You are at your most creative in the early part of the day.

You are fresh, full of ideas and clear-headed enough to create and to plan, (well that’s what should happen if you have a good night’s sleep!). Our bodies conveniently run on a natural circadian rhythm, thanks to your hypothalamus, that dictates your natural rise and fall in energy and creativity.

Yet many of us do all we can to sabotage our body’s natural rhythms by overloading our senses with digital input.

Does the following timeline sound familiar to you?

6.00am : We wake.  Our body tells us when it’s good to be creative and when it’s time to rest. Waking from a good night’s sleep we are naturally READY TO CREATE…..

6.01am: Many of us sleep with our phones next to our bed and the first thing we do on waking is bombard our sensitive brains with the latest updates or notifications on our immediately locatable digital device. Add this digital addiction to our body’s natural rhythms and creativity starts to fade into obscurity. CREATIVITY DIMMED…..

8.00am: Many of us head to work or to our desks with great ideas and plans for the day. We then open our email accounts and magically, within an hour or so, our enthusiasm is dulled or side-lined by other’s queries, issues or demands. CREATVITY FADING…..

1.00pm: In the afternoon, we often become tired and the environmental influences around us (heating, office equipment, staff) start to wear down our natural enthusiasm. It is a common phenomenon after lunch that our body clocks will tell us in no uncertain terms it is time to snooze. And in some countries of course they do! CREATIVITY NIL…..

I think many of us can identify with all or part of the above pattern. And yet when we first wake every morning, our body’s biological rhythm is predisposed to creative output.

Some of the world’s most successful entrepreneurs are well known for being early risers and for meditating, exercising, writing or creating before most of us have even thought about that first cuppa. 21 Successful People Who Wake Up Early

When you are at your most creative you are inspired, intelligent, clear and full of productivity. It is when real change can happen, when new ideas are hatched and when great, life-changing decisions are often made.

So we have gathered the latest research, added a touch of common sense and logic, and developed a plan to see you through this second quarter of the business year with great results.

Our Top Tips For Creativity

On Waking:

• Leave your phone! Tell your family and close friends to use the landline in an absolute emergency. There will be no reason, therefore to check your phone.
• Stretch and take some time to be mindful of where you are and how you feel. Try journaling your intentions for the day.
• Instead of reaching for your phone, listen to music. Music is a great tool for unlocking your creativity. It helps to stimulate the part of the brain that controls motor actions, emotions and creativity. According to Don Campbell’s book The Mozart Effect, listening to Mozart can increase creativity, concentration and other cognitive functions.
• Get outside. The neuroscientist David Strayer advocates walking, hiking or running for high-level creative thinking. “You let the prefrontal cortex rest, and all of a sudden these flashes of insight come to you. It supports creativity, positive wellbeing [and] reductions in stress. There are all kinds of reasons why it’s helpful.”
• Allocate a timeframe to respond to messages and catch up on the news before or after breakfast, then get on with your day.

At Work

• If you’re in an office space or team make it clear that you are not to be distracted between 9 and 11am. Don’t look at your emails, put your phone on silent and focus on OUTPUT not INPUT.
• Be totally strict, no exceptions, unless emergencies. Everything can wait. If you are in an environment where immediate answers are often sought, narrow your timeframe or scatter 30 minutes of ‘disconnection’ throughout your morning.
• Schedule all meetings and phone calls for later in the morning or afternoon.
• Recruit the assistance of others to support your plans. Or make it a company policy.
• Go back to pen and paper. Turn your back on digital for a few hours and use those old-fashioned tools of creativity and communication.

It really is about choice. You can choose to do the same thing and expect the same results. Or you can change up your morning routine and try a different approach.

To get your morning off to an explosive start, disconnect. Leave your phone, laptop or emails and just work. Do the work you’d do if you weren’t answering questions from others. Do the work that is aligned with getting your visions and plans off the ground. Do the work that is creative and will drive your business forward. And leave the digital distractions behind so they don’t cloud your productivity, or at least learn to make digital work FOR you and not AGAINST you!

February is the month of love. 

Whether you embrace the whole Valentine’s Day spectacle or scorn the mushy outpouring of sentiment, one thing is evident……. there is a definitely a market for love!

In the shortest, but bleakest month of the year, who can blame people for getting excited about a few red hearts and an opportunity to be nice? February is grey and cold, trees are bare and the signs of spring are not yet abundant enough to hint at hope. Whilst most months have some sort of excuse for celebration, February’s only real joy is that it is a short month!

So, a little love can go a long way in February. On the business front you are probably still suffering from reduced footfall or customer interaction, unless you’re in the heating trade, so it’s a great time to set the groundwork for your next peak period and take stock of what is happening within your own team.

Successful businesses are constantly monitoring their biggest asset; their team of employees. Unless you are a one-person business, you will be placing your trust in team members to represent your business and maintain the same standards that you, yourself, hold.

So when was the last time you asked your team how they felt about your business? As your greatest ambassadors, you can be sure that their attitudes and views will be apparent to your customers. A demotivated, aggrieved and negative team member will hardly be transmitting positive, cheery signals.

In our experience, the best way to ascertain how your team FEEL about working for you is that very basic, but very effective, tool – a staff survey.

It is simply impossible to make any productive changes within your business if you have no idea as to how your team members FEEL. If your goal is to increase your turnover and profits this year, you need your team to be just as motivated as you are. And not just your customer-facing team, but everyone who has a role in your business.

Research shows that when an individual works with a positive mindset, performance on nearly every level – productivity, creativity, engagement – improves considerably.

There are hundreds of ways to create positive feelings within your team and you should obviously implement schemes of reward based on your own business.

Here are five of our favourites:

1. Achievement and recognition are high motivators for employees. If they do something well, reward them. Present them with a voucher to go out for dinner, an extra day off, tickets to a show, etc. The small things adds up.
2. Create spaces where employees can easily communicate and share ideas. Casual conversations in the staff room can become collaborative conversations. Make it inviting and effective, with nice furniture, tables, and snacks and beverages, if possible.
3. Have a monthly team prize for the best performer. Make the team WANT to strive for more.
4. Create a career pathway – make your team WANT to stay with you. Create opportunities within the business and listen to them often, so you can help retain them long term.
5. Supplement salary by assisting employees in other areas of their lives. You can offer an extra level of life insurance or disability insurance for employees to protect their incomes. Other ancillary benefits, such as dental and optical care or gym memberships, are all well received by employees. It is important to offer benefits of some kind so your employees know that you truly care about them and their families.

Your expression of love and interest in your team doesn’t necessarily have to cost money or be extravagant. A simple plate of homemade biscuits or maybe an extra 15 minutes at lunch time says a lot.

A staff survey is a quick, easy and extremely transparent way of capturing the feelings amongst your team. The results of a survey can indicate gaping holes within your business that you, yourself, simply do not see. At the very least, implementing a staff survey shows that you CARE what your team thinks. How you use that information is up to you, but it is a great way of initiating a more positive and cohesive feel amongst your most important asset.

Call us for more information about how to easily set up a staff survey for your business.

PS Speaking of Valentine’s Day, whether you’re male or female, please avoid the “I don’t need Valentine’s Day to show my partner I love her/him – every day is a day of love in our house”. It’s an overstated cliché and an obvious sign that you’re too cheap to shell out on some flowers or chocolates! Go on, indulge in some romance.