Just Seven Things

Exploring why and how we do what we do, and how we can do it better

Archive for the month “July, 2008”

09 Jul 2008
3 Comments

Why Do We Feel Better if the Wording is Changed?

“There is no doubt that bringing elements of the US strategic arsenal close to Russian territory could be used to weaken our deterrent potential,” the Russian foreign ministry said. “…in such a situation the Russian side will take appropriate measures to compensate for potential created for threats to its national security”

Now I did a degree in Politics. Scary times, but not the point of this post.

A few minutes after reading the above in the FT, I opened up a letter about my subscription to the Times. They used to send ‘Timesaver’ tokens through with the vouchers. A perk of the subscription, it meant that I didn’t need to collect vouchers for anyspecial offers available. The letter said ‘You may notice that Timesaver Tokens are no longer included. We are continually working on new ways in which to deliver special promotions to you…..’

Yesterday I spent most of my time giving 360 degree feedback to my line reports at Madgex. We use a tool called My3Things which I based on a brilliant ‘rapid’ feedback tool from a guy called Matt Clarke from beyondnowhere UK. He worked with the finance team when I was at Sainsbury’s.

The feedback tool asks the person giving the feedback to give three things they’ve really noticed about the person they’re giving feedback to. And three things they’d love to see more of.

Now you may be asking yourself whether I’ve gone mad. What do these three things have in common?

Read more…

Posted in Communication, Conscious and Unconscious, Writing and tagged , , , ,
08 Jul 2008
4 Comments

Why does Relaxation lead to Creativity and Performance?

A whole heap of things have come together in my thoughts over the last 24hrs. They are primarily covered by the following:

  • Why does relaxing lead to more creative thinking?
  • Why does not thinking about an activity and sometimes just going with the gut or the flow often lead to better performance?

I started to think about these things because of the counter-intuitive way in which we sometimes work. In one of my line reports today I saw (what felt like) a classic case of ‘over-thinking’. I could virtually feel the heat coming from their brain….

Read more…

Posted in Conscious and Unconscious, Creativity, Mindfulness and tagged , , ,
07 Jul 2008
1 Comment

Superstition and Sport: Strange Bed Fellows

Venus Williams apparently maintains exactly the same routines to ensure her ‘luck’. In the Wimbledon final for the seventh time, and winner I think for the fifth she said in a BBC interview that she will do exactly the same as she has done on all the last winning occasions (same dressing room/ shower/ hanger/ locker…). Now designer of her own clothing range, she also made some comment along the lines of even wearing similar clothing.

Golfers are worse. In fact, looking at an article I pulled up from Google from News24.com they’re all as mad as a box of frogs….

But I began to wonder why this was. These people are amongst the most dedicated, driven, focused individuals on the planet. Fair enough that Jim and Jeff from work who play squash think they play a better game on court no. 4 at the local leisure centre. But Wimbledon winners. National team captains. Michael Jordan?

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Posted in NLP and tagged ,

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