According to The Eureka Hunt, an article by Jonah Lehrer in last week’s New Yorker magazine, scientists have finally found neural proof of what creative thinkers and those who study them already know: Insight doesn’t come from focusing on a problem.

Instead, insight comes from focusing on a problem and then taking your mind off that problem, leaving your mind with an opportunity to make subconscious connections that your conscious mind can’t quite get to through reasoning and smart thinking alone. This kind of thinking generates new insight, new solutions to problems, and new ideas.

According to Lehrer, that’s why good ideas often come while you’re in the shower, and it explains why Newton discovered the laws of gravity while sitting under a tree.

It also explains why I haven’t been blogging lately. I’ve had a lot going on, in every domain of life. And I’m finding that instead of everything informing each other in a way that pushes me to think about new ideas and make interesting connections, I’m just focusing too hard, on too many different things to have any ideas that are interesting enough to write about.

Which is why I’m looking forward to the next week. We’re taking the monkeys to hang out with their cousins, aunt, uncle and grandparents on Kiawah Island. I’ve been on enough beach vacations with a bunch of kids to know that they’re not exactly relaxing. But it is a good opportunity to get my mind focused on only one thing. So I’m flying away from my computer for a while and hoping it will be the break I need to get my ideas flowing again.

It’s critical for your sanity and for the sake of work actually getting done to establish clear boundaries for the home office. This pertains to space - where is your workspace and who is allowed access to it - and to when you’re ‘at the office’ and when you’re ‘at home.’

I’ve highly recommend having a dedicated workspace, whether it’s a desk, an alcove, or an actual room. Right now, I’m lucky enough to have a room, with a door that closes. The monkeys, USD and our former nannies all know that if the door to my office was closed, they should act like I’m not home. Even when I didn’t have a door to close, I made it clear to everyone in the house that when I was ‘at work’ - sitting at my desk - I was unavailable.

I never really have had auditory privacy, which means I know what’s going on in the house even when I’m at work.  Sometimes I would hear stuff going on and help out, especially when the monkeys were tiny babies. But I found that as they got older, it became really hard for them to see me pop in and out of their day but not have me to play with. So it was better for them and for me that when I’m working, I’m working and when I’m done, I’m done. When they’re home while I’m at work, I keep water and snacks nearby so they don’t have to see me while I’m working.

One thing I’m less good at is evening boundaries for when I’m at home. It’s almost impossible not to dip in and out of email in the evenings to see what’s up in my West Coast office. Ideally, I’d cut that out and make the boundaries even more sharp - perhaps by setting aside 15-20 min to check and respond to email once in the evening so I can have some regular down time. But I haven’t quite gotten there yet. It’s a work in progress.

I’ve had trouble finding time to blog lately. To help myself get a bit more disciplined, I’m succuming to a tried and true blogger tactic - the weekly column.

A lot of folks who juggle work and family life have the amazing opportunity of doing them both in the same place - working from home. I’ve been at it for over 4 years, and I’ve learned a thing or two about what works and what doesn’t. So on Tuesdays, I’ll share my tips for successfully working from home.

Today’s tip: Make lunch dates.

One of the hardest things about working from home is the lack of built in social infrastructure. Sure, you can call your colleagues, but if you’re in PA and they’re all in CA, you can’t spontaneously decide to go out to lunch.

Making up for the lack of social interactions by getting extremely chatty with the drycleaner, the barista, or the preschool teacher can only get you so far. It’s not the same as griping about work and sharing ideas with someone who understands what you do. 

Try to find people in similar industries near where you live, and schedule monthly lunches. I’ve recently been connecting with a former colleague who reccently moved to the area and a new friend who I met through a special interest list serv who work downtown. It doesn’t take a lot of time, but it helps prevent the feeling that you’re just a disembodied head on the phone or hands on the keyboard. And it’s a great way to stay connected to a local network.

We went to Ikea for dinner tonight. (This time, we didn’t go just to get the monkeys to behave, but knowing that I wanted to go check some stuff out gave me a great way to keep those guys in line all day. A nice byproduct.)

After dinner, we went downstairs to get ice cream. We got the cones, but didn’t manage to get the extra cups and spoons we usually give them so they can eat their ice cream and not make a total mess. As they started to eat I realized that at 3 years old, the monkeys are actually old enough to learn how to eat an ice cream cone.

Being old enough to learn how to properly lick an ice cream cone is not a major milestone that’s likely to be found in any parenting book. But it’s another reminder that they’re growing up, and fast. 

Tonight, it was another reminder that we cling to the practices that worked when they were younger because that’s becomes the habit that we’re in. Assisted ice cream eating, sitting in high chairs at the dinner table, swinging in the baby swings at the park, and ‘bumping’ down the stairs are just a few of the things I can think of that we should probably be moving past soon. But they’ve become as much crutches for me as they are assists for the monkeys. The high chairs keep them stuck in their seats. When they bump down the stairs, I don’t have to watch them as closely (and they can carry things!). All these reasons keep me - and them - rooted in what’s comfortable instead of looking for opportunities to grow.

And to be fair, it’s not just me. Although they are getting to be ‘big boys’ the monkeys still love to be cuddled, coddled and carried - mostly by me. They like to play the baby role almost as much as they like playing the big boy role.

But there’s something exciting and fun about teaching your kids the proper technique for maximum enjoyment of ice cream with minimum melting all over your hands. And for them, there’s something exciting about developing new skills and doing things that the big kids can do. Even as we give up some of the positive benefits of old behaviors, we gain something from adopting new ones.

It’s not just our kids that we get into these patterns with, of course, it’s our colleagues, too.

It’s easy to limit someone’s growth by saying - she’s not ready, we’ll give her training wheels and then, someday she can do it on her own. It even sounds like you’re doing something nice. But you’re not. You’re limiting her growth. Because without trying, she’ll never really learn.

Often growth happens at work by accident. People get pushed into developing or demonstrating new skills and flexing new muscles when they have to - a particularly difficult project or a very busy day means that everyone has to step up and eat their ice cream without a cup. And that’s when you realize that they can. But it’s probably worthwhile to be more proactive about providing these opportunities, not just taking advantage of them when they come up.

But I am going to be so sad to get rid of those high chairs.

I’m in a sophisticated phase of parenting called bargaining, negotiating and bribery.

I’m not proud, but I’ll do what it takes to ensure that the monkeys not only know that they shouldn’t pull their teacher’s hair in school but that they don’t actually do it.

A couple of weeks ago there was a lot of misbehaving at school. In a single day they were in and out of time out about four times each at school. I was unsure of how to handle it. But I knew that I didn’t really want to be the parent of the worst behaved boys at school. After all, our parent-teacher conference was just around the corner. So I tried a tactic I thought might work: bribery. 

At dinner, I set up the challenge: “If you can get through the day without getting into trouble tomorrow, we’ll go to Ikea for dinner.” By far, the monkey’s favorite place to go out to dinner is Ikea. I guess that’s what happens if you never take your children to McDonald’s. 

The next day I reinforced the bribe with a simple message. “There will be three rules for school today. 1) No crying when mommy drops you off. 2) Listen to your teachers. 3) Have fun. If you follow all the rules we get to go to Ikea for dinner.” For good measure, I let their teacher in on the set up. That way she could invoke the Ikea incentive if she needed to.

It worked like a charm. They were little angels at school and we had a fun dinner at Ikea. Easing my guilt on invoking the Ikea incentive was the fact that I am not the only mom at school that uses that particular motivation tool - we ran into another family eating there, too.

I was quite pleased with the result of the bribe. The problem, of course, is that I don’t really want to eat dinner at Ikea every night. This particular spate of bad behavior subsided without the need for another bribe, though, and we moved on.

Until this Monday, when the monkeys came home from school. “How was school?” I asked innocently. “Monkey #1 stepped on teacher’s toe,” reported Monkey #2. (No, they don’t actually call each other monkey). “On purpose or by accident?” I ask. “By accident and on purpose,” he replied. Turns out Monkey #1 stepped on the teacher’s toe a lot. Four times before he got sent to time out, in fact.

So I tried a new incentive - their favorite brunch place, Morning Glory. “If you behave in school all week, we can go to Morning Glory for lunch on Friday. You can have Monkey French Toast.” (Yes, it’s called Monkey French Toast. It is a delicious sugar bomb with fruit thrown in for good measure.)

I sent them to school with this great promise, only to end up with some very sad monkeys at the end of the day. See, they’re 3. And when USD picked them up from school, they wanted to go to Morning Glory for Monkey French Toast. They’re not really up on the days of the week and they didn’t understand that I didn’t mean tonight, I meant at the end of the week. And the end of the week looks a long way away when it’s Tuesday.

Morning Glory closes at 3, so I couldn’t make good on the promise they thought they’d heard. I talked them down, and explained everything, and they kind of got it, but not really. I had to keep explaining it and re-explaining it all week. They did behave in school, though, and we are going to Morning Glory tomorrow. 

The Ikea success vs. Morning Glory failure taught me something about incentives. The Ikea incentive works because there’s a direct correlation between their behavior and the reward. It’s timely for the way that they perceive time. The Morning Glory incentive might work for an adult, or even an older kid, but a week is too long long for 3 year-olds to wait for their reward.

The folks that I work with  are smart, overachieving people who generally do great work. We try to reward them for their work with salary increases, promotions, and recognition, but we don’t always do a great job. Often, I think, our incentives feel less like the Ikea incentive and more like the Morning Glory incentive. The connection to their particular contributions isn’t always clear. And we don’t always promote people and give them raises in a timely fashion. Of course, they don’t throw tantrums or hit me when I’ve missed the mark, but a lack of good incentives can still be a problem.

Sometimes I teach my kids. And sometimes, I learn from them.

This is a zen Buddhist koan shared by Robyn Waters at the Jump@10 mini conference last week.

She’s the former VP of Trend & Design at Target Corp, current rock star at inspiring people and companies to think smartly, inspirationally, and honestly about their growth. I think she’s an excellent example of where combining your work passions with your life passions can lead you. She’s gone from a stellarcorporate career that almost ate her life to a careerr where she’s a writer/speaker/adviser who sets her own metrics for what successful work looks like and how that plays a part in a successful life. It is inspiring.

And I love the power that that quote reminds us about - our own power to take action to turn on the light. It’s so easy to imagine the shadows of villains all around us - our bosses, our partners, our kids - conspiring to make our lives difficult. When really, often, we’re getting in our own way.

Step out!

My company just celebrated it’s 10th Anniversary. To celebrate, we invited some amazing thinkers and doers to talk about whatever they’re thinking about and doing these days. My brain is full of interesting ideas, which I’m sure will spill into the blog over time.

But today I’m thinking about one speaker in particular, Andy Hargadon. His blog is here. He’s a prof at the UC Davis School of Management with a very impressive bio.  One of the things that I appreciate the most about his work is the way he explodes the myths around ideas and innovation. Andy has discovered that innovation isn’t about building a better mousetrap. It’s about building networks of relationships between buyers, sellers, advocates, financiers, etc around the mousetrap. Without the networks, even the best mousetrap just sits on some stores shelf or, worse, in your warehouse. According to Andy, the idea is only the beginning of the innovation process. The hard part is what comes next, building the right network around the idea.

Anyone who has ever created a great product that didn’t succeed knows how true Andy’s findings are. Most new products that are introduced fail. And sure, some fail because they’re not actually better. But many excellent ideas still don’t succeed, and a lack of a supporting infrastructure, or network, is one common reason.

Parents who don’t want to constantly be tearing their hair out also leverage the power of the network. We have a network of teachers, babysitters, grandparents and great-grandparents that help us care for the monkeys while we work and play. They’re not just there for child-care, though. They’re critical parts of our child raising network because they can teach them things that we can’t. Mom mom, the monkey’s great grandmother, is good for introducing new songs and stories. Pop Pop, their grandfather, knows how to dig giant holes in the sand. Nana knows the entire tune of Peter and the Wolf. I know how to make pizza dough. We all play our part.

The network isn’t just critical to working moms, either. My sister-in-law just told me about her friend who decided to host a summer camp in her home. Her three kids each invited a couple of friends over, she hired a teacher or two, and voilla, instant summer fun. The kids got to participate in some new activities, the moms got a bit of a break, and the hosts didn’t even have to change out of their PJs until 10 AM.

The myth of the nuclear family is almost as strong as the myth of the lone inventor. Believe in either at your own expense - not only are you less likely to succeed, you’re less likely to have fun while you’re doing it.

Someone found my blog yesterday by googling “hit new husband with rolling pin.” I am so proud.

The search tracking capability of wordpress is great because it allows you to see the digital wake that your writing leaves. Themes, posts and comments all merge together in this wake in a way that the writer can’t control. So if you want the right people to find your stuff for the right reasons, you need to generally be conscious about the types of posts you write and the language within those posts.

This makes me think of another wake metaphor that my team coach, Sarah Singer Nourie, has talked to my team about. She talks about how people, like boats, have a wake. Often times, the higher a person is in an organization, or the bigger their personality, the bigger their wake. Just like boats. What this means is that even your intentional actions - walking through the office, stopping or not stopping to talk - have unintentional consequences. The leader who is always running and never walks sends an implicit ‘hurry up’ or ‘oh, no, the company is on fire’ message. The leader who always walks the same path, stopping to talk to the same few people, sends a message about who is important and who is not.

As a parent, I can see the results of my wake on my children. When I’m stressed about getting them to school on time so I can get to a meeting, they tend to be high anxiety, too. Especially in the house. The minute we get outside and we are headed where we’re going, we all visibly relax. And if I’m calm and intentional, they’re more likely to act that way too, with me and each other.

The more intentional we are about our behavior, the more our wake has a desirable impact, not a destructive one.

Of course there are exceptions. I kinda like this post  about making sure that expectations and standards are aligned to foster good communication. The wake: ‘jeans that make your butt look good’ is one of the most popular terms that people search when they find my blog. I just hope they’re not too disappointed.

Sue Shellenbarger wrote a nice post about how women indirectly influence how their spouses parent a few days ago on The Juggle, the WSJ’s blog on juggling work and parenting. A study written up in Journal of Family Psychology found that the way a new mom reacts to her spouse’s parenting efforts has a huge impact on whether he is an engaged and participatory parent.

If she encourages him, sets aside time for him to hang with the new baby, and complements him in front of others, he’s more likely to stay engaged. If she rolls her eyes, mocks him, or talks him down to the baby (you know ‘daddy dressed you in a silly outfit, didn’t he’), he’s likely to back away from involvement.

As a new mom, I was totally insecure. One of the ways that I hid it was to pretend I knew what I was doing. Because the monkeys outnumbered me, I couldn’t pretend that I could do it alone. USD had to get involved early, which I think has been great for our relationship and the relationship that he has with the monkeys.

When I went back to work, I started traveling. Because USD was always home at night, there was another reason that he had to stay very involved with their care. Even in these circumstances, though, I could see that the more I tried to tell him what to do, or, even worse, ‘fix’ the mess he had made with their outfits, their diapers or their cribs, the more he would back off. I quickly learned that the only thing I’d get out of micro-managing was the opportunity to do it all myself. No thank you.

Managers and bosses can have the same effect on their employees. The boss who always re-writes her associates’ documents no matter how good they are will find, over time, that they always come to her in need of a rewrite. Any smart worker learns not to waste her time if the work is going to be ‘fixed’ anyway.

Many good leaders are conscious of this kind of overt over correction, and avoid doing it. What we might not always be conscious of are the indirect ways we teach those who work for/with us to be helpless — withcomments to other colleagues, expressive body language, not taking time to communicate properly or even not giving people enough time to get something right.

The result in the workplace is the same as the result in the home: lack of engagement and lack of participation. These subtle messages that you’re not doing a good job results in you not doing a good job, and often, not doing the job at all. Which works out well for the manager or the parent who wants to do it all herself. And is a good reminder for the rest of us to think about how we empower others.

One of my fantasies - yes, this is my life, and this is a fantasy - is to really organize the monkeys’ toys. We have a bunch of bins, but I want bins with labels. I want the boxes in the bins to have labels. So that everyone involved in putting stuff away knows exactly where to put stuff. And so that when we want to play with something, we know exactly where to find all of it’s pieces.

Sadly, this remains in the realm of fantasy. But I’ll get it done, hopefully in time for the monkeys to be able to read the labels.

I got a little cautionary tale on what not to do with the system the other day at Whole Foods. Here’s their new system for waste management.

There are 6 different bins, each labeled. From left to right the labels read: Landfill Only , Co-Mingle Only, Compost Only, Compost Only, Plastic Bag and Wrap Only, Landfill Only. There are some equally obtuse sub headers under the labels.

The other day while I ate dinner at the little cafe, I watched about four people approach the trash cans, stare blankly, squint, and then throw everything in the “Landfill Only” category. Nice work, Whole Foods. You’ve confused the heck out of your shoppers. And made more landfill in the process.

An effort to create a system where everything has it’s place doesn’t quite work if it’s too complicated to follow. So I’m guessing my ‘creative playthings’ category won’t be as useful as labeling a box ‘finger puppets & musical instruments.’ Good to know.