I think I’ll share this article...

Yeah, I will.

First of all, it’s about something that I do regularly, a lot, which is talk to myself.

Secondly, I think it might help validate people who do this kind of thing too. You know, you’re normal after all!

And thirdly, it’s a truly practical tool, to talk to yourself to help you problem solve and coach yourself through processes or decisions.

So there - that’s 3 reasons why I think I’ll share it. Yep, it’s a win-win win, yes, that’s my kind of measuring stick of whether I’ll share something or not.

Hmmm talking out loud to myself, oh look, I’m doing it now 😂😂

It reminds me of how when I was visiting mum the other day, and we were out in her garden. She was giving some of her plants a bit of a motivational talk about how they were growing … or not. But maybe she was really talking to herself! Anyway then she started singing the lyrics from ‘Paint Your Wagon’ that’s 1960s song, “I talk to the trees, but they’re not listening to me“. 😂😂

We had a laugh about that one! Classic memory making right there.

Anyway, I’ll write this article up and then post it. Boom. Done.

Here's the article on talking to yourself. 

Creative tools / Beyond the blah blah / Atlassian community event / Ultimate skills workshop / Is it information or consultation?

Cut through the blah blah

It's a question we can wonder - how do we grab someone's attention or alert them to important information, how do we cut through all of the noise and information we're overloaded with.

If you've seen any of my 'stuff' you'll know I use visuals as a clever tool; for myself and my own thinking and for engaging, communicating and collaborating with others.

Oh, and it's a great influence tool too!

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Atlassian Community - Melbourne - Lynne Cazaly

Atlassian community - Melbourne

Join me at the next community event in Melbourne on July 24. I’ll speak about information overload and cognitive load coping as a modern way of working. The agenda is stacked with clever - not to be missed. Register here

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4 of my creative tools

This article prompted me to share some more insight about my creative processes.

This is a little more about the art we do ourselves and it doesn’t have to be that paint/draw/clay art you might think about when you see the word ‘art’.

Here are 4 ways I use art and creativity in my life and I know these help me feel better, get me through the shitty tough times in life (cancer, covid, grief), inspire and yet relax me, and give me ideas out of the … nowhere!!

Here we go :

1. SKETCHING and DOODLING

If you’ve seen my presentations, read my books, been in my workshops or read my posts you’ll see I use visuals. From originally using marker + paper 10 years ago, I’ve more regularly used an iPad + Pencil and many different apps. I make visuals for purposeful communication but also like ‘farting around’ 🤪 to see what I can do. Not trying to be perfect; just exploring and wondering. I'm running a skills workshop on this.

2. IMPROVISATION

For many years I’ve been a fan, audience member, student and now performer in shows with Impro Melbourne. There’s comedy improv we likely know but there’s also the learning and unleashing and making up stories improv. The spontaneity, narrative, stories, word play, characters and communication that improv gives me is multi-player, multi-level and multi-world stuff! There’s so much to learn yet it’s such a playful and creative art. I’m better with improv in my life and I feel blah and meh when it’s not part of my art.

3. WRITING

Yes I’ve written books, posts and blogs and some have called me ‘a machine’. But it is also creativity. I have a thought — oh my, lots and lots of thoughts — and I explore the thought with the written word. Are you imagining me sitting diligently at my laptop? No. I’m messy scribbling things in a journal, onto sticky notes all over the dining table, into a notes app. Anywhere. I love thinking deeply about things and writing with a marker from Muji and any paper or my digital device/s whether in a notes app or via voice to text.

4. FIBRE ARTS

This is my most recent creative arting. I’ve done a few basket weaving workshops and they’re wonderful but too small, constrained, prescriptive and ‘do it like this’.

I love the materials — leaves, vines, palms, sticks sticks give me sticks - I stop the car to ‘pick up sticks’ and add to my growing collection. Wonderfully surprising to me is how this art is evolving - I will be having an exhibition 7-27 October 2024 in Melbourne at Gasworks Arts Park in Port Melbourne. Details to come. I have more sticks to collect and things to make.

So there are 4 of my creative arts that mean I am a human and not a machine. That I think deeply, care even deeper and want to feel good about myself in this world like the rest of us.

Art is an essential.

Let me know, do you art, and what do you do?

And here's the article that inspired my thoughts...

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Invited to a consultation but it was an information dump - by Lynne Cazaly

Invited to a consultation -- but it was just more information

You know all of those consultations and conversations - promoted that way - but in reality, when we're there in the meeting, in the workshop, it's just more information?

If we're leading the consultation or meeting, we may not know how best to explain which pieces truly are for consultation and which bits are already set in stone.

We might fear the tension or conflict of people annoyed that they didn't get a say in a process.

Or we might ask for input secretly knowing nothing they say is going to make a shred of difference.

Sadly, then, we 'dress up' an information dump as consultation.

People give their thoughts, ideas and opinions and are of course annoyed when none of them are really recognised, acted on or implemented.

It's a modern day work pattern and it wastes plenty of time, effort, energy and ... performance theatre. It's also a part of the cynical cycle where we can't be bothered contributing to a consultation because ... 'well nothing ever happened with what we said anyway".

You can hear the cynicism and feel the defeatist feelings.

Check now:

• Where and when are you planning on consulting with people in your business?
• And exactly which pieces of information are you going to consult with them on?

If there's plenty of informing or information dumping on them, choose other ways than the valuable real time face-to-face meeting or workshop.

Make a video! A short one.

Go more asynchronous rather than a synchronous meeting.

And most of all, don't dress up an information session as consultation or worse... collaboration!

Age of haste/Show your thinking/Obsessed with activity/Share your knowledge/Do nought/Best at the end Lynne Cazaly CSP

Show me what you're thinking...

Could you? Or would you talk about it for awhile? Or spend way too long working on a detailed pack of information - with too many charts, with pillars and cogs and pie charts?

Thinking is evolving and so can our skills -- to show what we're thinking.

Visuals, scribing and sketching have become powerful tools to help with thinking, brainstorming, communication, collaboration, learning and coping with information overload.

Given there are so many benefits to using visuals, it's a shame that we discount our abilities to sketch and draw and therefore don't use -- or wildly underuse -- these clever and powerful skills.

Is it time to add this capability to your toolkit so you can:

🧰 quickly sketch out ideas

🧰 communicate complex concepts

🧰 think more clearly

🧰 take better notes (that you'll actually use again) and

🧰 make sense of all the information you're drowning in?

Yes, totally!

And these are even more epic skills for hybrid times when some people are here, some are there and conversations are remote, online, in person or asynchronous - happening at all different dates and times and locations.

I've been helping people cut through with their thinking and communications, make sense of their complex ideas and influence and engage others with ease.

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3 school students …

walking behind me along my local shopping street.

I was obsessed, eavesdropping on their conversation. They were coaching, advising and guiding each other through various parts of their school project. It was divine, clever, pointed and clear.

They were asking questions of each other. And they were eagerly contributing suggestions, ideas and insights.

One student shared a point or two about part of the assessment.

And then I heard it - another of the students said,

‘What was that? Share your knowledge?’

The student with the knowledge then delivered a succinct, clear and capsuled few sentences. Brilliant. No waffle. No grandstanding. No blah blah blah.

The group coaching was impressive.

The direct ‘share your knowledge’ request… even better.

And then the tight piece of knowledge delivered was the slam dunk, the cherry on top.

Students. Overloaded with information and learning … and developing mentally, physically and emotionally at record speed. And still this clarity in the asking for and the delivering of information.

Boom. Superb.Try it. Ask a colleague to, ‘share your knowledge’.

And if you’re ever asked, try to be succinct, clear, insightful. It’s harder than it sounds.

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Obsessed with activity

Do do do do. It’s not a song! It’s the obsession many workplaces have with wanting their people to be busy doing.

As if activity = productivity.

And if you’re not busy doing then you’re not ‘engaged’ or ‘performing’.

But the cultures of interruption and disruption (and not that innovative disruption either!) are growing in the workplace.

The 8 features of a badly disruptive workplace are outlined in this Psychology Today piece — and the list is looking increasingly like the standard workplace.

Read on and then reconsider these 4 points:

▫️how you’re leading people

▫️what constitutes performance

▫️how you know people are engaged and

▫️how your work practices need to evolve.

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In the age of haste

The treadmill of life is accelerating at such a pace, many of us are overstimulated, overwhelmed and overloaded. All the time.

Perhaps

▫️Timefulness

and

▫️Longstorming can help.

Autocorrect knows neither of these concepts, attempting to change them into tunefulness and long-standing!

But these are two ways we can consider how we cope with the changing world and all of its busy newness.

In redefining our relationship with time as it is whizzing by, timefulness helps us refresh our experiences of

▫️wonder

▫️curiosity

▫️awe and

▫️introspection.

And lonsgoeming, err I mean longstorming, is more about nature, the outdoors, and venturing ‘out there’ so you can

▫️step back

▫️slow down

▫️and deliberately think about the longer term.

Writer and social scientist Vincent Ialenti shares some deeper ideas, building on the philosophies of others in this Psyche article.

You’re probs too busy to read it or don’t have the mind space to change your speed and consider its suggestions.

But save it. And savor it. These might just be some ways to help us rethink what we’re doing and how we’re so hastefully doing it.

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But I can’t do … nothing

Among the trends of toxic productivity, the endless workday and the society of should, lives a little thing called ‘relaxation anxiety’.

Doing nothing. Well, at least doing less.

In a recent keynote and workshop on cognitive overload, participants fessed up about the challenges of taking short breaks between meetings, work tasks, work and the rest of life, and … little breaks for no reason at all.

And they found it tough.

We’ve been so slogan-ed into getting as much out of our time that the idea of getting less out of it — or getting nothing at all but rest out of it — can feel guilty, wrong or naughty.

That’s a habit gone too far - don’t ya think?

As we continue to evolve ourselves, knowing when to stop is as important as when to go go go.

Pausing, resting and recovering are all mighty valuable uses of our life and times - so get on with it. Resting. Whenever you can.

A micro rest here, a sliver of sleep there, and a spot of doing absolutely nought … right now.

Read more about it in this TIME article

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The best can come at the end

There have been a few more conferences on lately -- the events industry keeps picking up the pace, more events, more registrations, a more healthy return to eventing together ... in real life.

A quick survey of the last six conferences I presented at:

only one of them used a deliberate summary/synthesis/wrap up session that went beyond, 'Oh well, that's it, wasn't it great, see you next time.'

And the one that had the deliberate conclusion... I was facilitating it. Ha! 🤩

But seriously, it seems a waste to have a massively curated conference event program, full of speakers, panels, insights and messages, a-ha moments, learning, revelations and updates and then... what? Bye?

Missed opportunities right there. Big mistake. Big.

The collection, curation and co-creation of insights gathered at the event can be harnessed, revealed, elevated and shared.

And by more people than just the MC sharing things from their perspective.

Stop keeping all of the conference insights a secret!

The wrap-up or conclusion of the event can be a hugely impactful experience; deeper insights, more learning, sense making, ideas for application, possibilities for future connections - they're all possible.

Most conference events pack in so many speakers, presentations, panels and topics ... there's little if any time to digest, learn, share or embed the learning moments.

Facilitating a shared synthesis and a curated closing is a sure way to multiply the value people get from the event.

It reminds people of key messages, fills gaps from sessions you couldn't get to, and shows us what happened when we were distracted by emails and the love for our devices.

I can't wait to facilitate the next conference event closing this week where all my skills of improvisation, facilitation, co-creation, creativity and performance come together to extract insights -- in a friendly way -- from conference delegates.

There's so much value in that conference room at the conclusion of the event. Don't keep it a secret. Multiply the benefit and ROI of the event for delegates.

Yes... a best bit CAN be the wrap up when all of the other best bits come together!

What your creativity is trying to tell you

When you’re distracted from a task or chase bright shiny things, do you reprimand yourself and wish you had more discipline? 

At times we do need this focus and attention. 

But how about following the distraction… ok, not right then, but later? 

This distraction could be your creativity trying to alert you to your clever thinking and ideas. 

Here’s what to do: 

Make a ‘side note’ — a note in the moment of the distraction from the main task path you’re on. Jot it in an app or notepad — and return to your original task. 

Then later … allow time, space, a moment to explore, wonder and be curious about your notes about the distractions. Let yourself follow them up, deliberately chase the brightness and see where it takes you. 

You may think ‘I’ll never get anything done’ or ‘I never have time later’. 

But these thought associations we may see as distractions are often examples of curiosity and creativity trying to pop up throughout our day. 

Instead of squashing, hitting or ignoring them — or being angry at yourself because you can’t stay on task — invite the distraction or thought for long enough to capture it in a side note. 

It’s a note you can follow up, chase down or wonder about later. Or not at all. 

Creative and ingenious thought is there; give it somewhere to land when it rises rather than labeling it a distraction or bad. 

It’s actually very good, creative good. 

What does it sound like

Awkward silence. 
Deserted office. 
Difficult to focus. 

Each of these quiet situations can potentially benefit from the beauty that is music. And so can we. 

No, not just the radio or those poppy head banging louder tunes. 

Think more like ambient music … it’s music you may not recognize and barely notice. 

But it’s there. And it’s been shown to help with distraction and focus management, productivity, creativity … and community. 

Could your space do with some music? Might your headspace benefit? Do you know the impacts it could have on you? 

I’m writing this post listening to an Apple music station, ‘Spa’. It’s like I’m waiting for the massage therapist to come in for my relaxation massage. 😃 It’s a great way to start the day. 

During the workday when I need to focus, I’ll play the ‘Chill’ station. 

I write more about the benefits of music, white noise and ambient noise in my book ‘Argh! Too much information, not enough brain’. It’s a practical guide to outsmarting overwhelm.

And this great article talks about how music might help us work better in this new and changing hybrid world. 

I think I’d edit the title to say ‘your LIFE probably needs more ambient music’. 

Press ‘play’ more often.