You’re More Creative When Bored at Work

Posted on 2013/01/092013/01/10 by Jason Hensel

I would never say I’m bored at work (hey, boss!), but I will say that there are times when my productivity voyage encounters the horse latitudes.

That’s not a bad thing, because according to a recent study, boredom at work can increase creativity since it gives us an opportunity to daydream.

Dr. Sandi Mann and Rebekah Cadman, both from the University of Central Lancashire, presented the study this week at the Annual Conference of the British Psychological Society Division of Occupational Psychology at the Crowne Plaza Hotel, Chester.

They conducted two studies. The first one asked 40 people to complete a boring task (transcribing numbers from a telephone book) for 15 minutes. They were then asked to complete another task (imagining various uses for a pair of Styrofoam cups). This second task evaluated their creativity.

The results showed that those who transcribed telephone numbers were more creative in their uses of the cups than a control group that just worked on the cups.

The second study investigated the role of daydreaming by adding a different boring job to a group. Thirty people transcribed telephone numbers; however, another group of 30 participants read the numbers rather than write them.

Mann and Cadman found that the reading group was more creative than those who had to write the numbers out. This raises the possibility that boring tasks, “like reading or perhaps attending meetings,” leads to more creativity.

“Boredom at work has always been seen as something to be eliminated, but perhaps we should be embracing it in order to enhance our creativity,” Mann said. “What we want to do next is to see what the practical implications of this finding are. Do people who are bored at work become more creative in other areas of their work–or do they go home and write novels?”

When I read all day at work, the last thing I want to do is go home and work with words more. That’s just that immediate day, though. During work lulls, I do come up with ideas that turn into writing projects at a later time, so maybe there is something to this study.

Are you more creative when you’re bored at work?

(Story materials from the British Psychological Society. Image via Flickr: eggmergency / Creative Commons)

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Hot Chocolate’s Taste Influenced by Cup Color

Posted on 2013/01/032013/01/03 by Jason Hensel

Color is a powerful persuader. Red cars appear faster than other cars. Blue rooms are relaxing and help spur creativity. Now you can add that orange or cream-colored containers cause hot chocolate to taste better.

“The color of the container which serves food and drinks can enhance some of its attributes, such as taste or odor,” said Betina Piqueras-Fiszman, a researcher at the Polytechnic University of Valencia. The researcher worked with Charles Spence of Oxford University on the study.

The researchers conducted an experiment where 57 participants had to evaluate samples of hot chocolate served in four types of plastic cups, all the same size but of different colors: white, cream, red, and orange with white inside.

The results, published in Journal of Sensory Studies, showed that participants liked best the hot chocolate served in orange and cream-colored containers.

However, the sweetness (not the flavor) and aroma were not influenced by the cup’s color.

“There is no fixed rule to say that a taste or flavor is enhanced with a particular color or tone,” Piqueras-Fiszman said. “This actually varies with the type of food, but the fact is that, as the effect occurs, more attention should be paid to the color of the packaging, as it has more potential than you can imagine.”

This should encourage chefs and hospitality professionals to think more about the color of the tableware and packaging. For example, blue cups seem to quench thirst better, while pink packaging makes items seem more sweet.

(Story materials from SINC. Image via Flickr: Smokers High Life / Creative Commons)

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How to Finish What You Started

Posted on 2013/01/032013/01/03 by Jason Hensel

My friend, L-, wrote me an email the other day that included no greeting or closing. It only said, “Finish what you started, Jason.” I know exactly what it’s about. Nevertheless, it was ominous.

What L- wrote about was a play that I’ve meant to revise for a few months. L- was prodding me to complete the script so that it could be performed soon. Still, when I received the email, I thought, “Oh no, if I don’t finish everything I’ve started, something bad will happen to me. I may, in fact, die before reaching my goals.” Dramatic? Yes. Warranted? No. There’s no reason to freak out over every goal not met. That’s why we’ve been endowed with the good gift of justification.

There are some steps, though, you can take if you’re really bent on finishing what you started, courtesy of Ali Luke, a writer and writing coach.

Stop starting new projects
Access your current projects
Choose one project to focus on
Decide what “finished” will look like
Set some milestones (and start hitting them)

Those appear reasonable and doable. For this play I’m writing, I’m going to focus only on it the next two weeks, concentrating on producing at least two polished pages a day. Then I’ll be ready to send L- the script. Of course, I’ll attached an equally ominous note, something like, “Read carefully what you’ve been given, L-.”

Please read Ali Luke’s blog entry on writetodone.com for in-depth analysis of each step, and please let me know in the comments the best ways you finish what you started.

(Image via Flickr: marcus_jb1973 / Creative Commons)

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Greed Is More Often Paid Forward Than Generosity

Posted on 2013/01/022013/01/02 by Jason Hensel

Paying it forward is a great concept and one that should be practiced more often. However, it’s more common to find people repaying greed with greed.

“The idea of paying it forward is this cascade of goodwill will turn into a utopia with everyone helping everyone,” said lead researcher Kurt Gray, PhD. “Unfortunately, greed or looking out for ourselves is more powerful than true acts of generosity.”

The study, published online in the American Psychological Association’s Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, is the first of its kind to examine the notion of paying forward generosity, equality, or greed.

“The bulk of the scientific research on this concept has focused on good behavior, and we wondered what would happen when you looked at the entire gamut of human behaviors,” said Gray, an assistant professor of social psychology at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, who conducted the study with researchers at Harvard University.

According to the study:

In five experiments involving money or work, participants who received an act of generosity didn’t pay generosity forward any more than those who had been treated equally. But participants who had been the victims of greed were more likely to pay greed forward to a future recipient, creating a negative chain reaction. Women and men showed the same levels of generosity and greed in the study.

In one experiment, researchers recruited 100 people from subway stations and tourist areas in Cambridge, Mass., to play an economic game. They told participants that someone had split $6 with them and then gave them an envelope that contained the entire $6 for a generous split, $3 for an equal split, or nothing for a greedy split. The participants then received an additional $6 that they could split in another envelope with a future recipient, essentially paying it forward.

Receiving a generous split didn’t prompt any greater generosity than receiving equal treatment, but people who received nothing in the first envelope were more likely to put little or nothing in the second envelope, depriving future recipients because of the greed they had experienced. The average amount paid forward by participants who received a greedy split was $1.32, well below an equal split of $3.

The results confirmed the researchers’ hypothesis that greed would prevail because negative stimuli have more powerful effects on thoughts and actions than positive stimuli. Focusing on the negative may cause unhappiness, but it makes sense as an evolutionary survival skill, Gray said. “If there is a tiger nearby, you really have to take notice or you’ll get eaten,” he said. “If there is a beautiful sunset or delicious food, it’s not a life-or-death situation.”

The study also examined whether people would have similar reactions involving work rather than money. In one online experiment, researchers told 60 participants that four tasks needed to be completed, including two easy word association games and two boring, repetitive tasks that involved circling vowels in dense Italian text. They explained to the participants that someone had already split the work with them, leaving them the two fun tasks in a generous split, one fun task and one boring task in an equal split, or both boring tasks in a greedy split. The participants then had to complete those tasks and split an additional four tasks with a future recipient. The results were the same, with greed being paid forward more than generosity.

“We all like to think that being generous will influence others to treat someone nicely, but it doesn’t automatically create a chain of goodwill,” Gray said. “To create chains of positive behavior, people should focus less on performing random acts of generosity and more on treating others equally — while refraining from random acts of greed.”

(Story materials from the American Psychological Association. Image via Flickr: Scabeater / Creative Commons)

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Take One Step at a Time on Stairs

Posted on 2013/01/012013/01/01 by Jason Hensel

My office is located on the 17th floor of a glass building in Dallas. There are four elevators that can take me to my floor quickly, depending on the time of day. During times that I’m waiting for an elevator’s doors to open, I’ve often considered taking the stairs and walking up all 17 flights to my office. Then, of course, an open elevator appears.

Starting tomorrow, though, I’m walking up those stairs one step at a time. Sure, I can bound up them and reach my floor quicker, but according to recent research in PLoS, taking them one at a time burns more calories.

“The advice to those seeking to utilise stair climbing specifically as a method to control or reduce weight is to ascend stairways one step at a time; more calories are burned through this form of stair climbing,” the study’s authors wrote. “For example, climbing just a 15 m high stairway five times a day represents an energy expenditure of on average 302 kcal per week using the one step strategy and 266 kcal using the two step strategy.”

If you’re using a two-step strategy, you’ll have a much harder and quicker workout, expending more energy. However, if you take one step at a time, you’ll expend less energy but take longer to reach your destination, thus ensuring burning more calories.

What exercise routines are you starting this year?

(h/t to Scientific American. Image via Flickr: Dan Eckert / Creative Commons)

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Are You Awakening Possibilities in Others?

Posted on 2012/12/312012/12/31 by Jason Hensel

The year is winding down, and I’m sure many of you are making plans and promises for next year. For example, like many writers, I’m planning on writing more.

However, there is one plan I will work hard at achieving next year, and that is to help awaken possibility in people. No, this isn’t some New Age-Kumbaya goal. It’s simply an effort to help others see how powerful they can be on their own. It’s a positive take on my philosophy that we don’t need hierarchies (in business or life) in order to be productive or better people.

I thought of this resolution yesterday when I was re-watching a classic TED video (embedded below) from musician and conductor Benjamin Zander on the transformative power of classical music. Toward the end of his presentation, he talks about you can tell if you’re awaking another’s spirit.

Now, I had an amazing experience. I was 45 years old, I’d been conducting for 20 years, and I suddenly had a realization. The conductor of an orchestra doesn’t make a sound. My picture appears on the front of the CD, but the conductor doesn’t make a sound. He depends, for his power, on his ability to make other people powerful. And that changed everything for me. It was totally life changing. People in my orchestra came up to me and said, “Ben, what happened?” That’s what happened. I realized my job was to awaken possibility in other people. And of course, I wanted to know whether I was doing that. And you know how you find out? You look at their eyes. If their eyes are shining, you know you’re doing it.

I think we’re all searching for excitement in life and avoiding routine when we can. Perhaps if we all help awaken possibilities in each other, we’ll have much more fulfilled and happier lives. That’s my goal for next year. What’s yours?

(Image via Flickr: Chris James / Creative Commons)

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Books Read in 2012

Posted on 2012/12/282012/12/30 by Jason Hensel

Another year and another list of the books I read during the past 12 months. While I enjoyed many of the books, not many of them excited me, causing me to buy extra copies so I could force them into friends’ hands.

If was to do that, though, here are the ones that were my favorites:

Fiction: Butcher’s Crossing by John Williams, The People Who Watched Her Pass By by Scott Bradfield, and The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With the Sea by Yukio Mishima
Non-Fiction: Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard by Chip Heath and Dan Heath, Long for This World by Jonathan Weiner, Yes! 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to be Persuasive by Robert B. Cialdini, Noah J. Goldstein, and Steve J. Martin, and Sanford Meisner on Acting by Sanford Meisner and Dennis Longwell
Play: In the Next Room or the vibrator play by Sarah Ruhl
Poetry: Happy Life by David Budbill

Here’s the full list:

House of Holes by Nicholson Baker
Life of Galileo by Bertolt Brecht
The People Who Watched Her Pass By by Scott Bradfield
The Crucible by Arthur Miller
If You Want to Write by Brenda Ueland
Point Omega by Don DeLillo
Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
The Piano Lesson by August Wilson
Long for This World by Jonathan Weiner
The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern
The Dream Police: Selected Poems, 1969-1993 by Dennis Cooper
The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett
Netherland by Joseph O’Neill
Hadji Murad by Leo Tolstoy
The Hot L Baltimore by Lanford Wilson
No Exit by Jean-Paul Sartre
The Marquise of O by Heinrich von Kleist
In Our Time by Ernest Hemingway
The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Our Town by Thornton Wilder
Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard by Chip Heath and Dan Heath
The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With the Sea by Yukio Mishima
Under the Glacier by Halldor Laxness
Aura by Carlos Fuentes
After Claude by Iris Owens
Coriolanus by William Shakespeare
Oranges by John McPhee
Sanford Meisner on Acting by Sanford Meisner and Dennis Longwell
This is How it Goes by Neil LaBute
The Flame Alphabet by Ben Marcus
Happy Life by David Budbill
Old Times by Harold Pinter
Topdog/Underdog by Suzan-Lori Parks
The Marriage of Bette & Boo by Christopher Durang
Cloud Atlas by David MItchell
The Drunk in the Furnace by W.S. Merwin
A Moon for the Misbegotten by Eugene O’Neill
Time’s Power by Adrienne Rich
Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn
How to Improvise a Full-Lenght Play by Kenn Adams
Guest of Reality by Par Lagerkvist
Far Away by Caryl Churchill
Yes! 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to be Persuasive by Robert B. Cialdini, Noah J. Goldstein, and Steve J. Martin
In the Next Room or the vibrator play by Sarah Ruhl
Butcher’s Crossing by John Williams
Desolation by Yasmina Reza
Crimes of the Heart by Beth Henley
One Flea Spare by Naomi Wallace
Bhagavad Gita translated by Stephen Mitchell
Art by Committee: A Guide to Advanced Improvisation by Charna Halpern
Seascape by Edward Albee
Busy Monsters by William Giraldi
Adult Head by Jeff Tweedy

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The Rewind Button: Ramones

Posted on 2012/12/272012/12/31 by Jason Hensel

The Rewind Button is a group blogging project that I’m participating in. We’re taking on Rolling Stone‘s Top 40 albums of all time and writing our own reviews of them.

Have you ever been told to drink water or eat salad to cleanse your palate between dishes? Ramones is my palate cleanser. After weeks of albums that have been so-so for me, the Ramones offer me refreshment with their debut album. In fact, I’d rather just have it for a full meal.

While a lot of the artists reviewed in this project have presented great examples of expanding what an artist can do with pop/rock music, the three-chords-and-the-truth of the Ramones is more appealing to me than making an artistic statement. Okay, okay, sure, they were making a statement when they chose this route. I’ll admit that. And I’ll admit that I prefer it over seven-minute Dylan songs, no matter how great the poetry is in his lyrics. I’d rather slam-dance than sit around in a circle discussing the ins-and-outs of a line.

Usually, I’m not that way. I often prefer debates and great talks deep into the evening about literature. So, what is it about Ramones that makes me prefer it over much of what we’ve reviewed from the late 1960s and earlys 1970s? It’s possible that I’ve become bored with what we’ve been listening to for this project. The Ramones offer a change of pace, something that gets my dopamine flowing. That’s exactly why this album is on the Rolling Stone list, because it shook people out of their serious stupor.

I wish more albums of this caliber were on the Rolling Stone top 40 list, because I think it would have given it variety and added some excitement to the mix. Even if the magazine doesn’t list this as a top 10 all-time album, I’m tempted to do that. Question is, do I place it above other artists’ albums that I think are better, but have been influenced by it (anyone else notice the stoner-rock rifts that come in during “Now I Wanna to Sniff Glue”?), or do I put the original influence first? It’s a question that I will think about as I get closer to the end of the list and contemplate my own rearrangement of it.

Please visit these other blogs participating in The Rewind Button project:

Betty Livin

Musicqwest

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Best Songs I Heard in 2012

Posted on 2012/12/262012/12/31 by Jason Hensel

Here are the songs I discovered in 2012 that I either listened to the most, forced others to listen to, danced around alone to in my room, or wished I had written.

Some, like Rihanna or Kendrick Lamar, are artists I’d not normally listen to on a regular basis. Rihanna’s performance, though, of “Diamonds” on Saturday Night Live, complete with a green screen from the 1980s, caused me to listen to the song in a whole new way. Kendrick’s Lamar’s “Backstreet Freestyle” reminds me a lot of late 1980’s rap, a la 2 Live Crew.

Of course, I’m a sucker for power pop, and Ben Kweller is a master of that style. But this past year has been more of a rediscovery of my love of shoegaze. I’ve fallen in love with almost anything that the label Captured Tracks puts out, and DIIV‘s “Doused” is the best song I’ve heard all year.

DIIV was also one of the best concerts I saw this past year. They played at Club Dada with Frankie Rose and Lonesome Ghost, a Dallas band that I look forward to seeing more of in the next year. For the record, the other concerts that topped my list were New Order, Die Antwoord, and The Faint.

I hope you enjoy this playlist, and please let me know of any songs you loved this past year. I’m sure I missed many other great songs.

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The Most Popular Posts of 2012

Posted on 2012/12/252012/12/28 by Jason Hensel

I’m a sucker for year-end lists, so I’m going to let you in on what have been my 10 most popular posts of the last year. Judging from this list, I should do more music reviews. Those appear to pull in the page views. Thank you to everyone that has visited.

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Review: Busy Monsters

Posted on 2012/12/242013/01/03 by Jason Hensel

I will admit that a great first line is all that is needed to cause me to continue reading a book. Surely, I’m not the only one that’s been drawn into, for example, Fahrenheit 451 or A Prayer for Owen Meany based solely on their first lines. Busy Monsters by William Giraldi is another book that kicks you in a kidney with its first line: “Stunned by love and some would say stupid from too much sex, I decided I had to drive down South to kill a man.” If you’re not grabbed by the lapels after that first line, then you’re suffering from a deep state of depression that Hallmark wouldn’t even be able to help.

Busy Monsters is the story of Charles Homar and his quest to win back a woman who left him. Homar is writer for a periodical that publishes his over-the-top, true-life stories. Yes, Giraldi makes Homar similar in name to Homer, another writer who wrote over-the-top stories full of monsters. And if you didn’t catch that in-your-face similarity, then let me drive you back to school for your first day of high school freshman English.

Homar’s fiancee leaves because she wants to discover a living giant squid. In his quest to win back his lover, Homar tries to prove himself a man by shooting down a ship, capturing Bigfoot, and confronting UFO enthusiasts. Homar, of course, has his own odyssey on his way to reunite with his Penelope.

Giraldi’s narrative reminds me a lot of Kurt Vonnegut and Tom Robbins. I’m okay with that; however, it took me a couple of pages to get into the swing of things if I put the book down for a day. The style’s over-the-topness took me aback for a bit, but once I got into the groove, I was happy to ride this rocket to its destination.

Along the way, Giraldi wrote some great lines that encapsulate the book’s theme.

“We human monsters make choices with the minds of worms; good sense lies east, we veer west; trouble sends an invitation, we RSVP the very same day.” Also, “…all I mean to say is that a human being is an oblivious ape in the grip of nonsense…” Those are two that come to mind and really struck me enough to memorize the page numbers they’re on.

If you’re a fan of Vonnegut or Robbins, then I believe you’ll love Busy Monsters. It’s a fun read, and it will cause you to contemplate what kind of monsters, real or imaginary, you’d battle to win what’s important to you.

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The Rewind Button: Let It Bleed

Posted on 2012/12/202012/12/20 by Jason Hensel

The Rewind Button is a group blogging project that I’m participating in. We’re taking on Rolling Stone‘s Top 40 albums of all time and writing our own reviews of them.

Let It Bleed Pie

Preparation time: 1 year
Cooking time: 1 month

Ingredients:

1 oz. of vanilla
3 tbsp of clove
4 cups of sugar
1 dash of cayenne pepper
5 eggs (include the yolks)
6 cups of flour
3 cups of water
2 cups of blackberries
Salt and black pepper to taste

Put the flour and eggs in a large bowl and stir it until the mixture becomes solid. Slowly, like you’re recovering from a hangover, add one cup of water and the clove to the mixture as you continue stirring. Set aside for at least 12 months. After enough time, add the other two cups of water to the mixture, along with the sugar, cayenne, vanilla, and blackberries. Mix it fast with angst and the feeling of impending old age until solid as a rock. Take the harden piece out of the bowl and place in a large pie pan like you would crawl into bed with a beautiful man or woman and put it in the oven for one month at a temperature of 375 degrees Fahrenheit. Be careful when removing it from the oven, as the pie will be hot to the touch and will burn your mouth if eaten directly from the pan. Wise cooks take the pie from the pan and leave it on a plate near an open window where the scent of blackberries and clove whoosh throughout the neighborhood, causing men and women to stop what they’re doing and follow the scent to your door like a band of merry men traversing across a great land sampling every thing they sense . Once enough people are in your house wanting a taste of the pie, slice it proportionality and serve with red wine, or if you’re in a festive mood, Champagne, because surely all this time spent making this pie warrants more than a common libation. Raise your slices and glasses to the Moon Goddess and thank her for the bountiful nourishment, and remember your belly will always fill as full as it needs to be. There should be no leftovers.

Please visit these other blogs participating in The Rewind Button project:

Betty Livin

Love As A Verb

Life Doesn’t Have to Suck

Renée Sylvestre-Williams

Sara Bynoe

Musicqwest
Be a River With Me

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