Sensemaking as a way of coping and understanding

If overwhelm, stress or uncertainty creeps up and dumps on you, get out a pen and paper... and map it all out. 

- Map out the overwhelm: what’s going on?  

- Map out the stress: what’s happening - what are you thinking about? 

- Map out the uncertainty: what do you know and what could you do about that? 

Rather than endless thinking thinking thinking, sensemaking can help because it involves the visualization of what can seem like a mess of information. 

We’re able to get perspective on where we are and what’s going on so it begins to make more sense to us. 

It doesn’t need to be fancy. 

A simple page of shapes, lines and words can be enlightening and uplifting. 

There are no rules. Your map doesn’t have to be a certain way. 

It’s the act of making a map that helps get the tangle out of your internal mind and out onto an external page. 

Sensemaking is one of the key capabilities of adaptability : to be able to respond to and deal with change. 

If we don’t map to make sense of things, they don’t make sense no matter how much thinking we do. 

Strange times call for new ideas

When the Institute for the Future called out ‘novel and adaptive thinking’ as one of those skills we’d need right about now ... do ya think they knew just how much we’d need it?

The use of the word ‘novel’ may have become a little tainted (you know, the novel coronavirus and all).

So could we say unique? Or clever? 

The thing is, these strange times call for new and quite different ideas. 

We know the clichéd group brainstorming thing doesn’t work. 

We’re better off keeping an ideas book, capturing flashes of brilliance as they arrive. 

Or getting hands-on with an idea and prototyping it, to see how well it actually works. Although getting as practical as we can as soon as we can is a totally new concept for some people. 

- Part of a team? 
Know how to bring your clever. 

- Leading a team?
Know how to bring the clever out in others. 

- Running your own show? 
Look for opportunities to use your clever .... anywhere, any time. 

Almost anything goes!

These strange times need our unusual ideas and thinking. Be braver about that. 

Hold on the judgement that what you’re thinking isn’t ‘good enough’. 

We won’t know the value of an idea ... until it’s put into practice anyway. 

Obsessed with a detail

Missile lock.
Focused on a target, excluding everything else.
Determined.
Sticking with it.

This is singleminded focus.
And we need it in many situations.

Yet our crazy changing world requires us to also lift ourselves up out of that detail and to see the wider view.

It doesn’t mean we don’t see that task or project as important.
It doesn’t mean we won’t return to working on it.

We can get lost, blinded and ignorant to what is important and what the priority is. Just because we’re ‘in too deep’ or ‘too far gone’ doesn’t mean it’s the right path or that we can’t pause or reverse out.

The ‘sunk cost fallacy’ can drive us to continue with something because we’ve already put so much effort in.

But hey, isn’t that also a good reason to pause, and reassess if it really is still so very important?

Somewhere between persistence and stubbornness is a space ... a flexible space where we can put our attention and effort so it’s valuable, impactful ...and efficient.

If we don’t raise our eyes, lift our head and come up out of the detail, we may never see what the bigger picture is all about.

Pause for a little while.
Look up ... and around.
Reset.

The world needs us to think and work differently

Here’s a resource full of ideas, inspiration and practical wisdom on how to do that. 

It’s all coming together in the full colour book ‘Better Ways of Thinking and Working’. 

I’ve collected, selected and edited many of the ideas I’ve shared that are relevant for these times of change, evolution and revolution. 

Now they’re coming together in the one place. 

Order via my website or shop 

‘BETTER WAYS OF THINKING & WORKING: How changing the way you do things, changes what you can do’. 

Notice when you have an idea

Do you capture them... the ideas and thoughts you have while you’re reading, listening or thinking? 

We overestimate the number of ideas we think we’ll remember. Our train of thought is interrupted with the mundane ... and boom, the thought is gone! 

Worry less about a perfect system for collecting ideas and start with ANY system! 

> Write a few words on a post it 
> Say a few phrases into a voice memo
> Jot a note in a journal. 

We undervalue the creative thoughts that come to us - either by not noticing them at all, or noticing them but judging them as unworthy.

Still after the perfect system? But having it may not mean you firstly notice when you’re having an idea! We can have a shed of tools and not use them. Or a device of apps we rarely tap!

The point is, to become more aware you’ve had an idea or thought that could be captured ... and could be useful in the future. 

Notice ideas and more ideas will come.