In these strange times, I think it’s worth taking a fresh look at the benefits of keeping a journal. Pouring our thoughts into a journal can be cathartic, comforting and give us something to look back at in the future. “I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read on… Read more
Summer’s here and I think it’s a great time to nurture our creativity. Here are 10 ways you can reclaim your gifts. 1. Draw I’m a big believer that we can all draw. No, we’re not all Picasso, but we can all draw – with a little practice. Stuck for inspiration? If you doodle,… Read more
The idea generation, or ‘brainstorm’ (or ‘thought shower’ as someone suggested recently) is done. You’ve got heaps of wild and wonderful ideas, concepts, and suggestions. So now what? A point that’s made crystal clear in Zoomly’s ‘How to brainstorm ideas’ workshop is the need to separate idea generation from idea evaluation. These are two… Read more
Want to better handle those moments when you’re asked to evaluate creative work, a.k.a. feed back to the people who did it? Yep, there’s a Zoomly bite-sized workshop for that*. This is something that happens a lot in creative enterprises of all persuasions: content creators, ad / design / media / branding / experience /… Read more
Image ‘Recycle notebook’ by @jcsmilly / Deposit Photos It’s Mental Health Awareness Week and that means two things: The Mental Health Foundation publishes its latest research, ‘Surviving or Thriving? The state of the UK’s mental health’, which makes troubling, yet essential, reading. Social media noise and advice abounds – some good, some not so…. Read more
Image by Ron Harvey/Deposit Photos Having been in my current line of work for over fifteen years, I often get asked to run ‘train the trainer’ workshops for clients’ internal trainers. What typically happens is that someone (usually senior, and/or in HR) decides that the expertise on the payroll needs to be shared much more… Read more
The irony wasn’t lost on me that Chris Lewis’s ‘Too Fast to Think – how to reclaim your creativity in a hyper-connected work culture’ had been sitting on my desk for several weeks before I got to read it. I think it’s worth the wait, with some simple, practical tips and ideas for how we… Read more
Do you have a reputation for being great at Getting Stuff Done? (BTW, one of Zoomly’s clients has that phrase as a core competency – except instead of ‘Stuff’ they use another word beginning with S…) If we’re honest, most of us seem to have things that we put off – even people who… Read more
When we’re trying to generate lots of new ideas we often try too hard. What we really need to do is stop trying and simply brainstorm whatever comes to mind. However this can be really hard to do, because a) we look at the problem / issue / question from our own right-here-right-now perspective and… Read more
Here’s a bang-up-to-date version of a really popular post from a while back. Because – apparently – it’s summer. Here in the northern hemisphere, we make the most of summer – when it finally comes – don’t we? Holidays and days out with the kids (if you have them), weekends at festivals (probably if you… Read more
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