Some interesting reflections about these habits and my lack of action. First of all I’ll deal with risk taking; at the end of week 3, I left the UK for a long weekend to travel to sunnier surroundings with some friends. During the week I reflected on the notion of risk taking and found it difficult to find something about which I could take a risk that was relevant, appropriate and timely and could write about before I left. (Clearly my enthusiasm for the Innovation Challenge was waning!) I pride myself on being open to risk as throughout my life I’ve taken all sorts of personal and career risks and have always managed the consequences to my advantage. So, on the basis of keeping things simple, I decided to risk not writing a blog entry for the 3rd week. My rationale was the belief that no one was actually reading our blogs, so I felt the risk would have little, if any, consequence.
Imagine my surprise when I heard that at least one person was following the blog and was looking forward to each instalment! I have spent the day thinking about the consequences of my actions and how to manage them. Of course, the easiest thing to do is to sit down and write a blog entry, which I am doing now. The hardest thing to do is to deal with my feelings, which are a mixture of guilt (for not following through with the commitment I made at the start of this challenge) and the feeling of letting someone down (even 1 reader is worth continuing with the challenge).
My reflections have reminded me about the following:
1. Every risk has consequences.
2. Consequential actions are easier to manage than consequential feelings.
3. Don’t make assumptions.
4. Escape is not an option
This last point leads me to the previous week’s habit – Escape. Using the definition within the Seven Habits of Innovation (my basis for the challenge); this is about escaping out of your usual environment to help with the creative flow. Over the years I have learned that I am at my most thoughtful, creatively, when I am travelling in a car or by train. Both the physical and metaphorical journeys of getting from point A to point B help me to think differently about things. Whilst the previous week took me to a different environment, I did not have any specific problems to ponder on. I am, however, confident that when I need to tap into some creative time, I can manoeuvre myself into an appropriate setting to help set the mood.
(Problem + Different environment = Potential Solution)
This week’s habit focused on writing things down. A good habit to get into for all sorts of reasons, so in the context of this challenge I searched out my Creativity & Innovation journal which I write in periodically. I use this to capture ideas and thoughts about creativity and innovation that will be useful in Level Seven's work and research. Again, just like ‘Escape’ I do use my journal effectively but perhaps I could widen it out to include other topics. There is benefit to be gained in cross-fertilisation of ideas, so next week I will attempt to be more proactive about this habit. This could well help with next week’s challenge which is ‘Find Patterns and Create Combinations’.
I will report back next Friday.
Thank you to our readers!
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