I am a person who will have a lot of ideas, some of them good, some of them not so good, most of them having lots of obvious flaws when they come out of my head for the first time. When you are sharing about these ideas with people I think you meet (at least!) two basic responses.

The first one (and sadly a very common one) is based on exposing the flaws, critiquing the idea or saying that it won’t work. People will generally start “That is a great idea, however did you think about problem X,Y,Z with it”. This approach I identify as the approach that Rolf described as having the result of “killing enthusiasm“. I can very much relate. When I’m approached with this way of thinking I generally become impatient, maybe even annoyed, or frustrated.

Second approach I find from people is that they start asking questions or give ideas not in order to expose flaws or weaknesses in the idea, but rather to build on it. They’ll say things like “That’s a great idea, it would be even better if we did X,Y,Z”, or “That’s a great idea, how do you think we could make it work in the context of A?”. This type of response creates excitement and energy with me, moves the idea forward and will make me really engaged.

Both responses start the same. Both approaches have their place, and some people will prefer the first to the second and vice versa. They both will be able to tackle issues caused by the idea. However the reaction they will create within me, the way that they will move the idea forward for me, is radically different.

To me, the second way of approaching a new idea or concept doesn’t mean that you say yes to everything presented. Rather it is about seeing the value in every concept or idea, and trying to capture in which context or where this can be applied.

I am pretty clear of which type of approach I want to be surrounded by and work with, and I’m going to make sure to take steps to myself have this approach to as large extent as I possibly can.

Photo courtesy of nectarous.

It might not always be easy to see the point of the divergence – the relevance of it might not be clear, and we don’t see how it relates to what our real job is. However I’d argue that it has all the impact in the world on our real job, because it gives us new ideas, perspectives and a way to solve problems better or even at all.

I think my lack of blogging the past few months has been a clear sign of too little thinking outside of what my main focus has been – which is to lead and manage AIESEC in Sweden (not that I ever stop exploring completely – it’s one of my favorite hobbies!). When in such a mode of convergence it’s easy to properly make time for thinking outside, for seeing new perspectives or trying something completely different.

Overall, I think my ambition for my life is to live in varying periods of divergence and convergence. However, that requires that I make room for it in my lifestyle – and it’s a part that I’m still figuring out! Somebody who seems to have got it (I guess he had some more years to think about it than I) is Stefan Sagmeister, check it out:

Our international president, Aman, recently posted a question to all the other presidents from AIESEC in different countries about what this motivation really is, and he posted two videos on TED (Science of Motivation and Why We Do What We Do) as input to the discussion.

In the discussion some early comments came up that there is a major difference between people who are leaders and have stayed a while in AIESEC, and people who are new to AIESEC. Many shared that they felt that as you spent more time in the organization your motivation changed – from initially being focused on what you can get – you tend to move to a focus on what you give.

I think this shift in focus comes from the fact that you become aware of and connected to a community. I find that, in my country Sweden, many students I meet initially talk to me a lot about their motivations for themselves, their degrees they want to take, their aspirations for jobs, career, money they want to get. However, they rarely speak about their aspirations for their communities, what they want to achieve for others.

Once they have been involved in a community like AIESEC for a while, new desires and drivers are uncovered and motivation starts coming from a new source. We become connected to moving a community forward – rather than just ourselves. By moving the community we’re in forward and ensuring that all people involved grow, learn, develop the community thrives. By extension – if the community thrives, so will we, it’s members.

However, this is not an automatic process. It is something that we as leaders and members of communities can stimulate or retard. One of the basic tools to use is to engage in dialogue with people around how their drivers and desires connect with what the drivers and desires are for the community.

At a recent training we held we discussed Steven Reiss’ 16 basic desires. This theory, based on over 6000 interviews, shows us that motivation essentially is personal. But, by understanding the drivers of our members, and connecting these personal drivers to their work in the organization we can help them see the link between a thriving community and themselves as thriving individuals. Thus, the motivation is no longer only individual – it becomes a motivation for making the community grow.

Picture by Tom@HK.

Together we asked questions such as how we could support the creation of more entrepreneurs, how we could create businesses with social impact, what our role could be in transforming education, technology and the world through new business ideas, and many more like that.

After all these discussions – our chair of the conference raised an important challenge. He pointed out that we often looked at these discussions in the strict context of AIESEC and AIESEC’s relevance. This is important, and it’s crucial that we see it from our organization’s perspective, however it’s not nearly enough. We need, especially as young people, to be able to tackle the big hairy questions – the questions about how we will create a radically better world, the questions about the revolutions we need and can create.

Although we need to start from individual, organizational and national perspectives we cannot find appropriate solutions unless we really dare to look at these issues from a global scale. This goes for both AIESEC and everyone else. We need to open the spaces in our family dinners, at our company lunches, throughout our conferences, meetings and seminars to discuss these issues. By not shying away from these issues we are taking the first steps to creating the actions needed to change our societies.

Being a proactive AIESECer (wink ) – I sat down att the end of the day and reflected on what this day actually meant to me and how I could bring these thoughts into practice. The commitment that came out of this was to use my role, as president of my AIESEC country (Sweden), to open these spaces both within our organization but also with partners – we will strive to arrange a similar forum in Sweden and to bring these discussions to businesses and youth in Sweden. Furthermore I will work with my team to increase the impact of the experience for our members who are leaving our organization (we call it “heading for the future”) so that they more clearly can see the connection between what they’ve been doing in AIESEC and the actions that they can take in the future to have a positive impact.

That being my commitment – I also want to you with the challenge of deciding how you could act in your company, organization or community to raise these discussions & create actions from these.

To follow AIESEC’s international congress and the questions we raise – check out our virtual presence at http://www.aiesec.org/AI/iclive.

During the first few days of this experience we’ve covered topics such as what leadership is, how our organization creates leadership and where we want to go in the future. One of my reflections that I had throughout the sessions was the importance of believing. Many of us here are leaders who have been in the organization for a number of years – we’ve seen the ups and downs, and – particularly – we’ve see the things that recurringly don’t work. When faced with these it’s easy to become cynical and close your mind. However, the only real way to create change is to find a solution together and then taking the leap of faith to trust in that solution. Only when we do that (and we might not be successful immediately – meaning we need to rinse & repeat…) will we be able to find the truly transformative solutions we need.

I see this happening not only in AIESEC – but in many other organizations & even societies as a whole. It’s really valuablet to gain the ability to handle and counter these feelings – both within ourselves, but also within any organization we join. It is something I intend to practice all throughout this conference and my next year in AIESEC.

At these occasions one of the main parts of the content and reason why people are there is the connections, dialogues and reflections that all participants have with each other, and after the conference these are often the things that had the most impact / are remembered the most.  

This, however, has always previously left me slightly frustrated. I am a very action-oriented person and because of this my view of conferences has often been: yes they’re critical for our performance – but at the end of the day they’re also a distraction from the things we “should be doing”.

Lately, my perspective has been changing. I read somewhere that at the end of the day, our core deliverable as knowledge workers is new knowledge. A major way to generate new knowledge is through dialogue. So, spending time in dialogue isn’t in fact a distraction, it’s rather one a big part of “work”. Furthermore, conversations, as I have seen throughout this week, can be used not only to connect people, but also to move them into doing completely new or different things. They can be used not only to generate ideas and understanding – but also to focus direction and activity.

With that perspective in mind I have found it much easier to approach these conferences. I no longer feel the anxiousness of getting back to “real work” and can instead 100% focus on interacting with the dialogues and conversations that happen in them.

This is not all that uncommon today, there are an increasing amount of people who are having sick-leave from work due to stress related illnesses or injuries. Stress in the workplace is so pervasive that it sometimes seem that everyone should go through a period of burn-out through our working lives.

So, what causes it all? Well, the obvious triggers are too much work, too little relaxation, etc. However, since experiencing it myself I’ve wanted to understand it from a broader perspective than that. One explanation that I’ve really been able to connect with is that stress is due to our working memory becoming overloaded.

Our working memory is the part of our memory which we use to store temporary information in. This memory is generally understood to be able to process 5-10 items at a time – though it can be trained & exercised to deal with more. What happens is that as we’ve moved from mostly physical (manual labour) to more abstract and conceptual work (knowledge work), the requirements on our working memory have risen – but of course, the capacity has stayed the same. This causes a lot of stress.

Think of an example of a task you might have in your everyday life – “send out meeting notes”. When you’d start on such a project you’d probably first have to break it down into smaller actions in your head, say “find paper notes”, “type out notes”, “ask peter about his feedback on X”, “find Sandra’s e-mail address”, “draft e-mail”, etc. While doing these individual actions you’d also have to keep a lot of small notes and details on how you’re doing them in your head. Additionally you might get new ideas and remember old tasks while you’re doing this – meaning more things to keep in your head.

Overall, it’s a recipe for working memory overload. So, what do you do? Well, I’ve found that for me, one of the simplest and most effective ways have been to simply write everything down. I write down each task immediately as I remember it into my todo-list and I write down ideas, thoughts, etc. in a note-taking system. Once I consistently started doing this I noticed stress went down, even as I still had a lot of things to do, but just by writing it all down and keeping it out my head, I no longer felt as stressed about it.

So, if you’re looking for a good way to reduce stress, get out and buy a good notebook, a stack of index cards or a software like Evernote (for free!) to keep it all out of your head.

The first step is just making space for it, having time to sit down and look through what you’re doing, what you’re thinking and what you’re feeling. This is hard enough – when don’t you have a million other pressing things to do? For me, I’m trying to at least make it a part of my weekly review. Then I know I have a time that I’ve set aside when I’m going to do it.

The second step is knowing how to do it. Some people I’ve worked with have found it really hard to sit down and think about these things, they schedule the time for reflection, but then sit down and have nothing to write about. One way to get around this is to think of a question you’d like to ask yourself, and then reflect on that question. If it’s still empty, you can make the question more and more narrow until you’ve got something tangible enough for you to think about.

The third step is having the tools to make it easy to keep the habit. I find blogging being one such tool, I also would like to use Twitter as a sort of micro-reflection throughout the day.

Another good habit that many have (especially girls are good at this!) is journaling. I always had a hard time journaling, until I began the practice of journaling around a question, topic or issue that was relevant to me. This made journaling make a lot more sense to me.

Thinking actively about trying to have these three steps in place I’ve found reflection becomes an easier practice to implement and keep.

Photo by johnrite.

The result is that we get completely paralyzed facing all these choices – choices that sometimes are so complex that we don’t have the knowledge, skill or time to be able to figure them out.

In my generation you can clearly see this when it comes to careers, all this choice – instead of making people choose radically different things from each other – leads many young people to resorting to simple templates when thinking about their careers. Instead of using the fact that we in essence have the choice of choosing what we’re going to devote our lives to freely, opting for the choices that most resonate with our goals allowing us to have the most impact, we make low-impact “easy” choices based on what others do.

I recently came across some interesting thinking in this area that I wanted to share. The first is a book called Nudge and it deals with ways of relieving the burden for paralyzed choosers and ensuring that by simple methods we can be nudged into taking better choices. Nudges makes the “best” option a little bit easier to make (while not prohibiting you to make any other choice you might like) through for example providing intelligent defaults or making long-term results clearly visible (think about how many people are potentially susceptible to diabetes, but still chooses high sugary foods, thus increasing their risks…).

The book mostly looks at things like choosing your health care insurance, saving for your retirement and so on, but the pattern they describe holds very true also for what we do with our lives and how we work towards our goals. In this area, just as when it comes to choosing the right pension plan, we could use a little bit of a nudge. I think if we implemented more nudges in our everyday life focused around working towards our goals & aspirations or taking up impacting experiences, we’d probably live better lives.

The other source of inspired thinking in this area is TED-speaker Barry Schwartz (if you haven’t checked out TED, do so now!) who talks about this topic and on how the idea in our (western) society we can maximize happiness by maximizing choice is deeply flawed. His speech is well-invested 20 minutes. Overall I think that his points, combined with the approaches of the book Nudge makes sense – and I am certainly going to spend more time thinking of how I could “nudge” myself and others around me into making better (as viewed by myself & them) choices about sustainability, personal goals and personal development.

One choice that we also have is to eat meat or not. I usually don’t go around preaching vegetarianism (even though I will happily spread the idea if people ask) however an article I read in Economist today got me in the mood to share. According to the article we are now potentially quite close to the limits of what our ecosystems can handle in the terms of our water usage. Agriculture is one of the main users of water, using 70-80%. These needs are set to increase, due to in part to population growth but also to a large extent change in diet.

As more and more people get increasingly prosperous they also have the possibility to eat more meat. This has a huge impact on water consumption – producing a kg of wheat takes about 1000 liters of water, whereas a kg of meat requires a whopping 15 000 liters (and wheat has a higher energy contents!). For us who belong to the “top end” of the increasingly prosperous (in global comparison – so that means mostly everyone in western europe) we have a choice, and all too often we use that choice to consume much more of the latter than what is either healthy or reasonable. Even though you don’t have to go completely veggie – why not cut down meat to one or a couple of days a week? Beyond saving water, you’re also impacting your co2 emissions and improving your health.

This is just one of the many areas where I (and many who will read this) have the luxury of the choice. We can live perfectly healthy lives (even more so in fact) with vegetarian diets and lower our environmental impact drastically. So, why not use that luxury?