Feel the Churn

One of the glories of the Internet is that we have access to an incredible store of talks by a huge range of speakers. Between social media sharing and search engines, exceptional, mind-shifting talks flit across our radar on a regular basis. This same access can make us feel that people out there are crafting…

Say it out loud

Yes, you sound different when you speak than when you write. The carefully massaged sentence, paragraph, or turn of phrase is unlikely to come out of your mouth in the same way that it reads on paper. Writing, reading, and unscripted speaking are all different mental processes. You can create a consistency between your spoken…

Creativity and the Accountant

Let’s start with a throwback, for fun’s sake: I work with plenty of people from financial industries.  I also work with engineers, public health researchers, and others who would not be in job typically considered “creative.”  Often, clients from these walks of life kvetch that they are not creative, and say that it’s probably why…

Lost the groove

It is remarkably easy to get out of a solid groove.  The groove you lost may have been one centred around a good habit you had, or one for a skill you built up and were maintaining.  Either way, we can break out of these with surprising rapidity, losing the characteristic we worked so hard…

Everything that’s old…

Up-cycling, reusing, re-purposing, refinishing, and other activities that take old things and polishes them up into something newly relevant are very, very hot at the moment.   This surge of interest in making use of well-worn objects can be chalked up to a number of factors: frugality movements, tough economies and lower disposable incomes, environmentalism, and…