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Good day,

Did you ever have a mental vitamin prescription?  Maybe some benefit will ensue.

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"Laugh At It"  from "A Whack on the Side of the Head" by Roger von Oech.

An important part of work (or life, my addition) is humor.  If you
can laugh at something--be it a problem, a project, or your relationship
with another person then you're more likely to think about it in a fresh
way.  Laughter puts you at ease.   Do you feel more comfortable talking
with someone who has just told you a joke, or with someone who is deadly
serious?  Would you rather listen to a speaker who approaches his subject
in a plodding straight forward manner or one who has just given you a
humorous aside on the state of your business?

Getting into a humorous frame of mind not only loosens you up, it enhances
your creativity.  This has been demonstrated in studies investigating the
role humor plays in stimulating a creative outlook.  Typically the tests are
run as follows:  test participants are divided into two equal groups.  One
group sits silently in a study hall for half an hour prior to the test.  The
other group spends the same time in another room listening to an audio tape
of a standup comedian telling jokes like:

Question:  How deep is the ocean?
Answer:  Just a stone's throw.

Question:  What do John the Baptist and Winnie the Pooh have in common?
Answer:  They both have the same middle name.

Question:  What do you get when you combine the Godfather with a lawyer?
Answer:  An offer you can't understand.

Then both groups take the creativity test.  The group that's involved in the
comedy usually does much better.  The comedy loosens up their thinking and
establishes an environment in which people can be creative.

Why?  First, humor stretches your thinking.  The term "just a stone's throw"
typically denotes a short distance.  But when you throw a rock into water,
it travels until it reaches the bottom... The punch line forces you to make
a shift in how you think about a "stone's throw."

Second, humor forces you to combine ideas that are usually not associated
with one another... like Winnie the Pooh and John the Baptist.

Third, humor allows you to take things less seriously.  In the
Godfather-lawyer joke, both attorneys and Mafia dons are targeted. Just how
effective would a Godfather be if he couldn't threaten people?  How
effective would an attorney be if he couldn't find and create loopholes?  If
you can make fun of something, then you're more likely to challenge the
rules that give that "something" its legitimacy, and perhaps you can think
of alternatives.

The point is this:  there is a close relationship between the "haha" of
humor and the "aha!" of discovery.  If you employ the same thinking that you
use in humor, breaking paradigms, putting ideas into different new contexts,
seeking ambiguity, combining different ideas, asking unusual "what if"
questions -- and apply it to problem solving, then you're likely to come up
with some fresh approaches to what you're working on.

So... Go ahead and be whacky!  Get into a crazy frame of mind and ask what's
funny about what you're doing.

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So, would you like more of these?

Jeff part time CG for Becky, Seattle, WA
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