Compassion in Politics: Christian Social Justice, Non-Profits, and Life Theology

Be a cross-polinator (mix with people in other industries and with other passion) and disturb your boundaries. Interesting insight on creativity:

“For the last 20 years,” Allison Hope Weiner wrote in the Times, “Mr. Grazer has met each week with a person who is an expert in science, medicine, politics, fashion, religion - anything other than entertainment.” A get-together with trial lawyers inspired Liar, Liar, a comedy about a lawyer afflicted with truth-telling. An encounter with a former F.B.I. agent led to the new Fox series The F.B.I.

“I want to do things that have a better chance of being thought of as original,” Grazer said. “I do everything I can to disrupt my comfort zone.”

Also, check out Skellie’s Top 20 Ways to Come Up With Amazing Ideas.

(image credit: BoraBora)

David Allen, GTD mega-author and guru, posted today at the Huffington post about organizing yourself to capture all your fabulous ideas:

Most people have (or could have) many more of these kinds of thoughts than they realize, during the course of any 24-hour period. Most people don’t get value from many of them, because they lack both the habit and the tools to collect those thoughts when they occur. If they aren’t captured, they are useless, and even worse can add to the gnawing sense of anxiety most people feel about things “out there” they know they’ve told themselves they should or would like to do, but don’t remember consciously what they are.

Allen continues with the productivity solution:

To do this, and to make it easy, you’ll need two things:
(1) a collection tool with you at all times, and (2) the habit of processing all the thoughts within a short period of time.

(1) The Tools:
Simple, small tools are required. I use my NoteTaker wallet for this purpose since it has my driver’s license, credit cards and is always with me. I usually have my PDA/phone with me as well. Some people use a portable voice recorder. The tool doesn’t matter, as long as you have it handy when and where you have thoughts to capture.

(2) The Habit:
You must process these thoughts into your organization system soon, and completely. Processing could be as simple as picking up the flashlight from your inbox, and adding batteries to your shopping list that you take to the store. Of course some thoughts you capture will be about projects or larger goals, rather than simple actions. We’ll look at how to process those in more detail in the coming weeks.

Both elements are essential — capturing your thoughts outside your mind, and organizing the results. If you leave messages unheard again on your recorder, or notes piled up in a purse or briefcase, the whole process is defeated, and your motivation to continue will disappear.

But if you do get the tools, use them when you think, and organize the results into your system, I guarantee you’ll have more thoughts. And good ones, too.

I think social bookmarking like delicious is a great way to capture ideas. The new wave of web 2.0 collaborative tools, including the Google apps seems great as well. Are you a lifehacker? How to you capture and organize your ideas? Have any great lifehacks? (feel free to post a link if you like)

thanks to Michael Bretheton for the Stock Xchange photo of the colorful charcoals and Ciordia9 for the flickr photo of the hipster PDA.

From my days in junior high school reading Ray Bradbury’s Farenheit 451 still echo in my head to this day, “My mind is a sieve.”  The characters in Bradbury’s book were forced to memorize books in their entirety due to the government’s militant crackdown on the free press via widespread book burnings.  Bradbury’s character, though, has a point.  Our memories aren’t perfect and inevitably some of our best thoughts are lost to the wind (or bad synapses…whatever the case may be).

As someone who writes, or is a creative, or has a blog…this has two key implications.  Whether you are listening to live music, a book reading, a random event on the street its nice to be able to have a no fault system for recording what you need and want to hear.  So two key purchases make infinite sense:

• Voice recorder ($35-70) but a cheap tape recorder from craigslist will do.  I would check amazon, half.com, ebay, and shopzilla for the best price.

• Index cards, a binder clip, and a pen ($3.00)  It may be that you work better out of a day planner (or day minder), because you have a calendar, notebook, and contacts combination ($8-10) but the principle is largely the same.

Are other alternatives better?  Have you tried specific voice recorders with success?  Is simply recording on your laptop a viable option?  What do you think?

I’ve been reading contemporary Christian music artist Michael Card’s Scribbling in Sand about the organic relationship between faith and creative. Most recently I ran across Psalms 98:1 “Sing the Lord a new song, for he has done marvelous things” So acts of life and acts of creativity are ways of living out our lives and remembering how blessed we are. Personally cultivating an honesty and rememberance about the little things in life can re-energize our soul. I ran acrossed Blessed 1’s rememberance of her childhood amongst the natural wonders of Hawaii. While every day can’t be like a day on the big island, I think remembering and even reminising about our best memories can help provide us with strength, passion, and courage we sometimes desperately need.

Why Not? is a great idea for problem solving. I’m going to have to try out a couple questions and see what results I get back…Why not zoom over and ask Why Not? a question or two? Personal, professional, spiritual, or political.

I wonder how this compares to issue-specific message boards, Yahoo Answers, and other crowd sourcing…
Your experience? Your favorite wisdom of crowds application?

For more information about crowdsourcing, check out this handy article in Wired. Or even better, if you’re into learning more on the web, check out
a fabulous post at Read/Write web @ just that…web 2.0 e-learning resources.