For the life of me, I could never remember if creative types or analytical types were left brain or right brain. Then one day, years ago, I found a cartoon that showed two people at a party, a woman and a man. The woman is facing the viewer and asks the man, "I can't remember. Are accountants left brain or right brain?" The man's back is to the viewer. And his head above his ears veers sharply to the left. I'm a little of both, analytical and creative. I can pretty much turn one on or off at will, like I'm turning on a faucet. Sometimes, though, I need to get into the "other mode" more quickly than usual, and I need some tricks to get there. For me, this usually happens when I need to get creative quickly. I have a colleague who is mostly creative, but she is often alled upon in her work to think more analytically. She has some tricks to help her get there as well. A few years ago, I read a great story that highlighted how our brains work and how putting it through certain types of "exercise" will help us produce more work output. A woman wrote an article about her work as a marketing person. She had to pump out a lot of creative ideas one after the other. But just like writers get writer's block, she got creative block in her work. She worked from home a few days each week. One day, after her kids left for school, she noticed that her daughter had left art supplies on the kitchen table. She found paper, markers, crayons, glitter, and glue. Without thinking twice about it, she started playing with the paper, glue, and glitter, making all kinds of creative pictures and shapes. After doing this for about 30 minutes, she went to her office to work. Can you guess what happened? She was ultra-productive that day! She could hardly believe how much work she got done and how well it turned out. Recalling her creativity session earlier that morning, she decided to do something creative at the beginning of every work day for about 30 minutes. Over time, she found this to be a key to her success and for pumping out many good productive ideas and projects. I was so intrigued by this story that now I keep art supplies near my writing projects at home. Before starting to write for whatever book or project I'm working on, I draw with color pencils on a drawing pad. It gets my creative juices flowing. My creative colleague who needs to tap into her analytical side will count tiles. (Different, yes, but it works for her.) When we discussed this in a group, I suggested doing Sudoku puzzles to exercise the left brain. As you can guess, I'm not of the management mindset that says doing these types of activities during the work day is a waste of time or goofing off. On the contrary, I believe creative or analytical exercises that get our brains in gear and lead us to produce more high quality work is well worth the time. Therefore, I'm challenging managers everywhere to change their thinking on this topic to encourage right- and left-brain exercises during the start of the workday, or at the start of working on a project. Furthermore, I'm also of the "camp" that believes every business person should spend 30 minutes early in the work day reading business newspapers, such as the Wall Street Journal or Investor's Business Daily, and/or the business section of your metropolitan paper. Regarding this topic, the difference between most people and me is that most people believe this should be done "on a person's own time," while I believe it should be done during the work day. But, hey, that's another topic for another time! 2006 Borgeson Consulting, Inc. |
