Nick Jehlen's blog

UPDATE: We’ll be holding Guilt Hour on Twitter on Wednesdays from 11am-noon EST. Post your One Guilty Task with the hashtag #GuiltHour.

We’ve had three great articles on Guilt Hour in the last few days. We’re glad to see the

idea taking off, especially since we find this method so useful in our own workplace.

The social aspect of Guilt Hour is important: declaring your One Guilty Task to other people is usually a big relief, and it helps us move past our guilt and get things done.

But what if you don’t have a team to support your Guilt Hour? We humbly offer this experiment: join us for ours! For the next few weeks, we’ll be tweeting our tasks at the start of our Guilt Hour with the hashtag #GuiltHour, and then we’ll check in on twitter again at the end of the hour. 

Read more…

You know the feeling: you’re working on a project you fully enjoy, the rest of the world fades away, time slows, and you’re in that zone where everything you do feels… just right. If you’re a work practices geek like me, you’ve probably read a whole book on that experience: Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience.

But you don’t have to have read the book to get the feeling; flow happens to all of us. Csikszentmihalyi (pronounced Cheek-Sent-Mee-High) and his colleagues found that people in cultures around the world experienced the elusive feeling of flow at all ages during a wide variety of activities. Assembly line workers and retirees, shepherds and teenagers all described a very similar phenomenon. Csikszentmihalyi’s research showed that while it can’t be forced, flow is possible when your attention is focused on achieving realistic but challenging goals – conditions that happen at work, but also in sports and art. And when it is achieved, the rewards are nothing short of joy, transformation, and a sense of completeness. 

Read more…

Today we're announcing the launch of a new project: Death & Design. This is an invitation and challenge to designers to acknowledge the role of mortality in their own work. The website will highlight projects that use design to create meaningful conversations about the end of life. Read more...

You know that thing you’ve been meaning to do? The reply to the complex email you’ve been putting off, the phone call you’re dreading, or the task you’re cringing at because the last time through it didn’t go so well? Unless you’re a whole lot more centered than I am, there’s probably a few items like this that serve mostly to make you feel guilty every time you remember that you haven’t done them yet. Read more…

Wednesday, Jan 23, 2013 2:00—3:00PM EST