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Creativity and The Daily Brief

A few years ago, I created the Creativity Central Daily Brief.  Inspired by the mystery-shrouded President's Daily Briefing, I wanted to dedicate the first 20 post-coffee minutes of the morning getting a sense of the zeitgeist  of that day.  20 minutes is my personal limit because anything more seems to drain rather than entertain.  

The ritual of the Daily Brief has been the catalyst for a lot of my work in marketing, blogging and innovation.  Most executives I know are information rich, but time poor.  So, I often recommend the daily brief as a 20-minute dose of psychological oxygen.  

Self-discipline vs. habit.  In their book, The Power of Full Engagement, Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz offer up a an interesting way to think about change.  Instead of focusing on self-discipline as a means toward change, we need to think about rituals. "Building rituals requires defining very precise behaviors and performing them at specific times."  The advantage of rituals is that over time they require less energy and time than continual act of self-discipline.

So here is my Daily Brief.  I found that a good mix of general news and specific news about your industry or interest area works best.   While it's faster and easier to use an RSS or Atom Feed directly to your email, I created a Daily Brief file with clickable bookmarks to avoid the email.  Email will always present a higher priority item and the brief will take a back seat.

If you are more ambitious, you can create a simple word or text edit file for an idea bank. If you find an idea or think of an idea during the brief, capture it in your idea bank. 

Here's my DB starter kit:

1.  http://news.google.com/  

This is as good an aggregator as you can get.  The news is divided into convenient scannable sections -- World, US, Business, Elections, Science & Technology, Sports, Entertainment and Health.  What is great about Google is while it may highlight one story a source like Reuters -- it will list the 1000 other articles from newspapers and magazines around the world.  

2.  http://www.nytimes.com/

It's still the one to read.  Even after Google News,  the NYT may have content that is either new or expands on what Google News has covered.

3.  http://lifehacker.com/

If you haven't heard of Lifehacker, take a visit.  It is the portal to new products and techniques for getting things done.  For example, a recent posting covered the web application Oosah.  This site hosts a whopping one terabyte (That's 1024 gigabytes of media on line for free -- videos, photos, music.  The key is to bookmark or download app, but save it for later.

4. http://www.technotheory.com/

This is Jared Goralnik's -- guide to being productive with a decided bent on technology.  Smart, inspiring ideas.  A recent entry was called The core of a productive workflow, explained in 30 seconds.  

5. http://www.boingboing.net/

Boing Boing is a sorbet for your business mind. It's about gadgets and wonderful things you probably can't afford.

6.  http://sethgodin.typepad.com/

I have followed Seth's blog for a few years now.  He is the author of such books as The Dip and The Purple Cow.  Seth's observations are really insights disguised as blogs.  

7.  http://www.btobonline.com/

This is one of my trade secrets, but I can share.  Business to Business is a great magazine for clients, marketers, strategists and people who want to know how companies are communicating with clients.  

8.   http://www.businessweek.com/

BusinessWeek covers innovation like no other magazine.  It' a great source of information you won't find anywhere else.

9.  http://litemind.com/

How to make a good brain, even better.

10.  http://www.comics.com/

This is where I get my dose of Dilbert, Brevity and Editorial Cartoons.

11.  http://creativitycentral.squarespace.com

May be the best blog of them all, but I may be biased.




Posted on Saturday, September 20, 2008 at 08:17PM by Registered CommenterCreativity Central in , | Comments3 Comments | References23 References

References (23)

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Reader Comments (3)

Thanks for mentioning Litemind! Wow, it's really an honor to be listed among all those other heavyweight sites you mentioned! :)

September 21, 2008 | Unregistered CommenterLuciano Passuello

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