Tag Archives: Albert Schweitzer

Tuning In to Your Creativity

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By Peter Jeff
The Leadership Mints Guy

Here’s an idea to use music as a strategic thinking tool. Reading time: 3:09

How do you fine tune your creative thinking skills?

Albert Einstein

Albert Einstein

With a fine tune.

Albert Einstein chose to play the violin to help him relax and problem solve more readily, according to his son, Hans Albert.

Whenever Albert Einstein felt that he had come to the “end of the road or into a difficult situation in his work, he would take refuge in music. That would usually resolve all his difficulties,” Hans Albert recalled of his dad’s String Theory of a Different Kind.

At any rate, music just may be the oil in the engine of creative and strategic thinking. In fact, some of the world’s most renowned thinkers -leaders -were musically talented:

Galileo, the son of a musician, played a guitar like instrument called the lute.
Thomas Jefferson played the violin.
Ben Franklin, who invented the glass harmonica, played the guitar and harp.
Henry David Thoreau played the flute.
Albert Schweitzer played the organ. Continue reading →

The Write Way: Churning Your Spilled Milk

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By Peter Jeff
The Leadership Mints Guy

Here’s an idea to enhance your persuasive speech writing. Reading time: 2:55.

“I love revisions,” says novelist Katherine Paterson,
“where else in life can spilled milk be transformed into ice cream?”

No wonder that churning your spilled milk into ice cream through careful and thoughtful rewriting, editing and revising — over and over again — is the requisite skill of strategic leaders and cogent speakers.

Yet too many executives are only too quick to spill the milk of their ideas-their knowledge, experience and expertise RIGHT NOW -rather than churn that milk into an ice cream of thought.

Their Spilled Milk of Ideas (writing) churned into the Ice Cream of Thought (rewriting) become more palatable and portable to the audience.

After all, your revised writing and thinking- like frozen ice cream- can be packaged and carried a lot easier than a carton of milk (writing off the top of your head).

Yet too many executives don’t want to invest the time into the one-good-churn-deserves another concept of speech writing. They’d rather spill their milk on the run. Without much organized thought. But with much bravado. After all, they know what they know and their milk is bottled and ready for consumption.

These milking executives, their self confidence bordering on arrogance, are only too ready to pour their ideas out of their proverbial milk bottles of expertise and experience on the spur of the moment.

They are like the executive who was asked how long it would take him to prepare a 10-minute presentation. He said two weeks “but if you want a two-hour presentation I’m ready right now.” That 10 minute presentation would no doubt be more meaningful and memorable.

Continue reading →