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I just spent the week co-facilitating a presentation skills workshop for a creative team in Seattle. One of the frustrations that came up repeatedly was the lack of control over time.
Being double-booked
Early/late meetings due to time zone differences
Having people disregard time you’d blocked out for creative thinking/writing
That last item on the list hit people the hardest. As I wrote in a previous post called “Creativity Hates Meetings”:
Being a creative who’s too busy to create sucks. Going from meeting to meeting, responding to email after email, zaps your creative firepower. And if you’re an introverted creative, it’s even worse. Being a super noticer takes a lot of juice. Giving away your gold on transactional, mundane, often unnecessary busywork leaves nothing left for the good stuff.
During the group discussion about ways to combat this, my co-facilitator, Ben Levy offered up a gem of an insight. He has tried many different ways to create protected time on his own calendar and found one fool-proof solution. Ready?
See that 10-11 am slot? Labeled NOPE. As in, “don’t even think about it.”
Ingenious. This may be the one four-letter word that keeps us from uttering countless others.
Until next time, remember that culture is the new creativity.
This is 100% facts.
When I say I’m booked, it includes this blocked windows!
Letssggoooo!
I’m going to start using this immediately!