Author: moderncareers

  • How To Make A New Year’s Resolution

    It's okay to go your own way next year.
    It's okay to go your own way next year.

    With the New Year looming it becomes traditional to make a pile of resolutions, in order to get the next twelve months off to a good start. In my experience they’re easier to make than to keep.

    I can think of resolutions that I was only making because other people were telling me to start/stop/do more/do less and so on. I wasn’t making them because I wanted to make a change and so they weren’t kept.

    That’s the thing with decisions, if we go against our own energy then we will either work hard to unwind the decision, or just grit or teeth and have a miserable time. Neither of these options seems like a good way to start a freshly minted year.

    So, I have two tips for anyone who needs to make a decision as the Old Year slips by and the New Year waves a cheery hello:

    1. Make your decision when you want to and not because the clock is counting down to midnight. A resolution can wait a couple of days, until you’re properly ready.
    2. Follow your energy. If you don’t really want to, then don’t say you will. Do the things that you genuinely want to do for yourself.

    And if you’re not successful…there’s always next year….

  • Thoughtful Creativity

    Nativity creativity
    Nativity creativity

    Here’s fun: A witty talk by Sir Ken Robinson about creativity and education. If you would like to listen to it please click here.

    Thank you to Mel Armstrong at Cardinal Talent for sending it through to me in the first place. It did remind me that we often strive for creativity at work; in order to solve problems, design new products and run useful marketing campaigns, for example, yet society tends to really value qualifications in ‘proper’ subjects, like maths and physics. Sometimes, society can be very silly.

    In my experience of work people have actively discouraged both thinking and creativity. Two comments, from my own past, will suffice for evidence:

    “You’re not thinking again are you Maun? Stop that and get on with some work!”

    “Richard, you have too many ideas; go and get on with something productive.”

    People who say these kind of things are not great leaders and I’m glad not to be working with them any more. This brings me to my point. The next time someone has an idea at work, any idea, find a way to say thank you, even if you don’t like the idea itself, because their next idea could be the one that really makes a difference. Creativity is the future. Celebrate it and foster it.

    I’m off to be creative with some Lego now. What could you do?