my weird ideas

1. bug people. as i talked about in the immediately-prior post.

2. truly notice people. i have been told by a great many people that i do good impersonations. of project leaders, of classmates, of strangers, of best friends, of parents, of clients, whatever. i never used to think much of this -- to me, it used to be intuitive to be able to "play back" someone's words, and more important, their style - body language, inflection, tone, expressions, trademark "isms" and more. but i have actually learned that i am somewhat of a center of excellence in this regard. and it's not that i especially like to make fun of people, it's that this provides entertainment in stressy situations. i think it's one manifestation of the fact that i pay very close attention to what people offer as their public personalities. this in turn allows me to understand what a person's passions are, how their decision-making process works, what level of involvement they want in a project, and so on. this doesn't happen over the course of several interactions; rather, it takes a while...otherwise it just becomes a stereotype and it's useless as an evaluation criterium.

3. bring in strangers. some of the most helpful input i've gotten as a consultant, a student in this class, an employee of Starbucks, a husband, and a friend has been from people that wouldn't normally be "required" to give me such input. that's because there's a special energy that i believe is derived from spending an hour with people bouncing ideas around in a low-risk, high-reward environment. for example, nate and andy and ellie (none of whom are in my creativity group) and i had a great one-hour discussion where we just tried to build on, critique, understand, and further the raw ideas that our groups had come up with for the final project. besides how cool it is to see how other people think and react (see #2 above!), i got a lot of cool insights for our napping idea, and also built up some confidence by offering some feedback that was received well on ideas i'd never reflected on before. this helped increase my confidence about the choice of advisor as a continued career path, but that's a sidebar.

4. change the environment. one of the ways i have maximized my productivity in the absence of having a car and living far from campus is by calling a number of places "home" in terms of getting work done for school. by going to different coffee shops and restaurants, as well as different places around campus and even different rooms in my home, i have been able to steer clear of the feeling that i have "one place" where my best work is done. maybe it's good that this is true given that i'm going back to a traveling profession and that workplaces are becoming ever more virtual, but i think it's a non-trivial enhancement to my productivty, which of course is limited by my desire to be social as much as possible...but that's another story...

5. let it roll. simona asked me last week how i seem to be able to use humor and personality to get through what could be perceived as tough situations. i really didn't have (in my view) an intelligent or thoughtful answer for her, but i tried - it's something to the effect of feeling like people generally want to give you the benefit of the doubt, they want to enjoy your company, they inherently don't like conflict, and they really just want to connect with others, either personally or professionally. so when something isn't going your way, or when someone is being a dick to you, it doesn't make sense to get all riled up about it. a joke or lighthearted comment will do. better to be an optimist than a pessimist, because what's going to happen is going to happen, so why worry about it when you can enjoy the life that's immediately at hand?