Discover the full collection of #ThinkfullyHabits
Many of us prefer to keep doubt at arm’s length. It can feel like the enemy, especially if it renders us unable to make progress, blocks our ability to make decisions and causes us to pontificate rather than move forward. But what if a nagging feeling of doubt or a chronic sense of unease was actually more helpful than not?
Read MoreWe are pattern spotters. We love to see connections and work out how things fit together. The other side of the coin is spotting when patterns don’t quite fit together in the right way. However, this can be hard. It’s less obvious and we’re not always tuned into the signals.
Read MoreHow do breakthroughs happen? It’s amazing how many times they start with a chance observation that triggers a spark which leads to a discovery.
Take the example of how the microwave oven came to be. The first one was built by a company called Raytheon in 1947, but the chance observation behind it took place two years earlier.
Read MoreHow are you feeling? It turns out that your mood could be the difference between solving a problem, or not.
One evening, single parent Jerry Swartz simply wanted to occupy and entertain his three children so he brought home a laser pointer to show them. He started by shining the light onto different objects in the house and eventually started to shine the pointer onto moving objects to keep them engaged. They were simply relaxed, happy and everyone was in a good mood. Then he recounts that unexpectedly, “I knew I had it.”
Read MoreHow do you check if your assumptions are true or not? Even the best experts in the most critical of situations can fail to check assumptions.
Take the incident at NASA, known as ‘the scariest wardrobe malfunction in NASA history.’ On July 16th, 2013, Luca Parmitano and his fellow astronaut Chris Cassady went out on their second spacewalk together. 45 minutes in, Parmitano felt water at the back of his head. He didn’t know where it was coming from. The command was given to terminate the spacewalk early.
Read MoreIt often makes sense to look at other people’s solutions; to steal inspiration and nab fresh ideas. However, it also limits us to what other people have done. There’s a huge amount of inspiration that can come from looking beyond what others have already tried.
Read MoreMost of us have no problem imagining things happening. However, it's often in a free-flowing, unconstrained, escapism way. We may be less likely to apply the same imagination in a more deliberate and constructive way. Yet, applying imagination in order to work through a decision and watch the implications and consequences unfold in our mind’s eye, can be incredibly revealing. Even better, it’s something we can do with very little time and resource. It’s about creating a new habit of consciously thinking through a sequence of events and imagining how a situation may unfold.
Read MoreWhen we are an expert in something we can become trapped by our own expertise, entrenched in old routes and reassured by what we have known to be true in the past. It has been described by some as the ‘curse of knowledge’, and it can hinder us exploring new ways of doing things.
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