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Blowing up the garage with my chem set (and other curiosities)

7 Feb 4273225057_bcd1baf329_z

My friend has a sign in her office that has been top-of-mind for me this week: “Asking questions is a mark of success.”

Cool. So what does that mean?

Taken one way, it might mean that once you’ve risen to a point of being successful, once you’ve arrived, you now have permission to ask anything. And often this will go unchallenged—I know one tricky CEO who likes to ask stupid questions just to see if his staff is willing to challenge him! He calls it his “BS barometer.” I like that.

Taken another way, asking questions may be the pathway to success. Today, I got a call about something I’ve been preparing to do, and I asked several questions to try to be ready for a meeting about it later this week. The question I really wanted to ask:

“What do I not know now that I’m going to wish I knew six months from now?”

That is, what high-impact piece of information am I missing? And this leads me into further questions about whether the bridge to get this information is long (e.g. you must learn Russian) or short (you must learn the secret handshake).

So I started thinking of the questions I like to keep in my back pocket, the kind that automatically spring to my thirsty, curious mind.

One of the things I’ve disciplined myself to do is to compartmentalize my questions into three groups:

  • Thinking questions – These questions start with where, who, when, and how. They’re about facts that you can prove or disprove, and can measure objectively.
  • Feeling questions – These questions start with what, and they dig into experiences and personal assessments and perspectives. Don’t merely equate feeling with emotion; consider that a feeling question is a person’s subjective sense of the external world.
  • Knowing questions – These questions start with why, and they are about your core beliefs and intuition. They don’t rely on external perceptions—you know in your gut whether something is right or wrong, true or false.

I credit Shirlaws Coaching for teaching me this unique approach to questioning during a coaching skills workshop several years ago. They guide you to approach asking questions in this order, which allows a answerer to gradually move from answering from the head (logic) to the heart (feeling) to the gut (intuition).

I watched this questioning process conducted on a fellow coach and it was startling the degree biology came into play—the questioner probed with thinking, feeling and finally knowing questions, and when the answerer was done, he was just done. You could physically see the change in his body.

How do you approach questioning? Do you have a system to uncover the information you need? I find asking too many “why” questions in business up front can often put someone on the defensive, so that’s one more reason I try to use this system.

Consider testing a new product, for example. Let’s say you’d never even heard of the iPad. Here’s one way to organize your approach to learning more:

  1. Who is this for? How do you turn it on? How do you navigate? Who made it? Where can I get one? How can I use it? When do I need to charge it? When will I use it?
  2. What is this like? What is this totally unlike? What else can it do? What surprises me about this? What markets can it disrupt? What will I do with it?
  3. Why was it invented? Why aren’t there more products like this on the market? Why is it made in this shape and color? Why is it available only with X features but not Y features? Why am I reacting like this? Why do I like it? Why not?

So my question is this: how do you approach curiosity and questioning? How do you find out more about your world? I’m a kick-the-tires, take-it-for-a-test-drive kind of girl … I’ll get around to reading the driver’s manual only after getting stuck on the side of the road. My parents were smart enough not to get me a chem set or I would have surely blown up the garage. Instead, they shipped me off to courses in bubbleology and computer science (and this was 1984).

Once, a friend got mad at me—really, truly, angry—because I would not let him show me how to play a video game. I wanted to try it myself. And if I lost, well, I could start over, right?

Oh, no. In his mind, it was do-or-die, and he demanded I do it right the first time. Needless to say, we got in quite the tiff over whether it’s better to show someone the right way or let them figure it out for themselves.

You know which side I’m on.

I’m for experimentation. For mistakes. For more questions than answers. For try-it-before-you-buy-it. For fiddling around with all the knobs and levers until you’ve got things just the way you want them. For endless Control+Z do-overs until I finally, finally get it right.

That’s how I roll. How about you? GO.

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Key question for innovators: How can we make this more fun?

30 Nov Fun paint

As part of my social media experimentation and engagement strategy (that’s code for “learning it by doing it”), I sometimes participate in one of Harvard Business Review’s #HBRchat sessions on Twitter about leadership.

These can be a great—if chaotic—place to discuss business and management issues with other leaders on Twitter. Even if you miss the weekly chat sessions, the posted recaps always include a few insightful zingers, in tidy 140-character bites.

One of the questions I recently answered was “What are the qualities of a great leader?” My immediate tweet back? “A sense of fun.”

Leaders generate better ideas (and greater innovation) when people are willing to take a chance in proposing a wacky idea. Fun breaks down the barriers and fear of failure.

During the chat, I went on to argue that the most effective leaders make a conscious effort to build a sense of fun in their teams. They are intentionally approachable, which in turn encourages people to go out on a limb, look silly and even fail.

Let me put it another way: I strongly believe that leaders with a sense of fun will get better ideas from their team, because their team members will be less afraid to propose or pursue them.

I can tell you this: I can offer up the most hair-brained idea to my CEO fearlessly. While I typically put serious effort and thought into honing things before they get in front of him, I still feel the sense of fun, the permission to be foolish that makes innovation possible.

For example, at Pixar, mistakes are celebrated along with successes—the nothing-ventured, nothing-gained mantra is “He who fails the most wins.” Pixar’s appetite for risk has removed layers of fear that stifle creativity and limit an individual’s willingness to go out on a limb with a crazy idea.

What I love is that Pixar hired top-notch creatives who were considered “unmanageable” and gave this group free reign to do their best work. Result? Their film, The Incredibles, won Academy Awards and became a best-selling DVD, even though its budget per minute was lower than any previous Pixar film.

I have to imagine that fun was more than just a movie goal. It was an essential mandate for being part of the team.

Google tells a similar success story; it enables its engineers to spend one day per week or up to 20% of their time working on anything that interests them. Here, I see fun at work as a product of autonomy—getting to choose to do what you love.

Both Google News and Google Product Search were spawned by this permission to innovate. Pulitzer-winning author David Vise explained, “Google … technologists think first of ways to solve problems; only later, if ever, do they worry about how to ‘monetize’ them.”

For an extra helping of fun, take your meeting outside, or somewhere more interesting than your office.

One of my most successful projects was proposed twice, dismissed twice, and finally left for dead by a boss that fostered a sense of fear, not fun, in the workplace. It’s hard to keep pushing your idea at what feels like a brick wall.

But, when things changed and I had a new opportunity to pitch my idea, the project was resurrected (and we had a lot of fun doing it).

Fun beat fear, and the results speak for themselves.

What’s getting in the way of your ability to innovate? Maybe it’s a lack of fun, or the presence of fear of failure. So instead of tackling the innovation problem, consider taking a step back and asking a simpler question: How can we make this more fun?

GO.

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Forget flowers, say it with cupcakes: Three more speaking tips

22 Nov We made cupcake flags (like these pirate flags) with various messages for the event. I said, "Choose a cupcake that speaks to you."

Hi, I’m back with three more public speaking tips that I can dash down in fifteen minutes. I promise not to run long. (Remember, sticking to time was one of the first three tips I gave you.) Here they are:

Tip #4: Don't accuse your audience with the word "you."

Don’t accuse. Most of my presenting these days is done for colleagues, many of whom are senior to me. They’re already taking a leap of faith to listen to me: for some, I’m twenty years their junior and ten or twenty years less experienced in real estate (I’ve been in this industry for 11 years now).

So when I show up with suggestions, tips and guidelines for how they market themselves and their business, you can imagine that a bunch of finger-pointing doesn’t get me very far. The word you stands out as an accusation: “You should do this!” and “You aren’t doing it right.”

Changing my language, I could say, “We can do this,” and “Our company does this,” and “We’ve found this works….”

One of my mentors alerted me to the nuance of this language pattern and it absolutely floored me. I found myself crying, choked up over the idea that what I was delivering was not education, but accusation. It took me the rest of the forty minutes before my speaking segment to just recompose myself and think through how to use that critical (but painfully mistimed) advice.

Ever since then, my ears prick up whenever I hear a speaker say you.

It was never so obvious to me how poorly it came across than several years later in a live session that I was observing. Several senior managers were lounging in the back of the class, speaking up from time to time with comments on the speaker’s content for the class: “You should do this.” You, you, you.

Their intention was merely to support the speaker’s points, but they completely failed. I felt the audience withdraw. The air was seriously chilly.

When accused, do you dig in your heels? Do you get defensive? Yep, that’s what this language produced.

Connect back. Often, speakers arrive shortly before their session begins, present their dog and pony show, and then pack up for their flight out of town. I see this as a huge mistake, a missed opportunity.

When presenting at a training camp in Prague, I was planning to sit in with the managers to hone my own leadership skills. But when it was decided that I’d be presenting to the sales team instead of the managers, I immediately switched tracks and sat in with the producers for every session.

By being engaged and alert for all the teaching that came before me, I could make notes and build references into my own presentation. These connections made a huge impact, amplifying the “ah-ha” factor of my message.

I also got a sense of the tone of the room—who speaks up? Who hangs back? Was I going to have to manage an energetic, rowdy group, or a passive or tired group of people? Understanding where the group’s energy is at allowed me to change my game plan for presenting to ensure people were most engaged.

Try an object lesson. In college as a senior resident adviser, one of the cardinal rules in programming events and presentations was “serve food.” Add that element, and I could pretty much guarantee the attendance of thirty hungry students, no matter how dull the subject matter.

Now, in the corporate world, I see that this kind of bribery works sometimes—and sometimes it doesn’t. I watched one executive try to drum up participation by handing out gift cards to people who asked questions. Nice tactic (if you’ve got the funds to do it), but not memorable. I remember more about the gift cards than I remember about the presentation itself.

In another presentation, I collaborated with a senior executive who was talking about work styles and identity. We were thinking about how to really engage people, how to get them “off their dot” (another way of saying “out of their comfort zone”) to declare their identity.

We made cupcake flags (like these pirate flags) with various messages for the event. I said, "Choose a cupcake that speaks to you."

Here’s what we did: I spent $40 at Costco to bring seven dozen cupcakes to the office. I laid them out beautifully with fresh strawberries on a tablecloth. Then, in the top of the cupcakes, I inserted little flags on toothpicks. Each flag had one of sixteen different messages, such as “I make work more fun,” and “I never let a detail slip through the cracks” and “I’m the visionary.”

It was so fun to see more than sixty colleagues choose a cupcake that spoke to them, and then watch as the senior executive wove that into his presentation. It made an impact. I still see those little flags up in cubicles around work. People still remember his talk.

Do you love or hate public speaking? Do you have tips to share with me? I love observing talented speakers (I’m addicted to TED talks!) and I’m always learning from them.

What have you got to say? GO.

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Even gatekeepers get it wrong

18 Nov Umbrellas to meeting

Ever heard of Wikipedia?

Unless you’re living under a rock, of course you have.

It has 20 million articles (more than 3.8 million in English), which are written collaboratively by volunteers from around the world, including 90,000 regularly active contributors. It’s also written in 282 languages and is the largest and most popular general reference site on the Internet, with 365 million readers.

Let me revise: even if you live under a rock, you’ve probably heard of Wikipedia. There’s probably even an entry for under-rock dwellers.

But I digress.

Now, let me ask you another question: Ever heard of Nupedia?

No? Well, let me tell you about it, because its story is fascinating. Nupedia was an English-language encyclopedia founded by the same smart guys who started Wikipedia.

Sounds a lot like Wikipedia? Yes. The content was free. The experts were supposed to write articles for free. But the big difference is that instead of being open to all authors and editors, it required expert authorship and an extensive peer-review process.

It required gatekeepers.

Neupedia lasted from March 2000 until September 2003, and in that time only produced 24 articles for publication, with 74 more in the works. That’s pretty sad.

What the colossal failure of Nupedia—and colossal success of Wikipedia—suggests to me is this: gatekeepers are suspect.

For example, we’re seeing an explosion in independent publishing as authors go straight to their readers via e-readers, tablets, on-demand publishing and Internet marketing. Gatekeepers, in the form of agents, traditional publishing houses, distributors and stores, are bypassed entirely.

The result is that a lot of really, really crappy stuff gets published. But a lot of great stuff that might otherwise have been overlooked gets out there, too. Then the market decides. And for the crappy books, well, their sales totals number in the hundreds, if the authors are lucky.

So, as a consumer, I can take comfort in buying a traditionally published book because it’s likely the book has been vetted, edited and proofread. The gatekeepers are at work. (Still, crap gets by them. Of course it does.)

Flip side—there’s an enormous group of gatekeepers out there (readers!) crowdsourcing new content. When I read an awesome, independently published book, I review and recommend it. I help the cream rise to the top, even if it didn’t go through traditional publishing channels.

In work, consider who your gatekeepers are. Are your great ideas lost on a gatekeeping boss who would like you to simply do as directed, thankyouverymuch? Do you even censor yourself, as in “Well, this idea isn’t very good, so I’m not even going to volunteer it.”

Nupedia’s spectacular failure teaches me this: be wary of gatekeepers. When they add value, like fantastic editing, embrace them. But don’t imagine that they’re always going to be right, always going to be fair, or always going to produce the best results.

Ultimately, the market decides. So take a risk. Put it out there. Idea, book, project, whatever—let the market decide. GO.

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Five things I’m not afraid of anymore

16 Nov Times square fisheye

Hi. I’ve got fifteen minutes and I’m thinking about fear today.

If you plotted fear on an axis, it might look something like this:

Fear is the part that goes backward. The part that takes you forward? That’s love. The opposite of fear is love.

A very smart lady, Nancy Morris, once told me that in a training session (she’s teaches the art of accomplishment). It stuck with me long past the lesson itself. And now it’s absolutely, irrevocably cemented in my head because I have proof.

Here it is, my proof. Five things I’m not afraid to do anymore:

Wear a bathing suit. Show me a woman who thinks her body looks just perfect in a bathing suit, and I’ll show you—never mind, you won’t find her. Like most women, I wasn’t excited about pouring my aging, post-two-babies, plus-two-C-section-scars body into a bathing suit to take my toddler to the pool. But when I saw the absolute joy as he kicked and wiggled and experienced the water, I lost my fear of being judged for flab. Love conquers fear. I’ll take public humiliation any day for a chance to go swimming with my kids.

Talk back. From time to time at work in various jobs, I’ve butted heads with colleagues or managers. Sometimes, it’s a matter of opinion. Sometimes, it’s a matter of principle. I can shut up and take it, or I can speak up and try to change things. I choose the latter. I’ve learned that when I care more about doing a job than keeping it, I can be enormously effective. Love conquers fear, so I can stand on principle for the things that I’m passionate about, and as a result, get vastly greater satisfaction in my career.

Swing for the fences. I wrote a novel. That’s big—you put your butt in your chair for hours and hours and hope the muse meets you there. I’ve also supervised a complete kitchen remodel while seven and a half months pregnant, including sourcing all of the materials. I’ve gone to Egypt for weeks alone when friends wouldn’t go with me. I’ve moved away from my friends and boyfriend to take a new, vastly better job in Portland.

All of these things had huge potential for failure, but I’ve found that swinging for the fences is the best way forward. I’m not afraid to take risks because I might not accomplish what I set out to do. The alternative, not risking it, is that I will definitely not accomplish what I want to do.

Dabbling: one of five things I'm not afraid to do anymore.

Dabble. I embroidered a bunch of Christmas stockings for my family (ahem, I don’t sew). I started a blog. I tried Twitter, started and stopped and started again. I got an iPad and dozens of apps. I got a treadmill. I took the GMAT. I cut my hair (bangs for the first time in fifteen years). I tried silver nail polish (not a good look) and jeggings (comfortable, but weird). I bought quince at the farmer’s market.

I can’t tell you whether the quince thing will be good (I’m still searching for recipes), but I can tell you I’m happy I tried so many of these things. I might end up hating them, grow out my bangs, throw out my jeggings, and go back to my regular life. And that would be OK. I’m no longer afraid to try something and have it be an absolute failure. I order the weird things on the menu because, who knows? I might love it. And if I hate it, I’ll order something else.

Be real. A while ago, as I was working on a corporate communications strategy for Facebook, my boss and I were on the phone playing with Facebook’s groups functions, each of us on our own computers with our own accounts. I had just created a company page, and now I needed to add him as an administrator. Problem: He wasn’t my Facebook “friend.”

Uh-oh. “Don’t be friends with your boss on Facebook” is the number one cardinal rule of social media, is it not? Or even, “Don’t be Facebook friends with work people.” I’ve heard that before. So when my boss said, “Well, I guess you’ve got to add me as a Facebook friend now so I can be the admin for our company page, too,” I just did it, and damn the consequences.

Which were … none. Rather, nothing more than my boss kindly asking how my novel-writing weekend went (when I posted that as a status update). Happily, I’ve never put anything online that I’d be ashamed to have my grandmother or CEO read or see. But still—there’s definitely a work-life separation that I think most folks try to achieve. I, for one, am over it. I’ve gotten over the fear of being real. I’m just going to be me, seamlessly, in work and in life. The “Work Heidi” isn’t a different person from the “Home Heidi.”

So that’s me, I’m WYSIWYG. What about you? Do you have any fears? Hey, you’ve got fifteen minutes—start conquering them. GO.

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When inspiration strikes, pray that your car is dirty.

9 Nov Inspiration strikes feat

Hi again. I’m taking the next 15 minutes to add another post. It’s late (my whole family is asleep … even the dog is snoring) and the rain is absolutely pounding our house. Ah, Oregon.

I’d love to be in bed, too, but I find that when inspiration hits, I just can’t get away from it. It plagues me like a mosquito humming around my head as I try to get to sleep, keeping me up for hours if I don’t just settle down and write it out. And so I obey.

Sometimes, the inspiration is personal—an idea for my novel, or for a children’s book. I stumbled on a Facebook event launched because two mothers were asked to leave a local mall for breastfeeding in public (which is legally protected) and I spent that night doing research and drumming up a press release.

The result was coverage by three stations over two days, and I passed out more than 100 flyers at the event. I didn’t even know these women, but when I saw what was happening, inspiration struck … and it just wouldn’t leave me alone. (Also, I like to use my marketing powers for good, not evil.)

When I get inspired, the best response is to just do it. Do it now. Do it all all all. Because the flash of passion and inspiration is like a shot of adrenaline in my creative system, and the longer I make it wait, the more it fades and fizzles, like soda left open on the counter to grow warm and flat.

Yuck.

When inspiration or ideas strike me, it's as subtle as a fireworks spectacular. Featured photo by Denizen24; insert photo by Bayasaa

Often, my inspiration is for work: an idea for a cool project, a creative marketing idea, a new way of helping my company win new business or retain clients. If you’re in a meeting with me when inspiration strikes, you’ll know it—instantly. It’s like an enormous neon lightbulb exploding over my head.

Fireworks are more subtle.

If I were a third-grader in business meetings, I’d be flapping my hand, high in the air, doing that grunting thing kids do that’s code for “Pick me! Pick me!”

Yeah, sorry ‘bout that. I’m just that enthusiastic about ideas. It’s where I got one of my nicknames, “the idea vending machine.” Can’t help it. My best friend at work loves to tease me about it, pointing to something imaginary over my shoulder and saying, “Look! Shiny!”

I laugh, claiming I’m not that distract-able. But let’s be real—if it’s a really good idea, I am. I totally am. And as a recovering procrastinator, I should add that my favorite project at any given time is always the one that I just had a new idea for. Always.

Here’s my all-time favorite story about inspiration, from author Roald Dahl. Before I tell you about it, I have to say this: If you think you know that author (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, James and the Giant Peach), throw that notion out of your head and sit down with The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More.

Yes. As an adult. It is one of my favorite books, a perennial read, mostly fiction and one startling nonfiction short story. And Henry Sugar’s story still haunts me (but more on that in a later blog—I’d like to think it’s the reason I met my husband).

Back to Mr. Dahl. In the book’s introduction, he describes how inspiration once struck him while he was out on a drive. The idea for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory popped into his head and he was so desperate to capture this idea, he immediately pulled over to the side of the road and emptied the contents of his glove box to find paper and a pen.

Nothing. He came up empty. And he was feeling more and more desperate to hold onto his idea. So here’s what he did: he got out of the car, walked around to the back of the car, and wrote one word, chocolate, with his finger in the dust on his bumper.

And just like that, he’d grabbed hold of inspiration and tethered it to something tangible in our real world.

So what do you do when inspiration strikes? If I were sitting next to you and saw fireworks exploding from your ears, evidence of a great idea that had just occurred to you, I’d say, “GO! Run! Do it now! Write it down now! Make it real now!”

Because you never know how long inspiration will linger. Capture it. GO.

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Is what you are now what you really want to be?

3 Nov Is what you are now what you really want to be? Painting by Emilia Linderholm, photo by Christian Kjellstrom

Hi there! I’m taking a 15 minute “coffee break” today to blog with you.

I write it, you read it. That’s how it goes. Unless you care to comment. That makes me even happier! Go on…

Have you ever gotten home from work just exhausted, flat-out drained, and sunk into the couch thinking, “I don’t even have the energy to call the pizza delivery guy, much less talk with my spouse and family.”

Yeah, I feel that way some days. My head is buzz buzz buzz from brainstorming and meetings and conference calls, and then I crash.

When I was a journalist, I had a housemate, another reporter who worked in my newsroom. Sometimes we’d both get home from a deadline day, take one look at each other, and head to our respective rooms. It wasn’t personal. Robin just said, “I’m all out of words,” and that was that.

Is what you are now what you really want to be? Painting by Emilia Linderholm, photo by Christian Kjellstrom

But as a parent, I no longer have that luxury. I have two little people, Drew (age 3.5) and Audrey (11 months), and I find myself constantly teaching, talking, comforting, explaining. There is no break in the action, no opportunity to just tune out for the evening.

One of the teaching topics I visit occasionally with Drew is helping him learn things about our family. How to spell our last name, our address and phone numbers, and what his parents do for work. My husband’s a professor of mechanical engineering with a PhD in chemical engineering.

Guess how easy it is to teach that to a three-year-old?

We started with “Daddy is a teacher. He teaches big people.”

Now we’re onto “Daddy teaches a science called engineering to college students.” I think that’s stellar understanding for age three. And if you have (or had) a preschooler, you’ll know the ultimate follow-up question to any statement of fact, no matter how obvious.

Why. Why? Why? Why?

As we were describing Derek’s job and mine (“Mommy sells big buildings” and “Mommy teaches marketing” is our interpretation of my role in marketing commercial real estate), Drew asked why do we do our jobs?

Here’s one answer: “So we can get money to pay for everything we have, like our house and our food and our clothes, and so that we can take you fun places like the zoo.” Yep, I used that answer one time shortly before a trip to Seattle for work.

When I got home from Seattle, Drew asked, “Mommy, did you go to Seattle? For work?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Did you get money?”

“Yes.”

“Then can we go to the zoo?” Drew asked. Dang. That kid doesn’t miss a thing!

So this time, when he asked why we do our jobs, I told him another truth: “Because we like to. Daddy does science because he likes it. I do marketing because I like it. When you grow up, you can pick a job you like. What do you like to do?”

Drew didn’t have to think long.

“I like to paint!” he declared.

“Well, sweetie, when you grow up, maybe you can be an artist.”

Drew didn’t miss a beat. “I’m already an artist,” he said seriously. “I paint every day.”

Whoa, didn’t that just knock me back on my heels!

And so the truth I take away from that exchange is this: Don’t wait until you ‘grow up’ or some other milestone to give you permission to be what you want to be.

Be it now. Right now.

I call myself a “novelist” even though I’ve only written one and a half novels. I’m not waiting for an agent or a publisher to give me a nod before I can suddenly claim that title. I wrote a novel, I am therefore a novelist. Drew paints, right now, he is therefore an artist.

What you want to be? Can you claim it right now? Make what you want to be who you are (and introduce yourself accordingly). Go on. Do it. GO.

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Race a friend, race the clock, race yourself

1 Nov Want to get motivated? Race a friend or race the clock. Photo by Easylocum

Hi there. I’m back, and I’ve set my timer for fifteen minutes. What do you want to get accomplished today?

When my dad was a teenager, he worked at Safeway as a night janitor, courtesy clerk and stocker. He used the money to buy a motorcycle and an awesome car and move out on his own at age 19.

When he and my mom started dating (they were high school sweethearts), she would sometimes go into the store and buy something small—even a pack of gum—just so he could carry it out of the store for her. Aww.

At night, he was allowed to eat as many day-old donuts from the bakery as he wanted, because the next day the leftovers would be given to the “Pig Lady” who, you guessed it, would take them to feed her hogs.

But of all the stories he told me about his first job, this one was most memorable:

It was about ten minutes until the end of his shift, and the store was quiet. He and a couple of other guys he worked with were standing around, shooting the breeze, not doing much of anything. Their manager walked up to them and asked for complete silence.

Then, in the next ten minutes—the next strangely silent ten minutes—they watched the manager build an endcap display. That’s the product showcase at the end of a supermarket aisle where you’ll see a tower of soda, or cereal boxes, or canned food on special. You see those all the time. And someone builds them—usually, someone who does a job just like my dad’s.

When the manager was done, he turned to the young men and said this: “You see what I just accomplished in ten minutes? That’s the difference between spending time and wasting it.”

That lesson stuck solidly in my father’s brain for more than 30 years before he relayed the story to me. He often uses the phrase, “The harder I work, the luckier I get,” and I am insanely grateful for the work ethic he imparted.

His story helped drive the development of Fifteen-minute Firestarter. I am a full-time marketer, mother, aspiring novelist, enthusiastic cook. Where do I find the time to launch a blog and actually create content?

Fifteen minutes. I’m taking the first fifteen minutes of each lunch hour to make this happen. I set the timer. I have only three minutes left.

Where do I find the time to work on my second novel? Same answer, almost. I don’t write in fifteen minute chunks, but I carve out little bits from my night, the time I might have wasted watching television, and literally run to my office while the kids are asleep and the hubby is grading reports.

Want to get motivated? Race a friend or race the clock. Photo by Easylocum

I pull up Facebook and send an instant message to my friend Denise, author of several books and a single mother of six (if that doesn’t shut down my “I don’t have time to write” complaint, I don’t know what could). We do a word race: set the clock for 30 or 45 minutes and then just get down to business—we write.

It’s a contest based on the honor system: when time’s up, we count the number of words we’ve added to our manuscripts and compare progress. Sometimes I can boast 500, 600, 850 words. Sometimes I show up with 150. Sometimes she wins. Sometimes I do.

Don’t want to clean the house? Imagine your mother-in-law just called to say she’s on the way, she’ll be there in 20 minutes. Set the timer and go. Don’t want to pay bills? Sit down in front of you favorite sitcom and start ripping open envelopes with the goal to get it all done by the time the show’s over.

Having trouble starting a project? Set the timer. You’ve got fifteen minutes. GO.

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Who needs a muse when the clock is ticking?

31 Oct Who needs a muse when the clock is ticking? Photo by Tobyotter

It’s Halloween, and tomorrow is a big day for many writers. Why? It’s the kickoff day for NaNoWriMo—National Novel Writing Month for the uninitiated. Throughout the month of November, participants take the challenge of writing 50,000 words (about 175 pages) in a novel by 11:59 on November 30.

That’s no mean feat.

According to the organizers (backed by UC Berkeley’s Office of Letters and Light), “Because of the limited writing window, the ONLY thing that matters in NaNoWriMo is output. It’s all about quantity, not quality. This approach forces you to lower your expectations, take risks, and write on the fly.”

And then, the disclaimer: You will be writing a lot of crap.

With such a strict deadline, you are forced to run headlong through your plot, through shaky characters and dialog, through self-questioning and edits that truly stymie you, and into something few writers I know actually accomplish—a finished work.

I compared the feeling of finishing my first, 82,000  word novel Won’t Last Long to a person’s first marathon. You might not finish fast, you might not finish well, but the point is, you’ve finished.

And how many people can say that?

In writing circles, it’s clichéd to say, “Oh, you’re writing a novel? I’m working on a book, too.” And then the question, “Have you finished?” is met with mumbling excuses as they explain why their manuscript has been stuffed in a drawer for years.

Runners, I’m sure, can relate. Marathon finishers probably hear from dozens of other runners who have “trained” for a marathon without actually completing one.

I want to shout from the rooftops, “People! Stop talking about it and just Get.It.Done!”

So, back to NaNoWriMo and writing crap.

You might think that it’s a good thing to write slow, write carefully, edit as you go. But my mom told me a story that changed my tune entirely.

Who needs a muse when the clock is ticking? Photo by Tobyotter

As my mom earned a BFA, one of her ceramics instructors was teaching two of the same pottery classes concurrently. Same assignments, but he gave each group of students a different evaluation criteria.

He told one class: “I’m going to grade you based on the perfection of your work, the polish of each piece.” He told the other class: “I’m going to grade you based on the volume of your work, the sheer output of pieces you create.”

Then something strange happened.

The professor lined up both classes’ work and stood back for evaluation, not knowing which sculptures were submitted from the “most perfect” class and which were from the “most volume” class.

Guess what? As he graded the sculpture, the “most volume” class won—by a landslide.

There was something incredibly freeing for the student artists in the volume classes about just being asked to create, create, create—rather than to slow down and hone, edit, polish.

And so I imagine NaNo inspires writers in the same way. It works for me. Sometimes, as I write a novel, all I have to go on is the spiderweb sketch of the plot and a general sense of what I need to accomplish in the next chapter. I dive in and my characters surprise me. My subconscious connects the dots in unexpected ways.

For more on the idea of inspiration or muse, check out Julie Jordan’s blog post. I tweeted to her @Writers_Cafe that “the writing process itself inspires me.” Just getting in front of a blank page can be intimidating, sure, but with a timer to beat, who needs a muse? Just put words on the page and go.

So that’s it for me, my fifteen minutes are up. Whether your goal is to write or to run, what inspires you? Don’t make it hard, don’t count on a muse. Just lace up your shoes, fire up your laptop and GO.

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