Richard Maun

Tag: thinking

  • Crow Does… Thinking Styles

    Crow says 'Hello to you'...he's a friendly sort of bird...
    Crow says: 'Hello – I'm a bird!'

    Hello, I’m Crow and sometimes I turn up at Richard’s workshops, which is fun for me and gets some interesting reactions from people. I like to help humans develop their presentation skills, or challenge some of their thinking styles and if I squawk, well that’s just me being friendly, as I’m a happy sort of bird. Richard is taking a break for three weeks and has asked me to stand in and say something interesting. He claims that he’s in the garden ‘thinking great thoughts’, but personally I think he’s just asleep. Oh well, anyway, here goes my blog…

    As a clever bird I like to think that I can do thinking and there’s three thinking styles I’ve learned to think about:

    1) Canyon Thinking. This happens when another crow (not me obviously) thinks about every little aspect of a problem and spends so much time on the details they lose sight of the problem! You could say that, like a narrow canyon, their thinking is one inch wide and one mile deep! Ha ha! (What’s an inch by the way? Crows never got the hand of basic measurement systems).

    2) Coyote Thinking. Some crows rush about doing the first thing that comes into their heads, without thinking through the consequences. A bit like Wile E. Coyote. Honestly, if you want something doing properly, get a crow to sort it, but not one of those silly impetuous ones.

    3) Broad Thinking. Ah, I’m good at this. This is when I take time to think through and round and over a problem. Sometimes I sketch out the issues with my beak, talk to other crows and generally eye up the problem from all sides. Richard says he does this too, but you know, I’m not always convinced he does. But then he is human! Not everyone is as good as crows!

    How was that? Hope you liked it. More Crow stuff next week. I might do a bit about ‘why pigeons are so stupid’. I could go on for hours….but do you know how hard it is to type with a beak?

  • A Quote About Motivation

    A Model T "Yes I can do 150mph" Henry
    A Model T "Yes I can do 150mph" Henry

    “Whether you think you can or you can’t; you’re right.”

    So said Henry Ford, who in between building his River Rouge plant and selling the iconic Model T Henry, found time to trot out useful one liners, that have been preserved for posterity. No prizes though for guessing whether he thought if he could or could not.

    This is one of my favourite quotes because it reminds me that to be successful we need to listen to what we’re saying in our head, as it’s likely to be self-limiting. However, as an additional dimension to this I’ve realised that sometimes saying ‘I can’t do this’ is as useful and as necessary as saying ‘I can.’

    What Can’t You Do?

    In the headlong rush to get on with our lives it’s easy to write off a ‘can’t do’ as a negative and a limitation, but my recent writing experience has made me realise that in fact we need to balance the cans with the can’ts in order to be successful and to stay healthy. For example, I can write fast when I need to, but I can’t write and drive at the same time, so completing the additional chapters needed to finish my book has meant making sensible decisions about what was a practical use of my working day (and evening and late night). Henry Ford’s quote forced me to think about what I could do and what the consequences would be, which meant taking an axe to my diary, chopping a swathe through my appointments and rescheduling clients until later on in February. I could write my book, but only if I created the space for myself to do so and although this meant making some tough choices, at least I was making them proactively and getting control over the situation. It also meant not blogging for a bit, but I’m back now!

    I thought that ‘I can finish my manuscript’ and also that ‘I can’t do that and meet all my other commitments at the same time’. And I was right, so thank you Henry for making me think about both sides of the equation in a positive and proactive way.

    It’s an interesting point to consider folks:

    What can’t you do, in order to free up the space for something that you can do?

    Do let me know how you get on balancing things out to keep motivated and healthy.