JOCELYN K. GLEI writes about work & creativity.

May 31, 2017

How to Maintain Your Sanity (and Be Productive) When You Work Alone All the Time

I am a huge advocate of having a room of one’s own. But it’s not healthy to spend too much time in the confines of your own mind. Or, for that matter, alone in your home office. For the past two and a half years I’ve been working on my own, and in the process,…

May 24, 2017

The Problem with the “What Else?” Mindset

I am an inveterate planner. Which means I spend a lot of time thinking about what’s NEXT. Probably too much time. And when I finally accomplish all those things I was planning to do, I spend little (if any) time acknowledging what I’ve achieved. Because I’m already thinking about what else I could be doing.…

May 16, 2017

Why You Need “White Space” in Your Daily Routine

In design, “white space” is negative space. It’s not blank space because it has a purpose. It is balancing the rest of the design by throwing what is on the page (or the screen) into relief. The white space helps focus your visual attention. Now let’s expand this concept of white space beyond the world…

May 11, 2017

You Can’t Be Creative Without Being in Your Body

Creativity depends on being embodied. Merely having a body, that is currently hunched over a computer, does not count. To be embodied, you must be moving through the world: taking action, seeking resources, finding pleasure. Because that, as Charles Darwin noted in 1872, is what animals are meant to do. It turns out that how you…

May 3, 2017

How to Run Meetings in a Humane Manner

As a “productivity expert,” I once got roped into doing an interview about meetings. What I didn’t know was that the writer wanted tips about how to have efficient all-day meetings, which is an oxymoron in my book. My advice: “Don’t have all-day meetings.” You can’t wring blood from stone after all. That said, I…

April 24, 2017

My Anti-Jet Lag Recipe

We think of jet lag as a sleep disorder. But it’s really a disorder of your body clock, or circadian rhythm, which controls when you experience energy peaks, when your energy dips, when you feel sleepy, and a million other little highs and lows that impact how you move through your day. If you’re fully aligned…

February 22, 2017

Obsessive Attention to Detail Isn’t Crazy, It’s Required

A friend recently reminded me of this powerful quote from designers Charles and Ray Eames: “The details are not the details; they make the product.” Curious about the origins of this statement, I found out that it comes from an animated film the Eames created to promote a storage/study/sleeping unit system that they launched in…

February 15, 2017

How to Reduce Your Anxiety about the News & Protect Your Psyche

There are two kinds of anxiety: neurotic anxiety, which is characterized by over-rumination, looping thoughts, and generally unproductive worrying, and normal anxiety, which is what Kierkegaard talks about — the anxiety that we are able, the fear of our own potential, the “possibility of possibility.” In this unique socio-political moment, I think we have to…

January 31, 2017

Stop Letting Strangers Dictate What You Do With Your Day

Do you leave your front door open, allowing anyone who chooses to walk in and command your attention? I highly doubt it. And yet this is exactly how our email inboxes function. Your email is the front door for access to your work identity. And anyone who has access to the Internet can step right…

January 18, 2017

Music to Play When You Want to Get Focused

There are a handful of albums that I listen to obsessively when I want to get focused on creative work. Below, you’ll find the ones that have gotten the most play, organized into calm, atmospheric music and high-energy, upbeat music. Calm, Atmospheric Music: From electronic to piano to found sound, these albums run the gamut…

Jocelyn K. Glei

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