterwards.

The general assumption is that achieving some goal creates happiness, but is it correct?

That’s the area explored in a recent article by Jonathan Mead called “The Cult of Productivity & the Art of Purposeless Living.” In challenging the convention links between these two aspects of life (Achievement causes happiness), he points to the way so many people today become obsessed with doing more, making more money, being a better person and a host of similar goals — all harmless, even laudable, in themselves, but all capable of causing a great deal of unhappiness when they become obsessive. Continued

Instincts can be fatal for people as well as hedgehogs

Photo credit: Jörg Hempel

I recently came across this quirky article (“3 Things I Learned From Hedgehogs”) that draws parallels between the behavior of hedgehogs and people. It’s a somewhat forced comparison, but there are some sound points too.

When I lived in Great Britain, I saw plenty of hedgehogs, alive and dead. The live ones lived in my garden. You could find one most nights by listening for the snuffling and grunting sounds they seem to make all the time. The dead ones lay squashed all along the roads. The motor car is the biggest killer of the poor little creatures (for North American and other readers who have never seen a hedgehog, they’re rotund creatures roughly similar in size to a small possum). I suspect some drivers at least aim for them, since I drove thousand of miles a night in rural areas and never once, to my knowledge, hit a hedgehog in the road. Continued

Handling more with less effort may depend on how much green you see

I don’t mean the ‘folding green’ — money — I mean the real thing: plants and green leaves. That’s the conclusion of this article, Want More Productive Employees? Try Adding a Few Plants.

The author of a survey of office workers in Texas and the Midwest, Dr. Tina Marie Cade of Texas State University, found employees who worked in offices with green plants or views of green spaces felt better about their jobs and the work they performed:

Employees who worked near live interior plants or a window view of greenery reported significantly higher job satisfaction and thought far better of their bosses and coworkers than those who were confined to windowless gloom. The plant-exposed employees also considered themselves happier in life overall, while all of the respondents who said they were “dissatisfied” with their quality of life were plant-deprived—though it remains to be seen whether happier people are simply more likely to fill their offices with plants, as opposed to the plants providing the happiness.

It seems both women and men demonstrated more innovative thinking, generating more ideas and original solutions to problems in the office environment that included flowers and plants. Continued

According to The Globe and Mail (a Canadian newspaper), a growing number of parents are espousing a radical philosophy: deciding that it’s time their children got some life skills by actually living. As a result, they’re allowing far more unstructured time and more freedom for children to play, free from constant interference from adults (“The free-range child”).

Here’s how the writer expresses it:

As so-called hyperparenting continues to dominate modern childrearing with its flash cards, over-programming, hovering and handholding, a number of conscientious objectors are taking a big step back.

They are not slacker parents – they don’t celebrate 3 p.m. martinis and serve Happy Meals for dinner.

But they are returning to a parenting style in which kids’ time is filled with free play, unsupervised activities and plenty of downtime. Some call it free-range parenting.

Continued

Too many people rely on everything from blind intuition to excessive data collection when reasoning is a hand to help solve the toughest problem.

Do you seek help from others to work through your problems? If you do, it’s probably not because they have any specific knowledge about the subject. That’s not necessary. You usually have all the knowledge required. What you don’t know is how to organize your thoughts and come to a logical and reasoned conclusion.

Don’t rely on experience

If you have lots of experience, that may lead you to assume you can make quick decisions without bothering to collect background data. Sometimes it may work, but using your experience in this way can be a drawback. There will be a tendency to choose the answer which fits what you know. Continued

Success often needs determination, but when does tenacity slip over into obsession?

One of the toughest day-to-day decisions most people have to make is knowing when to let go and walk away. Few of us like to give up on something we’ve put time and energy into; the more of both we’ve committed — plus our credibility and sometimes our cash — the less happy we feel at the idea that even winning may not be worth the cost.

That’s the question posed by this article from The Age, an Australian newspaper, in one of its associated blogs (“Should I stay or should I go?”):

While I agree that entrepreneurs need to have a focus on their goals — often bordering on obsession — sometimes, you can be wasting time and energy on a project that isn’t worth the effort. Your focus could be better spent on something that’s going to reap you greater rewards. So how do you determine if your energies are better directed elsewhere?

The author suggests that you answer three questions to find the right path:

• Is price your point of differentiation? (Clearly, this only applies to decisions about launching a new product or business.)
• Is it impacting your family, health or sanity? (That’s key for all personal and professional career choices, as well as purely business ones, especially for anyone prone to bouts of being a workaholic.)
• Look into the future — will your product/service be superseded? (You can apply this to personal issues by substituting the question: “Will any skills and experience gained be superseded in the foreseeable future. Becoming an expert in a dying specialism may not be a sound use of time or energy.)

Difficult questions, but well worth thinking about if they can save you from banging your head against some obstacle until you drive out your remaining wits.

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