Weekly Update - Jan 22-28

Blog Posts

Webinar Review: Shortcut to Creativity
This is a summary of a webinar on creativity. The webinar was based on the six thinking hats developed by Edward De Bono.

Creativity Blogs to Follow
In this post is a list of creativity blogs I follow on a regular basis.

Genius Scan App
Use the Genius Scan app to scan from anywhere and share the files as images or PDFs to the cloud or others.

Writing 365

With an end-goal of writing 365,000 words in 2016, my daily goal is to write 1,000 words per day. I exceeded this goal every day this week, setting a new record of 1,840 words on January 27. Although writing blog posts is one of my four categories of writing - the others are journal, devotional, and e-book - I have decided to post less frequently rather than daily. This simply means I will need to write more words per day in the other categories if I don't write a blog post. I also hope to write longer posts, perhaps splitting up the writing over multiple days.

At 1,000 words per day, the target for January was 31,000, which I exceeded on January 27.

Bible Project

As I wrote last week, I am still trying to incorporate action on the Bible writing project into my daily routine. I completed three chapters this week. Currently I am working on chapter 22 of Joshua, almost to the end of the book.

Celebrate

It doesn't seem possible that I have already been writing consistently for a month. January seemed like it went by quickly. I am happy to have reached the first month milestone.

Webinar Review: Shortcut to Creativity

This is a summary of a webinar on creativity. The webinar was based on the six thinking hats developed by Edward De Bono.

In my book list review for 2015 I included the book, The Six Thinking Hats by Edward De Bono. I was surprised when I participated in a webinar on creativity and discovered that the primary content covered was the six thinking hats approach as a way to respond to change.

In a rapidly changing environment, creativity is a key attribute needed to recognize opportunities and be ready to adapt.

What do you see?

In the webinar, we were asked the question, "How creative are you?" After rating our creativity levels, the presenter shared several images to solicit our input on what we saw. Here are the images that we studied:

Perceptions

The presenter used this exercise to introduce the paradigm of different perspectives. Each participant noticed different details, and we could not agree on the number of faces in the third image. How many do you see?

Another exercise was also simple: how many uses can you think of for a paperclip? Obviously, a paperclip is designed to fasten papers together, but it can also be used as a key, to clean out your ears (as more than one person responded), a temporary fastener for clothing, a tool to open CD/DVD drives (and the SIM card tray on your smart phone).

The presenter used these examples to illustrate that each of us is creative and able to see the same situation from different perspectives. This was an excellent transition into the six thinking hats.

Six Thinking Hats

Edward De Bono developed the concepts of hats, probably based on the saying, "She wears a lot of hats," meaning that one person can hold many roles. The six hats approach quantifies perspectives about a particular situation into six hats, each represented by a different color.

Designed for individual thinking and group interactions, the six hats, when taken as a whole, allow a group to think about all aspects of a problem, situation, or opportunity. When "wearing" each hat, consider the situation only from that perspective.

• White refers to the objective analysis of facts.
• Red refers to feelings and emotions. Intuition, exploration of positive and negative emotions should be discussed while wearing the red hat. Especially in business situations, there may be a tendency to minimize feelings, but it is necessary to acknowledge the existence of feelings about a particular situation.
• Black refers to the evaluation of risks and barriers, a critical judgment while keeping a holistic view. Think about the hazards and other negative connotations to identify potential problems before they arise.
• Yellow refers to an optimistic view where opportunities and benefits are explored. Analyze the benefits of options to improve a situation.
• Green refers to new ideas. Brainstorming without censoring ideas helps get additional input from the group. As always with brainstorming, quantity is better than quality. Once many ideas have been generated then they can be reviewed for quality.
• Blue refers to the big picture. Focus on the goal. In the 7 Habits paradigm developed by Stephen Covey, this is Habit 2, "begin with the end in mind."

Whenever you are evaluating an opportunity or problem, take some time to try the six thinking hats approach.

Creativity Blogs to Follow

In this post is a list of creativity blogs I follow on a regular basis.

For me, reading online often leads to other websites and blogs. While www.PersonalChange.info is my primary blog, I also maintain a couple of private blogs. On one of those I keep a list of favorite blogs. Blogspot's list functionality displays the last update for a blog, and also sorts the list by the most recent post.

Blog | iMindMap

iMindMap is the software and training site for Tony Buzan, creator of the term mind map and evangelist for visual techniques to improve memory and brainstorming. While the iMindMap blog  often focuses on features of the iMindMap software, there are also articles on creativity and how others creatively use iMindMap.

eLearning Learning

This blog features articles and posts from experts on the topic of e-learning. The blog usually provides summaries and links to 8-10 articles. eLearning Learning is updated every day.

Presentation Zen

Garr Reynolds is the author of Presentation Zen and The Naked Presenter. His blog, titled after his book, focuses on issues related to professional presentation design. He frequently includes posts on storytelling techniques as well as design tips.

Austin Kleon

Author of Show Your Work and Steal Like an Artist, Austin Kleon writes about creativity and design.

Anecdote

The company Anecdote is an Australia-based company specializing in business storytelling. The blog features articles written by the company's principal partners.

Sacha Chua :: living an awesome life

I first came across Sacha's blog while learning about sketchnoting, creating visual notes. Sacha is in the middle of a five-year experience where she is exploring personal interests without working. She posts on life hacking, computer programming, visual design, and other interesting tidbits. Sacha usually posts every day.

Nieman Storyboard

Nieman Storyboard is a publication of the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard. It explores the use of nonfictional storytelling. I discovered this blog while searching for articles on storyboarding, a the visual technique created by Walt Disney. However, this was a serendipitous find, and I learn something whenever I visit this blog.

Genius Scan App

Use the Genius Scan app to scan from anywhere and share the files as images or PDFs to the cloud or others.

My family tells me that I am extremely organized when it comes to my planning journal, but far less organized and unstructured (aka messy) when it comes to the physical world. It is true, I have to admit. I have a tendency to allow papers and projects to pile up on my desk. When my desk gets too cluttered, I will expand my collection to the drawers. However, recently, I have really made an effort to digitize as much as possible and minimize the need for physical organization of files and paperwork.

Genius Scan

One of the tools that I use to help with in the process of digitizing information is an app on my iPhone called Genius Scan. I have used Genius Scan for years as a way to scan on the go. The quality of smart phone cameras is excellent, and you can obtain high quality scans of documents quite easily.

Genius Scan, developed by The Grizzly Labs, promises to be "a scanner in your pocket," and it is actually that convenient. Some of the examples provided by the developers for the use of Genius Scan include:

• Equipping employees for scanning from remote locations for contracts, training handouts, and brainstorming documents
• Providing a convenient way to scan receipts from travel
• Decluttering work areas (as I discussed above) by digitizing paperwork

The export screen for PDF

How to use the app

To use Genius Scan, simply take a photo of a document or select an existing photo. The app will prompt you for the boundaries of the document. The document will corrected with options for a black-and-white scan or a color scan. Once scanning is complete you can share the document with others via e-mail or text or upload the document to a cloud storage solution like Google Drive or DropBox.

How I use Genius Scan

Usually, I save documents to folders on DropBox. I have a folder for maintenance so I no longer have to save the multi-page paper receipts from the car dealer and the exterminator. I also have a document saved within the Genius Scan app to capture any business cards given to me. When my daughter's high school grades arrived in the mail today, I scanned the paper and tossed it.

At the end of each year, I review my journal and use Genius Scan to capture any notes from both the weekly pages and the notes section if I believe I will want to reference the information later.

While many apps exist for scanning documents, I encourage you to check out Genius Scan. The full version of the app is $6.99 but it is worth it.

Weekly Update - Jan 15-21

This week went by quickly. Because Monday was a holiday, I enjoyed a three-day weekend. I wish I could say I was more productive as a result, but at least the week itself was, for me, a successful accomplishment of my writing goals.

Blog Posts

• What's in my bag?
• Webinar review: Talking about change
• Create blog headers using Canva
• Flickr and creative commons

Writing 365

This week was the first with all green indicators for daily progress. Using Excel conditional formatting, I created a rule to change the indicator from red to yellow when any words are written for a specific day, and from yellow to green when the 1,000-word threshold is crossed. This week also marks by highest number of words written on one day, 1,739 words on the 18th.

In the My 500 Words challenge, I wrote over 500 words per day, but stopped writing when I reached my goal of 60,000. For the Writing 365 challenge, my goal is to write 1,000 words per day for a total of 365 days, slightly different than just writing 365,000 words. The cumulative total will, I believe, be over 400,000 words. For me, the key is to continue a daily writing habit.

Bible Project

Since initiating the Writing 365 project I have not spent as much time on the Bible project, writing out the Bible in it's entirety. I am still working to find the time balance to keep the momentum going here as well. When I conceived of the Bible project, my goal was to write a minimum of ten verses per day. Most of what I'm writing about now is the plot map of the tribes of Israel; the texts mostly contain geographical markers. Once I can press through the middle part of Joshua, the story aspect of the Bible picks up again.

Habits

I have often read that engaging in the same activity for 21 days locks it in as a habit. While there are other factors to consider before something becomes a habit. As I have been writing daily for 21 plus days, at least one milestone has been reached.

Flicker and Creative Commons

Use Flickr to find images with a Creative Commons license.

In yesterday's post I shared about Canva, an easy-to-use design application, to create header images for my blog posts. Part of my process involves locating images with Creative Commons licenses so that I can use them without having to pay royalties or purchase images.

Creative Commons

Creative Commons is a licensing structure designed to help you share your artistic work with other while still reserving some rights and control. Basic levels of licensing include:

• Commercial use allowed
• Modifications allowed
• Commercial use & modifications allowed

Flickr

Flickr is an online photo and video sharing site. Members can upload photos and specify a number of settings for each image, including visibility and licensing. Members can add other members as contacts and share images to groups. Flickr also provides additional licensing information:

• No known copyright restrictions
• Flickr Marketplace
• U.S. Government works

Advanced Search

To find images with open licensing, you will need to utilize the advanced search feature.

1. Type a term into the search box.
2. Click Advanced Search.
3. Select the desired license type, in my case "All creative commons."

After browsing images, I usually find one that will work for my purposes. After clicking on image to view it, I download the appropriate size using the displayed buttons.

At Canva, the Twitter size design is 1024 x 512, so I look for an image size larger than the Canva specifications. I save the image to my Downloads folder and upload to Canva.

Finally, at the end of posts, I try to give credit to the photographer by adding Photocredit: Flickr Name "Title of Image" with a link to the image.

Flickr is free to join. Even if you never post images, I encourage you to use it as a source for images.

Title image created with Canva. Photo credit: Bill Rice - "Video Shoot."

Create Blog Headers Using Canva

In this post I describe how I use Canva to create headers for blog posts.

Headers with images

If you look through the design style of my posts from 2011 until now, you will see some changes through the years. Currently, I am trying to add image headers to each post.

• You can only share to Pinterest if a post contains images. 
• Including an image on a post ensures that Facebook will recognize the correct image when you share a post. 
• Using headers can be a way to grab attention while conveying the theme of the post.

Canva

Canva is mostly free graphic design site created for those with limited graphic design experience. The motto of Canva is "empowering the world to design." At the time of this writing, over 54 million designs have been created by 7.3 millions users since Canva launched in 2013.

Canva contains libraries of designs, fonts, images, and layouts. Additionally, Canva features photo filters and icons/shapes. Canva is "mostly free" because a small charge is leveraged for certain design elements such as photos and other graphics. There is also a Canva for Work option, a subscription service.

The different types of designs are categorized as follows:

• Social media posts
• Documents
• Blogs/e-books
• Marketing materials
• Social media/e-mail headers
• Events
• Ads

Basic layout

Canva is easy to use. For my blog headers, I simply navigate to the Canva website and select the Twitter Post. Once the blank canvas opens up, I import my selected background photo (usually from Flickr), find a select text style, and modify the text.

Downloading designs

Once I have designed to my satisfaction, I save the download the image as a JPG. Four options are available for downloading. If you use any Canva-provided images that must be purchased, the downloaded versions will include a watermark prior to purchasing the images.

For my blog, I upload the design while creating the post.

Have you used Canva? If not, I encourage you to give it a try.