change_yourself – Page 23 – ORGANIZING CREATIVITY

Dissertation Crises

2010-05-17

A overview of the possible crises that can happen during a PhD -- sorted in beginning, mid, and end, and each with Description, What breaks you, and possible solution. Highly recommended for PhDs.
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Media-free Zone for Creativity

2010-05-14

Media can be extremely stimulating, but perhaps some zones should be media-free. At least free of some media.
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Change the Medium

2010-04-25

Sometimes you cannot realize a creative project -- you just can't. It's beyond you. But there's a solution for it.
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Where is personal mentoring going?

2010-04-22

Nothing is as needed and nothing is as hard to find. Especially today.
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Memory Landmine with Background Image

2010-02-28

Landmines in productivity are things you place somewhere where you stumble upon in the future, at best in the moment when you need to remember something. But if it stays there for too long, you begin to ignore it. So here's a simple solution for those working on the computer.
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PostDoc RoadMap

2010-02-04

How do you plan your post-doc phase? Here's a suggestion. (Update: Looking at it four years later, I think it's too detailed and optimistic. And it needed better feedback.)
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Recommendation: TEDTalk – Elizabeth Gilbert on nurturing creativity

2010-02-04

Incredible talk -- not only the content but also the performance.
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Wanting to appear competent vs. being competent

2010-02-01

When feedback about a presentation was ... completely misunderstood and turned into a real fuck-up, I began to think about competence and how some people seem to chose appearance over performance.
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Tweaking the 2-Minute Rule

2009-12-12

You should do a thing immediately if you can do it within 2 minutes -- this raises the question: How can you do more within two minutes?
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This is a private blog showing my opinions. If you have an issue with what I write here, either don’t read it or talk to me directly. Don’t waste your time — or mine — dragging my employer into matters where they hold no authority.

The institution I work for, or rather the people officially representing it, have already distanced themselves from this blog. I find this unnecessary, as I’ve clearly stated in the «About this Blog» section that this is a personal blog.

Frankly, I have nothing but contempt for those who lack the backbone to address their concerns directly and instead resort to passive-aggressive tattling to others. Such behavior strikes me as not only cowardly, but also spineless, gutless, and wholly unprincipled. Moreover, these efforts are as pathetic as they are futile.

That said, I might listen if you present compelling arguments and evidence, as constructive feedback is always welcome. Who knows? We might even both gain something valuable from the interaction.

A comment for those seeking to use this site for personal gain: Given the increase in requests, let me be clear. I write on this blog because I want to. It’s my hobby, my playground. Sometimes people point me to interesting products/services and I write about them. But any request regarding ads or sponsored placements ends up the trash without a reply. And if you think something would be of interest, differentiate yourself from the spammers by referring to a posting — in an intelligent way. (I get enough auto-generated mails to identify them immediately.)

BTW, posts can get updated after I published them if I spot spelling errors (not a native speaker) or think a different wording might improve precision and clarity.

This blog is not focused on a single topic, or method. As long as it is relevant to improving creativity (or allowing it in the first place), it's fair game.
Some postings on this blog deal with freedom, as I think that we need freedom of thought, of speech, of association, etc. pp. to solve mankind's problems. Thus, some postings may seem a bit remote when it comes to organizing creativity. Freedom is, however, the bedrock of creativity.
The heterogeneity of the postings can make reading this blog a bit cumbersome, at least if you are only interested in one topic. You can either use the search function (above), or use the categories or the tags to narrow down the postings you see.