Brain Unloading

Forest Shadows #2 - Andrew Gurnett (Made in Finland)

I went on an artistic residency in Finland a couple of years ago. I’m a fine-art photographer as well as being a consultant and facilitator. (Check the link at the bottom to see more of my art.) In preparation for this month-long residency I started thinking about what images I was likely to make. It was hard to determine what exactly I would be trying to photograph not knowing the location I was visiting. This left me with the quandary of deciding what lenses to take. I couldn’t take them all. But I also didn’t know what I’d need. Photographers know about this crisis. That’s why zoom lenses are popular. They mean you have fewer decisions to make. But I don’t have zoom lenses. That’s another story that only photographers would be interested in. The kind of story I tell my wife late at night to help her sleep.

The lens crisis really got to me. Since moving back to the UK I’d had an artistic lull. I’d been buying new lenses with the thought that they might open up a new area of photography for me and help me get my mojo back. They hadn’t, and now I had more lenses and consequently more decisions to make.

It suddenly struck me that the kick start I needed was not to add but to subtract. We are overloaded with decisions every day. From the moment you wake up you have choices about breakfast, clothes to wear, what to read or listen to on the way to work, whether you should read that email now or later, whether you should respond to that email now or later, whether to answer that text, where to go for lunch etc . It’s no wonder we sometimes get decision fatigue. How do you get rid of it? Simplify! Cut out complications that you don’t need. I’m sure you’ve heard stories of people having simplified wardrobes so they don’t have to waste brain power on choosing outfits. In this house we have a variety of mugs and teas. When I’m making a tea for my wife, I often ask her ‘what tea?’ and ‘in which mug?’ Crazy right? When we were in Finland our apartment had no mugs. We purchased one kind of tea from the supermarket and bought two mugs from a charity store. Then the question was simply ‘Do you want tea?’ That left our brains alone to do what they were there for, to be creative.

To do this mental spring cleaning it’s best to go back to fundamentals and decide what is important to you. Once you know what’s important it’s easy to prioritise. Do the important stuff and worry less about the rest of it. In the case of my photography I took the opportunity to think about my end goal. Fundamentally, what kind of artist did I want to be and what kind of images did I want to make? The clarity was great. I traded in a couple of cameras and lots of lenses and bought a camera that would allow me to become the photographer I wanted to be. I bought just two lenses for it. I had no decisions to make. I took my camera and lenses to Finland. They worked out great and I still haven’t felt the need to add another lens. I’ve got my mojo back.

When I go to take photographs now I don’t add to my decision loading, I use what I’ve got and keep my brainpower for the work that’s important to me, making artistic choices.

What can you simplify in your work or personal life to keep your brain fresh for the choices that matter to you?

My artwork - www.andrewgurnett.com

Go with Your Gut!

Well over ten years ago I was walking our dog Jasper when I noticed a pair of shoes, abandoned, placed side by side as if their owner had been taken up in the rapture. That was the story I told myself. I took a photograph and posted it on Instagram for fun. From then on, I kept noticing more abandoned shoes. Sometimes one, sometimes a pair. Always curious to me. I wondered about their stories: Why were they left? What happened to the owner? I photographed them and shared the images with my friends. There wasn’t really a point to taking the photos other than it amused me. It seemed to amuse my friends too. They would chip in on the story behind the photo. I would occasionally get sent an image of an abandoned shoe with a note, ‘Saw this and thought of you.’ (Now that you are reading this, you will start noticing abandoned shoes too!) 

A couple of weeks ago I published a small book of these images. After many years sitting on my phone they finally found a purpose: they are collected together to act as a series of writing prompts. It struck me that if their stories were intriguing to me, they might also be to others. The book contains 20 photographs of abandoned shoes with empty space below for people to write. It also has a short explanation of how to construct haiku poetry and questions to kickstart people’s writing so they can dig in to different creative ideas around the images. The book is called Abandoned Shoe Haiku but encourages all types of creative writing. 

Why is this a blog post? One reason is that I want to celebrate the publishing of this little book and let as many people know about it as possible. Here’s the link – www.benchpressbooks.com. The other reason is to communicate that it is fine, good even, to pursue a creative impulse even though you don’t know where it is going to lead. Maybe you feel like you want to review a policy or a process even though nobody is complaining about it. Maybe you want to make a presentation deck about something even though no-one has asked for one. Maybe you have the urge to learn something new because you think it might be interesting rather than because you need to. Do it. Go with your gut. At the least you will be satisfied in the moment and you will learn something or get better at something. But more likely, it will be a stepping stone to something else. The experience you gain may be directly applicable or even find use in a totally unrelated area.

And yes, you are welcome to send me pictures of abandoned shoes, or, even better, include some creative writing with that photograph.

Clean Your Grooves

This is a vinyl cleaning machine. A recent purchase. I am a very happy record collector, crate digger and music listener.

As we go through life, much like a vinyl record, we pick stuff up along the way. When we start out, our grooves are clear, we know where we are going, our song is true. But as the days, weeks and years progress we can find ourselves picking up dust and fingerprints. Other people’s priorities impinge on what we originally set out to do, we accrue ideas, roles and habits. And let’s face it, there is a LOT of dust in this social-media driven world. Plenty that gets in the way of us singing our true song. Plenty that distorts our music.

Serious vinyl collectors clean their records on a regular basis, whether they look like they need it or not, and I think this is a good practice.

How can we also get to what our undistorted music is? How can we focus on the things that matter and only those?

Firstly, do you know what is important to you? Have you spent some time considering exactly what that is? It might not be just one thing; after all, we do lead multifaceted lives. Then, in the medium term, what do you want to achieve with these priorities? Thinking about this can help guide you towards what you need to do daily to support your goals. You now have the tracks for your record.

The next task is to play those songs every day and not to let other noise overwhelm them. However, it’s inevitable that we will accumulate dust, so it’s important to clear the grooves from time to time. We need to check in with ourselves and review whether our priorities are still appropriate. Maybe we need to add a new track to our album. Is our method for reaching our goals still optimal? And have we picked up any dust along the way? If something is distorting your music, it’s time to clean it out.

In my re-focus, one of things I realised I needed to do was update my website, and that was an opportunity for a deep clean. What areas of work did I really want to do?  What do I enjoy? Where do I think I can add the greatest value to organisations? In that respect, my song has a lot more clarity and definition now. I wish you the same!

Be Intent on Your Intention

The photograph attached to this post is of a Japanese taiko drummer from the group Kodo at a performance in Singapore. What is so impressive about these performers is their absolute focus and intensity. As an audience member, I marvelled at their inventiveness and musicality, but also at their precision and clarity. They are intent on every beat of the drum.

We all know that in a presentation it’s important that you understand the point you are trying to make, and that your audience is also clear about this message. Yet, time after time it’s an issue for presenters. I see hundreds of presenters every year and at least 50% of them are unclear with their objectives, and so they deliver without intent and consequently without impact.

When you are presenting it’s not enough to have a general idea of what you are doing - to think that you are just going to share some information. That will usually create a flat and unfocussed presentation. Think about what you want to happen or change because of your presentation. That will put some energy and intent into your delivery, much more than if you are just sharing data. So, you are delivering some monthly sales figures. Wouldn’t you be more impactful if you were also to suggest some related action? Improving the sales process from the customer’s point of view, making better use of customer data, including other products in the portfolio…?

On a broad level, your presentation should have a purpose, and generally it pays to make your audience aware of that intention. In most presentations, you do not want them guessing. It’s so frustrating for the listener to get halfway through, or even to the end, and to then realise what the presenter was trying to say. They then have to re-evaluate everything already shared through this new understanding. Why not just let your audience know from the beginning? You can tell them what questions your presentation is going to answer if you don’t want to give the game away. Or you can just tell them, ‘I’m going to show you our February sales figures. Things are pretty even like last month, so I’m also going to suggest a customer-focussed change to our process that could help create an increase.’

On a more micro, drum-beat level, each slide should have a clear intent. Very often, people ask me how to improve a slide. The first question I ask them is ‘What do you want the slide to achieve?’ It’s surprising how many people cannot answer that question.

If you know what you want to happen because of your presentation and you know how each slide fits into achieving that, then you have some intent. And consequently, some dynamism. Then you can deliver with impact, like the Kodo drummers do.

To see and hear the Kodo drummers, check out the video below.

4 Presentation Lessons from a Rock Band

I went to a concert recently and as I thought about it afterwards it reminded me of many things I talk to presenters about. At the time, I was caught in the moment, just relishing the experience of a truly excellent gig. I really like Explosions in the Sky and they did not disappoint. As any good gig should be, it was better than listening to the albums. The energy, passion and commitment of the band was tangible. The lighting was dramatic and fit the music perfectly. The music was dynamic, sonically varied, layered, powerful, at times so quiet and at times so very very loud.

That concert will stick with me, just like a good presentation should. So, what can we learn about delivering a presentation from a rock band?

1. Be better than listening to the album – In presentation terms that means that what you offer has to add more value than what is in the presentation deck. Otherwise you might just as well send an email. How are you going to add value? What insight are you going to provide? Remember, someone has asked you to present because they value your opinion.
2. Perform with some passion – One of your jobs as a presenter is to get your audience to care enough about the topic to take action. Why should they care if you don’t look like you do? Sometimes people tell me they are just delivering data, or just delivering a report. The ‘just’ is a problem here. In any presentation you need to work out what is interesting about it, what your audience should be concerned about, what strikes you as curious, dangerous, fantastic. And that is what you need to get across.
3. Make the lighting fit the music – Get your visuals right. Make sure that the slides support and compliment your message. If you have a lot of text on the slides and you just read off what is there, again, you might as well have sent an email. If you have text or graphics on the slides and then don’t refer to them directly, then that is really confusing for the audience. It’s like you are playing two different tunes. And it’s about timing too. The lights change when the music changes. Your slides should reveal a point when you want to talk about it.
4. Have a dynamic sound – Make best use of your voice. There will be quieter moments, louder moments, faster sections, slower sections, emphatic words and statements. All of this helps your audience understand how you feel about what you are saying and keeps the delivery interesting. There are very few people who want to listen to truly monotonous music and probably even fewer that want to listen to a monotonous presenter.

Next time you have a presentation to do, think about a great concert you've been to and what you can learn from those performers.

And if you are curious, check out Explosions in the Sky