Organizing For The Creative Person

Right-brain styles for conquering clutter, mastering time, and reaching your goals.

To start this review of this very helpful book, let me mention that this book is greatly valuable for right-brain (creative) and left-brain (analytical) people.  Being a very left-brain person myself, I was afraid that there might not be a lot of substance to this book that would be helpful to me, but I was sorely wrong.  For right-brain people, this book gives great ideas of ways to help get yourself organized.  For left-brain people it explains how right-brain people are thinking, and why we sometimes think they are disorganized.

 From the authors:

If disorder presents continuing problems for you, we want to give you insights into what may be causing these difficulties and offer some tools that may be helpful.

Some tips the book focuses on are:

• Ways to keep your papers so you can find them without losing them in a filing cabinet
• Ways to use your time more effectively, so you’ll have more time left for fun and creativity
• Ways to overcome procrastination
• Ways to be in better control of your life without becoming rigid
• Ways to handle criticism

Some chapter highlights

1. Fulfilling your dreams - this chapter focuses on realizing what you can accomplish if you decide you want to fulfill your dreams.  Becoming organized is essential to getting to the next step because it is the only way you can make sure to channel your efforts to make the most of your opportunities.  Record goals, prioritize, and create a plan. 
2. Assessing your organizing style - this chapter helps you to understand the difference between an Arbie (RB, right-brained person) and Elbie (LB, left-brained person).  Elbies tend to be tidy, methodical, and punctual - “well organized” in the standard sense.  Arbies are characteristically creative, and their traits are opposite of those left-brain-dominant people.  This chapter talks about understanding the different styles and shows some easy ways to determine if you and the people you know are Arbies or Elbies (this knowledge can help you understand how to approach and work with these people in the most effective way).
3. Focusing in on your visions - you make the choices of what you do with your time, so take some time to think about it and decide what is important to you.  What is your vision, your goals you want to accomplish?  How can you use your time the best you can to achieve all you want to?  Do you know the difference between “urgent” and “important”?  This chapter discusses these topics in detail.
4. Creative ways to schedule your work - this chapter discusses a few different ways to plan your tasks.  See the whole project, break it down into steps, break the steps into activities, and schedule those activities.  This chapter discusses different ways to schedule appointments and tasks, and some mind-mapping techniques.
5. Launching your visions into action - this chapter discusses practical applitions of when and how to go about putting your dreams into action.  How can you best use your time, how to see the whole picture, and classifying “do it now” versus “note it now and do it later”.  Ideas about how to choose the best task and do it at the best time. 
6. … so much more.  There are more than these chapters, but these are the highlights.

Each chapter ends with a great summary to help you review what was just learned and focus in on the main points.

In summary, I highly encourage anyone to read this book.  It is helpful from the standpoint of being all about organization, but it also has some motivational aspects to it, and it can help you to be a better mentor, teacher, and manager because it will help you to understand how other people are thinking and organizing their lives (also, if you are an Elbie like me, it will give you that great view of what an Arbie is, and why they do what they do).  You can use the link below to buy this book now.

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Organizing For The Creative Person [Amazon.com]

At 211 degrees, water is hot.

At 212 degrees, it boils.

And with boiling water, comes steam.

And steam can power a locomotive. 

One excellent, quick-read book that can really change your life with just a few easy steps is 212: The Extra Degree.  I was actually surprised by the simplicity of the concept after reading the book.  I don’t want to call it a “system” like we have with GTD because it is so simple that is it just a solitary concept that can be applied to so many facets of your life and help product astounding results.

Reading the title excerpt from the book above in bold explains the entire system: 1 extra degree (of effort) can product extremely great results.  To quote the book, “(212 Degrees) reminds us that seemingly small things can make a tremendous difference”.

As far as the book itself, it is a very quick read and would also make an excellent gift for anyone you want to help give encouragement to.  The book is split up to talk about the 212 Degrees concept in a few different ways:

• Why? - because persistent  and additional action will produce exponential rewards
• Commitment - make a commitment to change your effort level
• 212 Degree Thoughts and Facts - example: in the 4 major PGA tournaments from 1980 - 2004, the average margin of victory across all tournaments was less than 3 strokes.
• Motivational Quotes - thoughts and words to live by
• 212 Degree Stories
  • 212 Degree Service
  • 212 Degree Attitude
  • 212 Degree Leadership
  • 212 Degree Kindness
  • 212 Degree Commitment
  • 212 Degree Belief
  • 212 Degree Focus
  • 212 Degree Perseverance
• 212 Degree Actions - the responsibility to act
  • As a friend
  • As a parent
  • At work
  • And then some…
• 212 Degree Reflections

It’s time to turn up the heat! Go to work.

This is such a great book and concept that I highly recommend reading it.  These ideas and stories will help you to be more productive and helpful in so many aspects of your life, that you are bound to receive positive encouragement from it.  That extra degree of effort you will start to show will help you to become more organized and get more things done and teach others so much about yourself and about life.  Enjoy!

212: The Extra Degree [Amazon.com]

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