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Tag: mental

Do what you love: Why you are not your job

Written by Jerome on . Posted in Start-up.

Even as someone who works for myself and makes a living off of creativity, it’s not always fun. I’m not like those photos you see from Google image searches of people who work from home, stretching out while letting the rays of sunshine wash over my face.

Most days, I bust my ass designing websites that require lots of rounds of revisions with clients, and we may not see eye-to-eye. Or publication editors ask for revisions I don’t always agree with.

I butt heads with people that pay me, and some days I wouldn’t work if I didn’t have to. I sometimes miss out on doing things I want to do because I have to work. And I have it so easy (because I work for myself doing something I mostly enjoy) that I don’t even have the right to complain.

While I love doing what I do, it’s still work. I still get up at 6 a.m. or 7 a.m. everyday and sit down and work for most of the day. I don’t wait to be inspired because it’s a job. And I stop when the work is finished.

I’m lucky to have this life, which is afforded to me because I live in the first-world and grew up middle class. I don’t have to stress about how I’ll pay rent, afford health-care or wonder when we’ll be able to buy groceries next. I completely see the hypocrisy and classist edification of me even talking about this subject.

But if everyone’s job was simply to “do what they love,” who would collect garbage, work as a cashier, do data-entry or any other job that doesn’t seem as soul fulfilling? Those aren’t even lesser jobs either, they’re just jobs.

The reality of jobs

Doing what you love for a job is awesome, but not mandatory or valued above anything else.

I’ve never understood why so many people are so concerned with only doing a job that makes them happy – as if anything else wasn’t worth doing.

Find a job that you don’t have to worry about when you’re not doing it – or a job that doesn’t make you miserable every single day. You’ll still be far better off than a lot of folks.

As I enjoy telling my wife, work is called “work” and not “super happy fun time” because often it’s just tasks that need to be done. It doesn’t mean your life is less meaningful just because your job lacks existential value.

You aren’t your job. It doesn’t have to define you unless you let it. Plus, you can always do what you love in your spare time.

“Doing what you love” doesn’t have to mean a job. It can be a hobby, a passion or even simply spending time with the people you that you love the most. If you like something enough, you’ll find time to make it happen.

How to retain mental and creative focus

Written by Jerome on . Posted in Creative.

Have you ever wondered why, when you leave a two-hour meeting you usually have very little retention of what was said? An onslaught of stimuli and information comes our way every day. Why do our minds label some of it as important, and the rest becomes no more memorable than this morning’s Starbucks experience?

Lack of focus is not due to too much TV as a child, it’s a function of our Reticular Activating System (also called the extrathalamic control modulatory system, but let’s just call it the RAS). The RAS is a structure embedded deep within the brain, that helps with two main business functions: 1) highlighting information as relevant while it is being experienced, and 2) stimulating pattern recognition that can be used as innovative fuel.

What if you had a tool that could improve information retention in the moment, and mind training for the future? By simply asking the right questions at the right cadence, you plant seeds of thought in the minds of your employees and create thought patterns that drive your business forward.

Too much input

Awareness must be regulated during our waking lives, since our minds have a finite amount of resources and simply cannot process all of the external stimuli that we experience each day. 

The metaphor ‘asleep at the wheel’, is not far from the truth. Our brains are actively ignoring information that isn’t deemed vital.

When we zone out in meetings, the RAS is acting like a switch to protect us from being overstimulated by a massive amount of information in a short period of time. When it is turned off, we “zone out”. When the RAS is on, we have increased awareness and retention of vital information.

Meetings are a turn-off

In meetings, the person in control of the conversation is often a leader who is forwarding a well thought-out agenda. But for the employee who is listening to the information, it may be perceived as uninteresting or even threatening.

When we are uninterested, the RAS is not activated  and what we hear just becomes noise. And when we feel threatened by something because we don’t understand it or it seems overly burdensome, many of us shut down.

Bolt, the fastest pigeon in the world was sold for £300,000 last year to a Chinese millionaire. Belgian pigeon fancier Leo Heremans also sold the rest of his aviary collection at auction for over $5 million. Did that seem random to you? It was my intentional strategy to activate your RAS.

I recommend starting meetings with information that people are not expecting, as it gets them to pay attention. This technique brings them fully into the room and makes them present.