Read These (wk of Jan 15, 2006)

Here are some great links. Read these! :)

IDEA: The best role of a boss.
SOURCE:MabelandHarry
(via Anna Farmery and via the ThoughtsPhilosophies carnival):

Robert Altman says the the role of the film director is
“to create a space where the actor or actress can become more than they’ve ever been before, more than they’ve dreamed of being”

Now if you replace actor/actress with employee…isn’t that what business is all about? You are a dream creator, a dream coach, a dream maker…..now tell me that you have no power!

IDEA: How to measure what you’ve been doing.
SOURCE: David Maister’s summary of the words of Deborah Szekely, founder of the Golden Door Spa.
(via Anna Farmery and the ThoughtsPhilosophies carnival):

Among her pearls of wisdom was the advice that, every week, we should take an hour or two to examine what we have done with our time in the previous week, marking everything in one of five colors.

* Green would be used for anything that was a challenging growth experience
* Black would be used for things that were a waste of time
* Blue should be used for things that could have been delegated (even if the other person could only do it 85% as well as you could.)
* Red would represent something you did that was a deposit for your health
* and your own favorite color would be used for time spent on family, friends and fun

IDEA: Why smiling makes you happy.
SOURCE: Bob Sutton
(via Life At the Bar which was emailed by Stephanie of Idealawg.)

There is now compelling evidence that smiling causes people to feel happy. Requiring people to smile, no matter how they really feel at first, results in increased positive feelings; frowning conversely decreases positive feelings. Robert Zajonc and his colleagues show that smiling leads to physiological changes in the brain that cool the blood, which in turn makes people feel happy. [A series of experiments] show that positive emotion and cooler facial temperatures result when people saying the letter “e” or the sound “ah” over and over again, apparently because making these sounds requires a smile-like expression. …

These [experiments] also show that negative emotion (and hotter facial temperatures) result from repeating sounds like the letter O or the German vowel ü, apparently because making these sounds require a frown-like expression to pronounce. This effect was found to be equally strong in both German and American research subjects. These researchers also found direct effects of temperature on emotion, demonstrating that people who have had cold air blown up their noses are happier than those who have had hot air blown up their noses. Hundreds of other studies show that hot temperatures are a powerful and reliable cause of foul moods and interpersonal conflict (especially aggression and violence).

So, if you want to be really weird, try increasing happiness (and thus creativity) by having your people say “ah, ah, ah,” “e, e ,e, e,” or perhaps saying “cheese” over and over again, blowing cold air up their noses, or just keeping the buildings cold where creative people work. Or as Jane Dutton at The University of Michigan told me after she heard Robert Zajonc talk about these ideas: “When I want to get in a good mood, I’ll just go home and stick my head in the refrigerator.”

IDEA: A website about the good things in life.
SOURCE: Stephanie West Allen of Idealawg about DarynKagan.com. Stephanie writes:

Without identifying it as such, the article mentions confirmation bias. Because so much sensory data hits us each moment, we have to filter much out to maintain our sanity; we tend to let through that which confirms what we already believe.

“Bad things happen in the world,” Kagan says. “But I believe everyone has this life filter, this life view. We all run around collecting stories in our head to support whatever that life view is. I’m choosing to have the life view that good things are happening.”

We cannot get rid of our confirmation bias but, with managed and focused attention, we can change the bias. How do you see the world? Whatever your answer to that question, you will continue to see through that lens. If you don’t like what you see, trade in your bias for a new one.

IDEA: Being good. Returning library books.
SOURCE: Man returns book overdue since 1960