Get Smarter - Play Video Games!

Guy Kawasaki quoted Dr. Richard Restak on ten tips for improving your brain. See http://adjix.com/35yg. I like the first one, myself:

Take up video-gaming. Action video games improve eye-hand coordination, improve spatial visualization skills, and increase the number of things that you can visually attend to simultaneously.

In my view, video games, especially the immersive MMORPGs like World of Warcraft, should be standard in every seniors facility. Not only do they provide the brain stimulation as mentioned by Restak above, but they are opportunities for social interaction, personal challenge and achievement, and provide a rich virtual environment in which to play and learn.

Players in WoW and other similar games interact with others of all ages, cultures and nationalities through the course of the game. They are continually given problems to solve (quests) and confronted with situations that require collaboration (dungeons) or research (what gear should I choose?). These activities tie into #2 and #8 in the article quoted above.

We didn't really need excuses to play video games, but it's good to have expert support for this fun activity. And if you can't visit great-grandma as often as you like, at least make sure her subscription to WoW is up to date.

Day 6 30DC - Don't Judge, Just Notice

Even with 2 days of rest and catchup, the clock is still ticking, counting down the magical 30 days of the Challenge. In today's training Ed continued his riff on market research and gave us a couple of new ways to go about it. His emphasis continued to be on noticing, not judging.

It's hard not to employ one's critical thinking skills when looking at niche markets. Immediately the brain tries to edit and evaluate what we're seeing, but at this stage of market research, like brainstorming, it is important only to notice what we're seeing. Essentially, it's a data-gathering phase.

By the way, that is one of the first phases of project management, for any project, the research and analysis phase. Note that the word Research comes before Analysis. You need data in order to have something to analyze. The quality of your analysis will only be as good as the quality and thoroughness of your data.

The term "noticing" also implies that you are paying close attention to what you are seeing. Your market research is not just a factoid grab, but an intelligent observation of the data you are gathering. This means taking in the information on the periphery as well as what is directly in front of your face. What else is on the web page you are looking at? Where do links take you from that page? How many people have been looking for that keyword? What related keywords do they search for?

If you only gather the superficial data, i.e., the low-hanging fruit, your market research will be inadequate, and if you later base business decisions on that market research, you put yourself at risk for losing money.

There is no substitute for the research and analysis phase in project management. (And if you've taken any of my classes you know that project management, product management, document development, software development, event planning, and pretty much every other human activity follows the same Development Life Cycle.) You cannot take shortcuts with this. While it's attractive to rush this stage to get into the sexy and fun part of developing a product or project, neglecting the research and analysis phase creates time bombs and traps that you will have to deal with in the latter stages of your project, and then they will be very costly indeed.

So in phase 1, Research -- noticing everything, judging nothing. Then analyze. No doubt we'll be talking about that tomorrow.

Day 2 30DC - Getting Ideas

You don't have to be a creative genius to get ideas. You just have to do a little bit of research and get your brain thinking along lines of idea generation. Ed's training videos and podcasts today showed a number of places online to scan for ideas. What we're looking for are topics that people are interested in and searching for information on. More importantly, we're looking for things that people are passionate about. If no one cares about your topic area or niche, how can you be successful doing business in it?

This first exercise is really just brainstorming -- searching for idea starters and then jotting them down without editing or evaluation until you get as long a list as you can manage.

Care and Feeding of Ideas
To spark ideas, for whatever it is you need them, it is important to tell both your conscious and your subconscious that you need ideas. As you take steps, consciously, to generate ideas by doing research or "sitting for ideas" which is just being still and pondering your topic, your brain begins to work at coming up with ideas that would be suitable. To get the subconscious mind on board (and this is the one you really need for idea generation), as an idea comes into your mind you need to acknowledge that idea by writing it down.

Acknowledging the idea validates the actions your brain has taken and rewards it for a fruitful search (doesn't matter at this point whether it's a "good" idea, just that an idea has occurred). With that encouragement, your mind begins to look for more ideas, to get more encouragement and acknowledgment. Thus the floodgates begin to open so ideas can stream through.

If you get an idea and you dismiss it, or you fail to write it down, it will go away. The next idea will be more difficult to generate, and if you ignore your ideas long enough, you won't get any new ones.

If your business or academic career depends on the generation of new ideas, don't go anywhere without a notebook and writing instrument to keep track of ideas that come to you. I have a tiny voice recorder that I use while driving because I often get ideas in traffic. (There's a reason for this that I'll explain in a subsequent post, but it has to do with the Theta brain state.)

We've all had that experience of having a great idea, an awesome idea, a million-dollar idea, and then forgetting it a short time afterward. Because we didn't write it down. Take my advice, never be without a means of capturing your ideas, and iif it should happen that the great idea occurs to you while you are completely unarmed for making note of it, figure out some mnemonic that might help you remember it. A rhyme, a string around your finger, a specific phrase. Then jot it down at the first opportunity.

All you need is one good idea to make your fortune.