Have you tried creative loafing? It is a good excuse to relax, and also a great way to come up with new ideas and solutions to problems. How does one creatively loaf? Just relax, open your mind, and use one of the many idea-generating techniques.
A Creative Loafing Technique
My favorite technique is one that is best for generating new ideas rather than solving specific problems. It can be used in any area of life. It is simply the imagining of new applications for existing ideas.
Once, while laying on the couch, I saw an advertisement for a company that uses a dog to find mold in your house. You may know that dogs can be trained to sniff out almost anything. There was even a news story a year or two ago about a dog that could detect if you had cancer.
What was my first thought? “I wonder what else dogs could find by smell?” The first idea that came to mind was to use dogs to find other pets. They find lost people so well, so why not have a service to find lost pets? just one sniff of the cats favorite rug, and the dog is on the trail.
A Creative Loafing Example
You can certainly use your relaxing times to just randomly ponder things, but why not put creative loafing together with a good idea-generating technique. Then you can lay under a tree and have an endless stream of creative new ideas. For this “new-application technique,” just start with the essence of the idea, and look for new ways to use it.
For example, you might lay there and think about the pneumatic tubes that deliver your money and papers at a bank’s drive-through. The essence is a cartridge that delivers things through a tube using air pressure. I imagine the same thing would work for human transport. Could you ride “the tube” to the next city, or maybe make this into an amusement park ride?
Look other aspects of an idea too. For example, these tubes allow several customers to be waited on at once. Where else do they need this? A fast food drive through comes to mind. Perhaps pneumatic tubes would spill drinks, but the idea of multiple car lanes can be used. Several drive-through windows, radiating out like spokes, at different angles, would allow three different lines of cars.
If you want to practice using this technique, just lay back and…
- Imagine three new uses for pedal-power.
- Imagine two new uses for magnets.
- Think of a new application for Darwin’s theory of natural selection, outside of biology.
Can you see how easy it is to come up with new ideas? Why not learn a few more techniques? Then apply them to personal problems. Finally, to make the best use of your creative loafing time, keep a notebook or tape recorder ready.
Steve Gillman has been studying brainpower and related topics for years. For more on How To Increase Brain Power, and to get the Brain Power Newsletter and other free gifts, visit: http://www.IncreaseBrainPower.com
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March 30th, 2008
Nowadays, the practice of obtaining a criminal background check of job applicants seems to be gaining ground. More so if the job requires you to interact with external sources a lot, e.g. jobs involving dealing with children or the ones in health care industry.Of course you, the job applicant, need not worry if you have done nothing wrong. It goes without saying that some one with a past record might stop him from getting certain jobs. Though it will be harsh on the applicant, interests of others are well protected by such action. Similarly, some one who has never been convicted of a crime has nothing to worry about.
However at some places you may have to pay for your own criminal background check, whereas elsewhere employer will pay for you. In either case, applicant will not be confirmed until the criminal background check returns a clean record. Certain types of background records like conviction as a child molester will obviously not get job in a school.
If you have a record which is likely to show up on your criminal background check record, but you are confident that it will not come in the way of your getting the job, then you should make a disclosure about that. Usually many application forms have a question which asks if you have ever been convicted of a crime. If you do not mention about it, and it shows up on your criminal background check, then you can forget about getting that job. However, if you have been honest enough and make a mention then it will help you.
It all depends on the circumstances. If you are honest about your past, you have a chance at being hired. Always be honest about your criminal background check and you will find a job. It might take you a little longer, but there is something out there for you if you just keep trying. There are places that will give you a second chance if you seem to be worth that chance. If all those who have a done something that shows or is sure to show up on their background check record, then unemployment levels will reach staggering proportions.
Learn more here –
clearing your criminal record
background check criminal record software
March 8th, 2008
For the past ten thousand years or so the human race has had a distinguished record of achievement. We have solved problem after vexing problem. fed the hungry, provided medical advances to cure diseases that once threatened our very survival, learned how to overcome distance to the point where we are sending probes to the edge of the solar system and beyond.
As problems arose we used our human abilities to overcome them. If those abilities were to disappear surely the human race would be radically changed.
Our ability to solve problems rises from the need of the moment, “necessity is the mother of invention”, etc., but to an even larger extent from our ability to visualize solutions and how we might profit from them. Not necessarily profit in the monetary sense but in the acquisition of new knowledge or the plaudits of our fellows.
The single thread that binds together most breakthroughs is that they were achieved by individualists, dreamers, people who didn’t fit the mold.
Most of the world of today is run by hardheaded, practical, pragmatic people who see problem solving as a systematic exercise. You just feed all the relevant information to the computer and wait for it to spit out a practical solution for you to follow.
This is a viable approach to problems with large amounts of available information concerning similar problems but it isn’t the way breakthroughs occur. For one reason, most of the easy problems have already been taken care of. Somebody already came up with the wheel, the sail, the sundial etc. Each of these inventions, in its own time, was the equivalent of curing cancer, or developing a clean, renewable, economical energy source today.
These discoveries were probably made by individuals more or less in the mainstream of their society, folks not too different from you and me. Therein lies the rub.
Most of the major problems we face today are not susceptible to solution by the average person. They are so complex, so esoteric in nature that it requires either someone of genius level intellect or vast and very expensive education. In addition, they can’t be solved just through human thought. The possibilities are so numerous that supercomputers are necessary just to eliminate the impossible. The physical components that can’t be run through a computer still need great amounts of expensive production and test equipment for validation and quality control.
The costs involved in this kind of problem solving places it out of reach of everyday folks and into the venue of the new inventors, the technocrats who by virtue of their education or position have access to that kind of equipme.
Unfortunately, this also leads to an overall lack of inventive spirit in the human race. Why should we care about solutions that baffle college professors and their banks of computers? So we just sit back and watch and hope that the eggheads can come up with a solution before we are overwhelmed by whatever the latest dilemma happens to be.
The spirit of inventiveness, the dreams of the plain people of yore that solved our problems until the advent of the industrial revolution has largely disappeared. The dreamers; the Gutenbergs, the Edisons, the Morses, the Franklins, who took a minimum of education and sophistication and produced inventions that shook the world are becoming a dying breed.
The loss of this spirit is bad enough in itself but what it poses for the future is even more ominous. We will soon run out of dreams and soon after of dreamers. That may not seem important to the practical problem solver of today but there is a possibility that without dreams not only will science suffer but other human activities as well.
And I’m not saying, as some have, that the end of invention is near, that soon we’ll have invented everything that needs to be invented. There are still vast worlds to conquer, it’s just going to require more resources and deeper thought.
The arts in particular stand to lose as we run out of dreamers. Art generated by computer seems a poor substitute for a painting by Rembrandt or a Michelangelo sculpture. Too much of the creativity is taken over by the machine, the selection of color and texture will be flawless, and sterile. Imperfection will be ruthlessly rooted out and we will see not the soul of the artist but the technical ability of the computer programmer.
However, excepting the world of art with its obvious cultural impact, what does the loss of dreams and dreamers imply for the mundane everyday world.
To me it means that we are eventually going to reach a point of stagnation. A state in which little really new ever appears. Where what is described as new is in fact only a rehash of something old, where the serendipitous world shaking innovation is only a memory.
In some measure we can see a microcosm of such a world in today’s Japan. Japanese society is one in which the individual is submerged in the group. The maverick spirit is frowned upon as unsuitable, “the nail that sticks up must be hammered down.” Ironically, this philosophy has stood Japan in good stead since the end of World War II. It has produced a class of “super techs” that have proved superior to our own in the continuing development of electronic equipment and even automobiles.
The important concept in the above is “development”. All the world wide admiration Japan has earned through its hard work and adherence to its ancient principles is based on innovations from outside, mostly from the United States. They have created one of the great economies in the world by taking someone else’s ideas and improving and tweaking and developing them to such a degree that they simply thrash us in the marketplace.
These products must not be confused with the “MADE IN JAPAN” junk toys and notions of post-war occupation fame. They sell better simply because they are better!
In these products and in the very success of the Japanese way though may be the seeds of their own downfall. The focus of Japanese industry is on development, on the improvement of existing products. Furthermore, their culture is not conducive to unorthodox thought, the kind of individualistic unconventional impracticality that marks the great inventors in Western society. The free-thinking, risk accepting philosophy that produced the printing press, telegraph, telephone, gramophone, etc. Each one of which was ridiculed early in its existence but went on to change the world.
This isn’t to say that the Japanese way of doing things is wrong, their success in the world market is abundant proof that it works. It is part of their adaptation to life in a nation of small, crowded islands not overly blessed with natural resources. They are making the best of what they have.
But what does that have to do with the way American culture works, they are them and we are us, why should we study, analyze and attempt to learn from the Japanese experience? Simply, it could happen to us!
The Western way of doing things is very different. We have cultivated a tradition of openness, of individualism, of innovation that the Orient has never known. Much earlier in our history we began exploration for its own sake. The search for new ideas, urged on by ambition and nurtured through the appearance of new technology became part of our heritage. Thus the Western world was a beehive of innovation not only in science and technology but in politics, social and commercial relationships.
How then are we in danger of losing this spirit of innovation? Through the loss of dreams and dreamers! We are moving away from the patterns of thought that brought us our free spirit. Our society has matured to the point that we are focusing ever more inward, our interests are more on personal day-to-day issues and on the micromanagement of our environment. This is exacerbated by the fact that our technology has outstripped our educational system to the point where the average person can’t even understand it much less participate. Our incredible advancement has put the invention of earthshaking new products or concepts beyond our capabilities. Innovation has become institutionalized. For a superb description of the creative mind and process, read Robert Grudin’s wonderful book, “The Grace Of Great Things.” Nobody says it better.
The sad fact that we are on an innovative downslide is apparent not only in the technological area but in our day to day life as well. Government constantly attempts to insert itself further into our personal lives, activists of every shade and color try to legislate their point of view into law. Those of religious persuasions attempt to institutionalize their version of morality through political means. Small business, the supposed last refuge of individualism, wallows in regulation and anti-competitive litigation, while big business uses legal chicanery and mind-numbing advertising techniques to peddle useless products to television junkies.
In businesses throughout the West, but mainly those in that self-professed bastion of innovation, the United States, the triumph of style over substance, the victory of the sensationalized description of a product or service as opposed to its actual worth has made a travesty of the once dominant commercial force in the world.
Our whole society is becoming obsessed with the physical appearance of an individual. His clothes, physical condition, odor, possessions, “lifestyle”, etc., have replaced his intelligence and willingness to exert effort as measures of ability. Whole industries have developed to pander to this new world of “style over substance”. Major auto manufacturers produce “stripper” models of expensive vehicles so that the newly minted yuppie can afford to show off his “big name” car to all his equally newly mobile friends, even though he hasn’t a chance of owning a real “TLM SUPER-ZAPPO V300.” He has to be seen at only the trendy, fern adorned, “in” restaurant for his properly nutritional “Power Lunch/Breakfast/Dinner/Snack.” He slakes his thirst with beer or water brought from halfway around the world (properly labeled, of course). He owns (and constantly USES) a cell-phone to properly impress those of lesser stature with his importance. He learns a jargon, not for communications with his peers but to impress those unfortunate enough not to be on the “fast track”. He is judged not on his ability to accomplish anything but on his ability to impress his superiors (themselves recently graduated yuppies).
This shouldn’t be a surprise in a society where the major objective of business is no longer to produce products for sale or to sell those products but to simply shuffle money from place to place and where individual success is measured by how much cash sticks to your (or your company’s) collective fingers.
Has this been a cause of the decline of inventiveness or a result of it? Actually both.
Due mainly to the huge costs involved, the invention of new products or ideas has become largely restricted to people working in a corporate setting, leaving the average person in his basement workshop to develop new veggie choppers or water filters or garden implements. The major advancements are made in the laboratories and research facilities of large businesses or institutions. The results forthcoming from these facilities are the usually the efforts of groups, not individuals. The genius will always find a place but it will be more difficult for him to exploit his individual talent as he is mired in a team environment.
In the second case, our society has become increasingly self-centered, Whatever altruistic tendencies there were have fallen to the pursuit of personal success. In the main I see this as a result of the attitude present during and shortly after the Great Depression which boldly proclaimed “My kids are never going to have to suffer through anything like I did!” or words to that effect. Noble enough sentiments perhaps, but as history has shown, a little adversity never hurt anybody. We went from believing that a person must earn his way and reap only such rewards as he might be entitled to through his own effort to shielding our young from any deprivation whatsoever and providing them with rewards just for being our offspring. A new car simply for graduating from a high school, multi-hundred-dollar sneakers because “all the kids have them!” Putting them in an education system whose goal is fostering mediocrity? Hardly a way to instill the good old “American work ethic.”
So the path to success began to run not through our own will and efforts but through the politics of corporate or bureaucratic life where sham and deceit are the order of the day. Where terms like “upward mobility” and “mentor” and “fast track” are commonplace. Where individual effort is always subordinated to that of the “team”. A situation guaranteed to stifle all but the strongest flame of individualism and inventiveness.
“But,” the supporters of corporate society bleat, “it has to be that way in the world we live in today.” Perhaps so, but if true, it sounds the first notes of the death knell for the human spirit.
Melodramatic, you say? Overstating the problem?
Not a bit of it. Without the innovative spirit somewhere on the planet, without the adventurous spark that we celebrate in fiction and try to douse in life, without those willing to take risks to advance the race we will stagnate.
Oh, we might continue to exist here on our little ball of mud, we might be able to stretch dwindling resources or find alternatives to replace those that disappear, but life as we know it would be reduced to scratching out a living and trying desperately to overcome the deadly hopelessness and boredom.
Ask those who have been at war, in the front lines, and most say it consisted of moments of sheer terror separated by days or weeks of crushing boredom. But you say, “We have our TV and our parks and our roads that will take us to places where we can see and do things.” “We have the ‘Internet!’” Wow!
It is the loss of the human spirit that is most troubling to me. I have no desire to exist in a world where the only escape from terminal boredom is electronic or worse, chemical. Chemical escape is what drug addiction is to me. Today drugs are used to escape from poverty or crime or the little tragedies of life we all face at one time or another. How much worse it will be when we all face the reality of boredom, not temporarily, but forever.
© 2005 Charles Stone, Jr.
Born: Buffalo, NY 8/7/42
Graduated: Williamsville Central HS 1960
Military Service USAF 1/27/61 - 1/4/65 Missile mechanic, 3 years in Germany.
Computer School, Buffalo, NY 1967.
Worked as a computer programmer, programmer/analyst, systems analyst, DP manager and consultant from 1968 - 1990
Became disabled in 1991
Currently living in Kissimmee, FL
Interests: politics, motor sports, history (mainly military), Web surfing, talk radio junkie.
Member of the NRA.
Favorite TV shows: CSI, Whose Line Is It, Anyway?, Nova.
Favorite radio program: Neal Boortz
Political leaning: libertarian, Constitutionalist, individualist.
Supported and campaigned for Harry Browne in 1996 and 2000. Not sure I’d do it again.
Published in: Bureaucrash, Sierra Times, The Libertarian Enterprise, Free Market Net, We Hold These Truths, The Informed Volusian
February 16th, 2008
I spent last week making art in two different workshops. It was a very humbling week. I encountered that first hard bump of learning something new, that first jolt of, “Oh no, I can’t do what I want to do, I can’t make what I see in my head or feel in my heart.” When I learn something new, I experience a brief grace period (beginner’s mind?) when what I make or do is satisfying. Then the bump, the frustration, the ouch comes — it’s not working anymore! Oh no!
I’m proud to say that my critic did not come out with his stick poised to beat me up. I was gently curious during the entire bumpy week — and I did feel fear and despair. As I said to my friend Kristina, “I’m worried now I won’t be able to make visual art anymore, that I’ll go back to the old me who yearned to create and could not. Just could not.” Kristina said, “Isn’t that what all artists think?” Her comment made me pause and see the bump for what it is. I thought back to college and my second attempts at writing fiction (the first had been in high school). I got a C in that class because my stories were average at best. I thought about what I tell my coaching clients and retreat participants and what I know to be true, just as I know my bones support my flesh — it ain’t about talent. It is about perseverance and passion and prayer. Lots and lots and lots of it. It’s also about seeing how our life lessons actually end up providing some of our deepest inspirations after we have waded, splashed, or floated through them (your choice).
Speaking of bumps, in my network of friends, both online and off, there have been some struggles around how we can or why we should keep going, keep living, and keep loving even when someone dear to us is ill or passes away. We get submerged in the urges of empathy (please let me get sick instead or suffer with this person) and the “survivors’ guilt.” Appreciating life is the deepest challenge and the most life affirming choice. It’s like the Borg always says, “Resistance is futile;” but it sure is tempting and in a strange way it is a shadow comfort that seems to say that if we don’t give in, then the endless cycles of creation will stop.
There are theories out there around how our entire material world is made up of the same atoms that have been around since the beginning of time. Our molecules continue to circulate in one way, shape or form, giving reality substance. However, it’s the animating spirit that we miss when we encounter serious illness or death in our circle. It’s that feeling that a part of us is now missing, but you really have to ask…is it?
Perhaps, just perhaps, we can approach the situation like a Fool…maybe we really don’t know what is going on, what will happen next, or who we or anyone else will be and for how long. Maybe we can reconstruct our trust, our innocence, one breath at a time and confirm our commitment to creation–with all of its limitations, vulnerabilities, and infinite twists. In this way, we realize that we are the flow and our attachments, while important, are not meant to isolate our spirit. They are meant to help us grow, learn, express, and be with more love.
Jennifer Louden is a best-selling author of five books, including her classic, The Woman’s Comfort Book, and her newest, Comfort Secrets for Busy Women. She’s also a creativity and life coach, creator of the Inner Organizer, and a columnist for Body + Soul Magazine. She leads retreats on self-care and creativity around the country. Hear her live on Martha Stewart Living Radio, Sirius Channel 112 every Sunday at 8 am Pacific, 11 am Eastern. Visit her world at: http://www.comfortqueen.com and http://www.jenniferlouden.com
December 3rd, 2007