Have you made your New Year’s Resolutions for your website?

The thought of tightening the belt during the holiday season sounds like a bad idea. If there was ever a time we let things go — food, finances, diet, will power — it’s during the end of the year when holiday after holiday hit. New Year’s Resolutions are often an unfortunate reaction to end-of-the year irresponsibility instead of a genuine thoughtful reboot. They could be more than a mere reaction and an opportunity to start fresh.

Take your website, for example. Is it time to declare website bankruptcy, or do you just need to make adjustments?

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Setting up a Gravatar is easy, and gives your words a face to go along with them.

Gravatars are “Globally Recognized” avatars. They are based on association with an email, and show up on any website or forum where you’ve written or commented with that email. Using a Gravatar instead of just an avatar makes it super easy to maintain your identity across the entire web, and not have to manage different pictures uploaded to every profile you’ve ever created. If a site recognizes Gravatar, you’re set.

But first, you’ll need a Gravatar account.

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Reusing your past content isn’t a good idea. It’s a great idea.

Total Recall was a box office smash in 1990, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger as a character whose memories had been changed, and were violently resurrected — to dramatic ends — when he decided to take a virtual vacation through memory implants. Ironically, the movie was remade 22 years later this past summer, a total recall in and of itself.

There might be some lessons to be learned somewhere from the film, the main one probably being that you don’t want to breathe the Martian atmosphere pre-Schwarzenegger’s arrival. Mainly, though, we’re talking here about remembering the past.

Total recall isn’t a bad way to be when it comes to the content you create. What a shame to create something and forget it.

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[This is the final post in our series on ways to encourage creativity into the workplace.]

Find ways to make those big ideas grow.

Creativity can be killed.

It might happen on purpose (let’s hope not!) or it might happen slowly through lack of nurturing. Starting a culture of creativity, and helping it thrive, are both purposeful decisions. Otherwise, creativity loses its momentum and the workplace reverts back to a kind of lowest-common-denominator of existence, the bare minimum required to get the job done.

How do you help creativity grow in your workplace? How do you keep it from dying?

Creativity Killer Myths

Stereotypes and myths surround creativity, and letting these take root will kill any creativity that is trying to grow, no matter what stage it is in.

1. Creativity is messy. Clutter isn’t good. It keeps you from finding things you need, wastes time, and increases procrastination. Keeping control of things is directly connected to freeing up the mind. The absent-minded professor or eclectic artsy stereotype aside, clutter will create a roadblock at some point. It might keep you creative in a set of boundaries, but it is restrictive. Creativity isn’t the same as being messy.
2. Creativity can’t be scheduled. We’ve covered this extensively on this blog, but the truth is, being able to schedule creativity is a strength and a must. We each still get great ideas at off times, and should take advantage of that, but training ourselves to be creative when necessary can be done. Sometimes we need solutions at 3:15 p.m. on a Tuesday afternoon.
3. Creativity is for artists. Creativity isn’t synonymous with ‘artistic’, yet people will often respond to a request for being creative with “I can’t even draw a straight line.” Most artists can’t draw straight lines, either. Everyone can be creative in their own way. Creative thinking is for everyone, every job, every day.
4. Creativity isn’t measurable. Businesses want proof that what they invest in, whether it’s time or people, has value. They want to know the return on the investment (ROI). Creativity is tough to measure because it manifests itself in different ways. It might be responsible for an amazing solution and satisfied client. But those regular creative events and activities that weren’t project-specific, that might seem like a waste of time? They were the foundation for that amazing solution. They made it possible for the team to come together and create that solution.
5. Creativity comes naturally. For some people, being creative comes naturally, sure. But creativity is something to be practiced by everyone. Sooner or later there will be time when it won’t be ‘easy’ and that’s where having practiced comes in handy. Practice methods for working through blocks, for working as a team, for setting aside distractions, for creating on a schedule. Natural abilities still need refinement through practice. Creativity is no different. Make it a regular practice.

Don’t let these myths to take hold. They will kill creativity in their own subtle way.

If you want to be original, you have to accept the uncertainty, even when it’s uncomfortable, and have the capability to recover when your organization takes a big risk and fails. What’s the key to being able to recover? Talented people! — Ed Catmull, Co-founder of Pixar

The Creative Power Of Individuals and Teams

Individuals lose objectivity with their own ideas, or make them too precious. Teams easily slip into group-think and make consensus and compromise more important than a creative solution. Understand these tendencies, and consider:

Individuals come up with ideas. Teams refine them.

Keeping creativity alive and growing means using both the individual and the team, and not one over the other. It means knowing how they work together best, and when to bring people together to work or to split them apart for new ideas. Having a team helps when it comes time to schedule creativity. Some in the team might be on, some off, but together they function as a creative whole and can bounce and generate ideas off of each other. Making use of individual creativity is good when the ideas seem to be stuck in a rut.

How do you help creativity grow?

Don’t fall for the myths. Then, see the power of the individual creator, and the strength of the team. Use them both. Regularly.

Don't let your great ideas get lost in the clutter of life.

[This is the second of a series on ways to encourage creativity into the workplace.]

Creativity is more than just a few good ideas. It shakes things up.

Creativity is for the rabble-rouser. The boat-shaker. The status-quo decimator. And above all, the truth-teller. Creativity takes courage because it brings about change and it tells the truth. Most of us don’t always want these things.

We say we want creativity in the workplace, but whether we’re aware of it or not, we quietly quell creativity with an insistence on being reasonable, realistic, down-to-earth, having common sense or being polite. Creatives are either quieted down or they quietly leave.

 Being With And Without

People are generally afraid of two things, both at the same time:

1. They are part of a group.
2. They are not part of a group.

Creatives, in particular, intensely need to feel like they — and subsequently, their ideas — are unique. That they stand out from the crowd. However, even the most individualistic of us likes to know someone has our back when we take a deep breath and say “I have an idea on how to change everything.” Fear makes creativity stay silent. How can we encourage creativity and meet the need for individuality while fostering solidarity and quieting those fears?

We answer that question in one way: making it safe for creativity to exist.

Management’s job is not to prevent risk but to build the capability to recover when failures occur.  It must be safe to tell the truth. — Ed Catmull, Pixar Co-founder

 Safety In Numbers

We’re not looking for safe ideas. We’re looking to make it safe to have ideas. To do that, we want to avoid these scenarios that commonly develop during brainstorming or creativity sessions with groups:

1. The Laugh Down. No one laughs at an idea no matter how ridiculous it seems. An idea might be from way out in left field, but perhaps just a few feet away from where it is out there, lies a solution. Ideas can be fragile; even light teasing can cause serious damage to future group efforts depending upon the personality of the person.
2. The Patronized Play. Out-right disagreement or ridicule at least has the side-effect of emotional push-back and energy. Being overly patronizing when responding to an idea you don’t like makes someone feel like a child. If you don’t like an idea, that can be worked out in discussion. Pretending to like an idea but subtly indicating to the group that you think it’s flawed silences creativity quickly.
3. The Invisible Idea. Brainstorms are all or nothing. If people are throwing ideas out and they’re being documented, such as on a whiteboard, don’t be an editor. Put all ideas on the board. What’s written quickly leads the group on the path. This is not the time to determine what is relevant enough to make it on the board. Write it down. The group’s brainstorming will handle the editing naturally. Let everyone participate.
4. No More Questions. Some people present creative ideas not in the form of solutions, but as questions. The gift of asking the right question is as valuable as the person who has the gift of finding answers. Every group needs those who ask questions, and those who provide answers. Let people ask questions without silencing them by saying “we’re looking for answers, not questions, right now.”

The trick to remember about ideas is that even the “bad” ideas are necessary. They help us work past roadblocks. They help us see the good ones for what they are by comparison. The kick open the doors to amazing ideas we wouldn’t have found otherwise. In that way, there are no bad ideas.

Being creative is terrifying enough, sometimes. Don't make it worse.

Many Voices, Many Volumes

A leader makes it safe to be creative and tell the truth. Group members go about this in different ways, depending on their personality.

Be careful that the loudest voices in the group don’t drown out the quietest. Watch for anyone who may consistently come up with strange ideas that don’t get used or that people to react poorly to. These are necessary ideas, but it is easy for someone to learn to keep quiet if it feels as if they aren’t a contributing member of the group.

Above all, build a culture of creativity. Let it be clear that truth, change, and ideas are all welcome.

[This is the first of a series on ways to encourage creativity into the workplace.]

A space to create should be a given for a creative company.

Creativity is for every business, whether we sell tires or advertising. Creativity is foundational for all success. It is about the ability to think, work with what’s available, and identify and solve problems. What could be more important in the workplace than that?

Exchanging creativity for unquestioning obedience, towing the company line, and a “that’s not my job” mentality is a losing situation. We must actively encourage creativity to make sure that doesn’t happen.

Creative Spaces

Creativity happens in different “places”, some more obvious than others.

1. Physical Space. A designated location where brainstorming and creativity occur helps us switch gears and have permission to set aside usual work for a time. Maybe it’s around a conference table, or in front of a whiteboard. Gathering here is a clear signal to everyone that creativity will commence.
2. Personal Space. We each need space that we feel is ours. Within reason (i.e. no Jacuzzi installed in the cubicle), being given the freedom to feel safe and “at home” where we work is vital.
3. Mental Space. Sometimes we need to be given permission to think, to be silent, to join in, or to not answer in favor of processing a request. Introverts and people who aren’t impulsive, especially, need ample mental space.
4. Clock Space. If no time is set aside for being creative, we tend to leave it until an emergency demands solutions. Regular creative meetings, especially in the scope of a specific project, keep everyone informed and help spawn solutions to problems we didn’t know existed.
5. Exploratory Space. Field trips aren’t just for school kids. Exposing people to something unfamiliar and is a great way to jump-start creativity, whether that’s a field trip or in-house education or event. Unfamiliar territory is where new ideas and the discovery of new interests come from.

Is there room for creativity where we work, or has it been squeezed out in favor of being “productive”? Creativity is what ensures long-lasting productivity. Without it, productivity dwindles into nothing more than mere clocking in and out.

Don’t think. Thinking is the enemy of creativity. It’s self-conscious, and anything self-conscious is lousy. You can’t try to do things. You simply must do things – Ray Bradbury

Idea Centers

Idea centers fall into the category of actual physical spaces, even if they are online in a protected website accesible only to a select group. They are more than just a break room or social network. They are designated as a “dumping” ground for ideas with very few boundaries, allowing many forms (writing, drawing, found objects, clippings, etc.) and allowing anonymity (as long as things remain appropriate and do not contain personal attacks).

Idea centers may consist of (whether actual or online):

1. Whiteboards. Their strength is their immediacy and simplicity. They can be erased, so old ideas don’t drag down tomorrow’s fresh idea. We can make a photo of a whiteboard before erasing if we want to reference any content created on it, since they are transitory in nature.
2. Bulletin Boards. These allow for additive collaboration, pinning things of interest like a collage, building on what others have shared. At some point they, too, will have to be cleaned off, so a picture may be warranted.
3. Idea Book. Having a blank book where people can write, draw, tape, clip, staple, and glue whatever they want to creates a fine reference tool, a creative release for employees, and a simple way for people to feel like they, as a team, made it. It could be as simple as a notebook, or something more elaborate. Once a book is full, it can be added to the company library or bookshelf.

These are just a few possibilities. Having an outlet makes it easy for us to find something interesting and think “this is a perfect idea at work, I think I’ll share it.” Having a place and the tools to do that makes sense.

We should be able to use these creative spaces without fear of reprisal. It might even mean asking everyone to put in 20 minutes a week to get the habit of creativity started.

Don't fool yourself. Are you really a company that values creativity?

June is National Candy Month. It is also National Fresh Fruit and Vegetables Month. We’re going to tell you how to celebrate one of them, Todaymade style.

Candy Month, it is.

Candy In The Office

Your office should have a candy dish. Ten percent of the time it’s for visitors, ten percent of the time for appearance, and 85 percent of the time for everyone in the office.

Yes, there’s an extra five percent.

Here at Todaymade, we believe in making life a bit sweeter than just a mere 100 percent. And, in that spirit of sharing and celebration, we’re giving you our top-secret candy mashups using Tootsie Rolls and Frooties, the Todaymade sugar avenue of choice.

Optimize your candy enjoyment with these simple mashups.

Make It Real Where You are

With just a few guidelines, you can make your office a bit sweeter.

1. Walk It. Offer a bowl of candy, but keep it out of your arm’s reach. You want to at least make yourself get up out of the chair if you plan on eating it yourself.
2. Plan It. Consider some sugar-free candy options for visitors that can’t have sugar.
3. Season It. Get candy that fits the season or holiday.
4. Like It. Choose candy that people actually like. Remember the disappointment when dumping out your Halloween bag and finding “yucky” candy? If your candy bowl has been full, without refill, for over a month, you chose poorly.

National Candy Month: a cause for celebration all year long.

When it comes to social media, we talk a lot about our audience and the conversation. Let’s talk about your brand. Who are you? What do you do? Why do you do it? Long pauses and lengthy answers are a good indicator of one thing: your brand has somehow been lost. That’s too bad, because your brand is your identity. It’s who you are, and what you do. It’s how your customer knows you. Confused brands create confused customers. Confused customers don’t stick around.

Watch out for signs that your brand is losing its focus and originality.

The Brand That Was Lost

Brands are easy to lose. They might start on track and with a clear identity, but time, progress, business competition, and poor leadership cause brands to shift and become confusing. Without constant watch, it’s easy to lose our brand. Maintaining your brand is a kind of business art form requiring constant vigilance. There are four ways that your brand might have been lost.

Blurred

Your brand’s focus might be lost. It might have been in place at one time, crystal clear, but you either passed that benchmark and didn’t set a new one, or leadership failed to keep it raised high above the fray so the team had a common goal. A blurred brand is still visible, but it’s hard to make out and it, like bad eyesight, only gets worse over time. The focus needs to be tightened back up.

Diluted

Maybe it was the temptation of feature-creep, or the push to continually add new products, but whatever caused it, your brand has become weak. You’re the gift shop that sells gifts, shoes, sandwiches, fresh bread, and spare tires. You don’t make sense to your customer, and they’re suspicious that you’re the jack-of-all-trades but master-of-none. They won’t trust you to do a good job with their sandwich out of fear that you’re too busy selling shoes.

Overworked

You haven’t lost focus, and you haven’t diluted your brand. You’ve done the opposite instead. You’ve focused inward to the degree that your brand is overworked. Your products have been fussed over too long. You’re not adjusting for changing times, you’ve lost flexibility, and you’re in danger of becoming a dinosaur. You go over and over the same things time after time, never considering something fresh. You’re in the video business, maybe, and are still the proud expert on VCR’s when you should be considering Blu-Ray.

Smudged

You’ve been doing a good job with maintaining your brand, but somewhere something caused a bit of a smudge and you’re in danger of seeing everything slide in that direction. Maybe a bad customer service issue or a product recall set you back, and you’re still stumbling trying to recover from it and erase that damage to your brand.

Forged

Out of fear or a lack of creativity, your brand has fallen into the already-trodden path of another. You find yourself trying feature-match a similar brand, or mimic the products of another. You take your advertising and marketing cues based on what other brands in your industry are doing, and lose your unique identity in the process.

 Refresh Your Brand

It is possible to reclaim your brand, and clarify what had been lost.

1. Reinvent yourself. In as few words as possible, write down what you do. Start with what you can think of. Edit that down, and try again. Edit that down, and keep fine-tuning it until you finally locate your brand and understand what it is once again. Then, do the same for who you are, and who your customer is.
2. Rethink names. Do you have products or slogans that have names that confuse customers? Are you selling books and calling them candles? Consider the words you’ve surrounded your brand with and whether or not they need changing.
3. Reconsider trends. Avoid the traps of clever advertising, trendy technology, and anything that isn’t meant to last. When it ages, so does your brand. Build it on solid principles of great design, social marketing, and technology. Have the confidence to stick with what you have and ride out the impractical trends.
4. Reassemble the team. Periodically sit down with your team and discuss what’s happening with your brand. Make sure upcoming products are in line with the brand. Ask opinions. Make sure your brand isn’t in the process of being blurred, diluted, overworked, smudged or forged.

A diluted brand means you have a diluted customer base. Being conscious of the problem and actively looking for the first signs of a brand that’s weakening is vital. In a world full of brands, weak brands quickly fade away.

You’ve heard of David Allen’s “Getting Things Done” system of productivity? We’ve decided to share with you the black sheep of the GTD family: How Not To Get Things Done. It’s all about distractions, and learning to focus.

If this is you, then there's trouble ahead.

A friend once told me that the best way to handle an ugly situation where someone was accusing you was to slowly pull out a yellow legal pad and begin calmly taking notes of the conversation. She said it had an unnerving effect on most people, often causing them to back off a bit and really think about what they were saying.

Taking notes might be as easy as choosing a pen or as complicated as choosing the right app.

Taking notes is a skill not only for students. We all make notes in life, for personal or for work reasons, and some of us are just a bit better at it than others.

All Notes Included

There are three considerations for taking notes, whether on paper or a computer, which helps us determine how we will take notes.

1. Where They’re Taken. Do you take business notes in one notebook or app, and make personal notes in another? Or do you lump them all together? No one way is best. Just find a way to make your personal preference work. If you’re losing your notes and don’t know where to find what you wrote, your system isn’t working.
2. What Kind Of Note. There are the notes a student takes in class, the notes we take at a business meeting, and the notes we make to ourselves. Students need to use their notes to study from and retain lots of information. The same can be said for business notes to some extent, but business notes often translate into tasks or “to do” items that we need to complete later in our office. The notes we make to ourselves are a bit of a different animal; they could be anything from creative brainstorming to outlining the things we need to accomplish in the coming week.
3. What Happens Next. Do you need to just pull the information off and add it to a task list before throwing the original notes away? Do you need to keep the notes organized for continued reference? What you intend to do with your notes affects the permanence and quality of how you take them.

Tip: Whatever system you use, be sure to put a date on the page every time you start writing. It’s helpful to know later on no matter what kind of notes you’re dealing with, and you won’t regret it.

Taking Notes On Paper

Yes, there are still a few of us paperphiles out there, those of us who enjoy pen on paper and don’t always use a laptop or tablet as our first choice in note-taking. We never have to look for an outlet or WiFi connection, but we do have to write fast and plan ahead. There’s no “undo” and going back to add space on an already-filled page. Using three basic ideas that we can fit into our own note-taking system will help organize the page and compete with the guy on the laptop next to us.

1. The Margin Call. Using the margin of your notepad, or creating one, allows you to notate your notes. It allows you to go back and add something when there’s no room in the main body of the notes. We can keep the main body of our notes clean while using the margin to note extra information, or call attention to an action item. The margin is also a great place for doodling for those that are honest and admit it.
2. The Home-brew Shorthand. Most of us don’t actually know shorthand, but we do come up with our own versions of it whether we’re aware or not. For example, using “w/o” for “without” or “b/c” for “because” saves a decent bit of writing time. If we’re writing with pen and paper, shorthand is going to be our best friend.
3. The Hieroglyphic Hierarchy. Traditional outlines work. The hierarchy they provide are ideal in notes. Many of you, like myself, may have come up with a second or third cousin of an outline, however, using dashes, arrows, colons and other markings and indentations. Creating a hierarchy while taking notes makes much less work later, when we have to use the notes.

Tip: Write down key thoughts and supporting content or actions, and avoid discussions that spiral down the rabbit hole. In a meeting or class, for example, a good speaker has organized his or her own teaching notes as an outline, and so it is easy to logically write them down. If this isn’t the case, or isn’t possible, write down the important concept, and leave space on your paper if you feel like that topic might be revisited because the conversation had gotten sidetracked.

Taking Notes Digitally

The general ideas of note-taking are still in play (particularly hierarchy) when taking notes digitally. The difference is that it’s not a matter of choosing which notebook and pen we want to use, but which piece of software or app we want to use. Digital notes have the benefit of allowing us to go back in and clean up the file after the fact, which we can’t do on paper.

Before choosing what we’ll use for our notes, we should determine what we need.

1. Collaboration-based. Do you need to share the notes with others? Are these notes for a group? Are you acting as the official note-taker, or do others need to see what went on in a meeting they couldn’t attend?
2. Cloud-based. Do you need your notes to be stored in the cloud so that you can access them from multiple locations, platforms, and devices? Are you going to want the ability to add notes at random whenever the pop into your head?
3. Project-based. Do you need to store multiple notes under the umbrella of one project? You’ll need something that provides a way to organize your notes.

There are many dedicated note-taking systems, each with their own benefits.

• Evernote, for example, provides a webapp, a desktop app, and a mobile app. We can type notes whether we’re online or offline, and they’ll be synced to our account the next time we’re online. It also allows for collaboration and the ability to create notebooks (projects) with notes underneath. However, some users find the interface a bit clunky.
• Springpad recently went through a major overhaul, and is what you’d get if you married Evernote to Pinterest. It has both a webapp and a mobile app, but no desktop app, meaning no offline use. Collaboration and the ability to create notebooks is one of many robust features.
• MS OneNote has evolved from its original connection to MS Office, and now has an app for the iPhone and Windows phone (no Android app) as well as a webapp. If feels much like using word processing software. Collaboration and sharing is possible.
• Word processing software or using something like Google Docs, is, of course, always an option too.

Tip: The same note-taking concepts apply (important facts only) but with a digital system, you have the ability to go back and delete, insert, and adjust space. It’s also easier to type faster than writing, and therefore, take more extensive notes. Be careful. More notes aren’t better. Don’t give yourself more to sift through and cleanup later. Stick to the important stuff only.