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Lecture - A minute to think

Photo du rédacteur: nathalie manathalie ma

Dernière mise à jour : 20 févr. 2024

Reclaim creativity conquer busyness, and do your best work

Juliet Funt

 

Ce livre est un bijou. Il est riche, bien écrit et tellement libérateur. A lire et à relire.

 

N.B. Comme vous le constaterez mon objectif n’est pas de vous proposer une synthèse ni une analyse de ces lectures mais de vous en offrir mes extraits préférés pour, peut-être vous donner envie de les lire.

 

“The space is what makes flames ignite and stay burning. However, we forget this law of nature in every area of our lives beyond the hearth-especially at work. […]

Without space we can’t sustain ourselves. The full fortitude of our professional contributions eludes us. We miss game-changing, breakthrough ideas that fail to grace us with their presence because busyness is barring the door. We miss human moments of serendipity and connection that should occur in the in-between moments of life-because in-between moments no longer exist.”

 

“It’s called “social conformity”. We follow and we follow and we follow. If everyone else keeps working after work hours are over, we do, too. If everyone else checks email every single second like a woodpecker, we do, too. If information is hoarded by our colleagues, we amass more and more data. The feedback loop is constant and reciprocal. Our colleagues race faster and never take a breath. We mirror them and they do the same.”

 

“Adam Gazzaley, an award-winning San Francisco-based neuroscientist, helped me understand why the periodic cessation of activity in our workday is so necessary and effective. When we perform complex, intensive tasks without giving our brains time to recuperate, we experience cognitive fatigue. […]

Research suggests the only known way to truly recover from cognitive depletion is by giving our brains a break.”

 

“Only relaxation and social activities had any benefit. Cognitive activities during work breaks actually made their fatigue worse, likely because these activities tax many of the same mental processes that we are trying to rebuild. Across a wide range of fields, research is amassing to show that simply makes us work better.”

 

“People by and large do not feel they have enough time to do their work, certainly not to do their work as creatively, as innovatively, as they’d like to.”

 

“In white space we may follow thought. We may follow ideas. We dismiss constraints fully. With ultimate freedom, our minds explore, stretch, and recover.”

 

“The Wedge is the small portion of white space inserted between two activities. […] another key occasion for the Wedge is selecting the next item you will touch in your day. That “So, what’s next?” moment, when completing one task and moving to another, is a linchpin of productivity. If we’re unaware of having choice in these critical junctures, we become slaves to our hyper, excited natures and jump prematurely into any ol’task. To-do lists intensify this problem as they provide the perfect on-ramp to mindless activity.

 

“When taken to extremes the Thieves of Time become corrupted. Drive becomes overdrive. Excellence becomes information overload, and Activity becomes downright frenzy.”

 

It’s time to de-crapify your day- to use the strategic pause to reduce, or to even go broader and adopt what we call a reductive mindset. In the context of creating white space, having a reductive mindset is a way of seeing the world where ridding yourselves of the unnecessary becomes second nature. It’s a celebration of the elegant, expansive feeling of less-less complexity, less on our to-do lists, less waste, less interrupting, less unnecessary touch points and meetings.”






“There are times when instead of asking for something new, we need to learn to accept what is. Some people have behaviors that are highly unlikely to change. With your boss who always multitasks while you talk or the woman who’s so contrary she’d say puppies aren’t cute, you know what they’re going to do. Instead of asking for change in these cases, prepare yourselves by visualizing the coming scene in your mind and rehearsing the inevitable. Visualization is a technique used by true masters in many fields, like Muhammad Ali, who said, “If my mind can conceive it and my heart can believe it-then I can achieve it. So, float like a butterfly right past your previous disappointments with this person and imagine yourself acting skillfully the next time you see them. In that next interaction, you’ll be confident and less affected.”



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