David Rock in his book “Your Brain At Work” states that smaller the information the prefontal cortex(processes thoughts , decisions etc.)is loaded with better the efficiency.
Chunking of information into manageable pieces results in efficient brain processing with less energy drainage.
David Rock in his book “Your Brain At Work” makes a mention of the fact that parts of the brain involved in thought related processing e.g problem solving , creativity make most use of energy e.g. glucose , oxygen.
As a result of this “Prefrontal Cortex” involved with this function needs to be used optimally once when most needed.
For this to happen meticulous white board planning needs to happen to determine the prioritized list of tasks to engage this part of the brain with.
Generally this planning should happen at times when we are least loaded e.g. early morning , late evening vefore bed.
Dan Pink’s book “Drive” emphasizes the importance of “intrinsic motivation” for a modern day knowledge worker.
He makes a mention of the iconic company named Atlassian(invented Jira ,Confluence etc. agile software lifecycle tools).
To encourage creativity as a drive towards intrinsic motivation one day every quarter is celebrated as “FedEx Day” wherein anyone can develop anything of his or her choice provided something is shown as a deliverable.
Amazing thought process!!
Attainment of “Mastery” is bound by the following three principles.
Dan Pink’s book Drive makes a mention of the same.
1) Mastety is a “Mindset” – Continuity in excellence needs a learning mindset rather than a performane mindset
2) Mastery involves “Pain“- Excelling in a particular field needs a lot of personal sacrifices.
3) Mastery always follows an “Asymptotic” pattern – Attainment of mastery will never touch the ceiling , even though the final destination may seem very near.
Google , 3M have been very well known for providjng a lot of autonomy to employees to showcase their creativity.
In an effort to create a Result Oriented Work Environment(ROWE), it has historically provided employees a leeway of using 20% of their time to do something outside their realm of work.
This autonomy provided to employees have incidentally given birth to these iconic creations.
Dan Pink’s book Drive makes a mention of this term.
To make customer service more interesting , JetBlue had started diverting customer calls to homes of service representatives , without any monitoring.
This was contrary of the popular practice of offshoring such work for cost savings..
Components of intrinsic motivation to help switch to Type I (Intrinsic motivation) personality are:
1) Autonomy
2) Mastery
3) Purpose
Dan Pink in his book “Drive” makes a mention of the fact that “if-then” rewards better known as carrot/stick awards can be detrimental when it comes to instilling creativity and doing right brain oriented tasks.
Hence these rewards must be used with caution mostly for the purpose of getting done “left brain” oriented mundane tasks by making use of an external driver e.g. money.
“Emotional Design” by Don Norman beautifully highlights the difference between a successful product and a magical product.
Successful Product – A product born out of prototype creation , repeated testing and re-design.This is the standard process of creating a product that sells and enables the maker to make profits.The recipe is very simple , follow the standard processes of product design.
Magical Product – Now there is no clear receipt for creating such a product for e.g. iPhone , iPod etc.The only pattern that we see is that such products have been created by visionaries and have involved high financial risks worth the final outcome when the product sell gathers momentum. Had there been a clear recipe , had these followed standard processes and been time boxed all successful products would have become magical products.