Humans are peak performers

My post on "The most important factor driving innovation is a company's internal culture" got me thinking about my own motivation, and what happened during a day - where some things happen easier than others, and where time-of-day, timing in general, task, people, environment and so on all makes an impact on my overall performance RIGHT NOW.

Many years ago i attended a company course day - called something like "organize yourself" or "find your personal rhythm". Focusing on the energy level and thus focus that each person could maintain during different phases of the day. Each attendee ended up with a chart where we plotted our personal feelings on energy and focus during the phases of the day. On top of this we then allotted time boxes with tasks like "checking e-mail", "meetings", "project time" and so on... The idea was great, and I think it helped... as long as you remembered to look at your personal chart when booking meetings and so on ;)

As the title suggests, I do not believe we can stay "on the top" during a whole day, and when that is said, of cause you need to put the tasks at the right time... but also ,and more important, you need to do ONLY the tasks that is right for you- with your specific "rhythm".

I tried to define some simple elements, from which I could create a cart.



For each of the elements, I've put a value between 0 and 5 for each of the phases of the day; Morning, Before noon, noon, After noon, Evening, Night.
The elements I've decided for is; Concentration, Creativity, Happiness, Energy (and ? - because there are probably a lot more you could track)

The following chart then appears.




I've not spend to much time on actually defining the right values for myself - but set them from a general perspective. By that I've made some general assumptions like.
- Energy is low at night and high in the morning.
- Most people are creative either in the morning or just before they go to sleep.
- You are more happy when not working ;)
- Concentration has a dip just around noon - you are hungry, energy is taking a small dip as well and maybe not feeling too creative.

Now, a chart like this is actually not static at all. All of the elements can be more or less directly influenced by outside disturbances - positive and negative (symbolized by the red and green arrows). But just as important, the elements them self influence each other.

- Energy levels can be influenced by sleep, food, and happiness - among a few.
- Concentration - as explained above...
- Happiness can be influenced by other persons (with their own element-chart)
and so on...

I've just scratched the surface on a workspace / GTD related issue, and I'm sure lots of people has done much more research in this direction in relation to which elements to track, how they are best tracked and which outside elements influence each of the elements.


I also think this is interesting in regards to which job's and tasks a person would do particular good. I imagine that a similar chart could be made from the definition of a job- a chart that would be more static that the one for a person.

Addition:
Just read about an out-there version of charting a persons different elements during a day.
An auto diary which depicts a day automatically based on sms's, pictures, movement and pulse... other element that I'm talking about but still...

Another great article in Report 103 on Visual Brainstorming

Jeffery Baumgartner brings a thoughtful description on using more visual tools in a brainstorming process. I agree with most of it - though i do believe that conventional text/word based brainstorms still has it's rights in some instances.

One thing I especially like is this:

Incidentally, research has also shown that while verbal brainstorming in a single location often brings less creative results than individual creativity, on-line brainstorming using web based tools is more effective than on-site brainstorming or individual brainstorming.

I've had more successful on line brainstorms facilitated by everything from a shared document, mind map, skype or even a combination of text messaging, sending pictures, links and drawings, than localized ones with the same success factor. So I think there might be some truth in this.

I also think that Anand Chhatpar - which I'm fortunate to have had good chats and brainstorms with, thought of this a while back when he created http://www.brainreactions.net/

I've used it far less than i should and could have, but I think it might come to it's rights, especially if you use it even if the brainstorm is localized. I think it has great potential regarding idea-collection and later idea management.

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The most important factor driving innovation is a company’s internal culture

New ways of measuring innovation points to internal company culture as one of the lead factors in defining a company as innovative.

I know there has been discussions weather beanbags and such could spur the innovative culture in a company - which it still can't !! But rather it's the overall mindset of the people working in that company which defines the culture.

This is also interesting when it comes to talking about idea-generation and management systems such as Dell's Ideastorm and Idéoffensiv - a danish county's idea generation tool made by Socialsquare.

Because one thing is setting up the physical collection of ideas from various sources, another is actually qualifying those ideas into use full information and in turn projects/solutions.

This is where the culture of the company comes to play - if the ideation is not supported in the company, a lot of ideas won't make the difference. They have to be matured...


Read the whole article on Innovationtools

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Passive and Active Creativity

In the September 07 issue of Report 103 is a very interesting article on creativity. For many creative involved people, this might seem as just a precision of something they all ready know, but I especially like this paragraph:

Although the exact process is not clear, it seems that the biochemical process of the brain restructures memories before storing them during the night. This restructuring most likely allows our minds to see problems in new ways and so bring new solutions to them. (Ref: http://www.cnn.com/2004/HEALTH/01/21/sleep.creativity.ap/index.html)

As stated in the article - sleeping on a problem is not exactly new, though this gives me a clue as to why i often describe my "most creative" period as being in the shower each morning.

The article also touches another interesting creativity-issue - the space or beeing-space. Getting out and about, changing the setting in which you think is a powerful but yet overlooked tool in today's company culture. (No IKEA been bags is not enough - an article about where your ideas come from in Danish)

RSS reader of my dreams

Sitting going through another 100+ feeds in my Google reader, i tend to get annoyed by the numerous feeds about the same subject - having to decide each time weather I want to read it or not.

Right now i see two ways of solving this.

1. Have an intelligent reader which analyze the text in each feed, to categorize it. The objective is of course to group related posts together, giving me the choice to "mark as read" on the entire group when read the ones I found interesting.

2. hmm, nope i guess i only saw one... Anyone with some similar ideas?


In best Scoble style I'm going to publish my Google trends - which is evidence to the fact that I had an offline vacation :
From your 123 subscriptions, over the last 30 days you read 827 items, starred 80 items, and shared 17 items
You don't have to read 123 feeds - you can all ways find all my shared items to the right- on the blog.

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When people actually think...

I love when a product in it's simplest form bares evidence of the people behind it actually sitting down/taking time to think new thoughts.
Musicovery is for me such a product, and watching the simple but very intuit iv GUI of this app. is very inspiring.

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Future vendor of silence...

Just read about NOSO (=NOSOCIAL) which is quite interesting from a workspace point of view.

Of cause it's a bit extreme to have a (social)network to support you in your non-social efforts... but from my point of view, the facilitating of noise-free environment's might be a future commodity.

The trend is all ready forming in work spaces today. The big open office spaces are no longer the main trend. More and more social spaces, meeting, relaxing, thinking spaces find their way into the general office space. We all ready know that the mind needs "quiet time" to filter and form inputs to new meanings and ideas. So why not offer a place with complete silence for your thoughts to be heard?

Personally my imagination runs wild under the shower, and (sorry) on the toilet during the day...
When you think about it, where else are we granted complete solitude?

Where do you go to think?


Where do you get the next good idea?

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No gambling in SecondLife - what will become of the alter universe build for exactly that !?

Wow, that was my first though, when I read this over at techcrunch today.

Being a bit of a fallen SL user, with an avatar left to meet it's maker (for now), it's a bit interesting to see what direction Second Life will take from here.
Maybe in the long run, it can help save SL transforming it from this sex-focused money-making world, into a more true place of social interaction. Just maybe...

I'm not jumping back into the SL world, mainly because it's still too time consuming, and my original question "How do i combine my FirstLife with my SecondLife?" has jet to be answered. I do not believe this to be the future of web(3.0) (shame on me - I don't know if web3.0 is as bad to say as web2.0 - is it?)

The true web3.0 - in terms of social interaction, will be much more based on a closer sibling of the browser we know today. I think examples like Flock and the ideas like XFN is more likely to be the near future of the web. (again I know that "web" is a huge concept, just like web2.0)

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Very inspiring - watching this over and over again!

I must admit I do not work that way, but on the other hand i see no reason not to! Or at least parts of it. I'd like to meet some people once in a while, but of cause it shows the capabilities of our wonderful Internet, and some simple tools.

It's goes to show that you can do without the giant software companies, but sadly it also pokes at the core of why not so many companies are successful living the full web2.0 (shame on me) dream; It takes every one to get it rolling! I've trying running a project blog - i was tired of my boss asking "what are you doing, what have you been up to this week?", so I started a blog - the problem was, he didn't understand the value, and did not check it...

Anyways, take a look, it's a slideshare

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Decentralizing your social network to multiple network services

I had read about it some time ago, and was very interested to hear that there actually was some thought put into the growing problem of multiple social networks like LinkedIn, MySpace, Facebook and so on...

Each compeeting each other on different user-expierence/ social angles; business, hobby or some other form of category - Leaving the users in a bit of a predicament, since using only one network-service rule may rule out a lot of friends not associated with that network.

In effect that means you would have to join any networks your friends are using, and/or making them join yours.
Getting your friends to join a network like LinkedIn, if they are not in the business of professional networking but maybe active on MySpace, can be quite hard - and will eventually just leave you and your friends with a lot of networks to update.

Seperating the basic metadata from the network part gives you the ability (in the future) to have friends on multiple networks, but not forceing you to activly join each and every network yourself.

XFN does exactly that - Defining the social relationship between people through simple linking - an advanced blogroll if you will.

Read all about XFN here, and join!!!

Which i found through this post on Scobleizer

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