We live in a society now where there are constant pulls on our attention - a phone just beeped, a new email just popped up, our child wants us to play, the mailers need to be sent.  And I'm sure we've all experienced the need for quiet alone time in order to get creative work done - whether it be writing or brainstorming or choreographing or painting.  The ideas won't flow when we constantly being interrupted!  And research by Roda, Stojanov, and Kianfar illustrates this... http://ac.aup.fr/~croda/publications/RODA-AAAISpring2013.pdf  In their experiment, task switching hindered people's ability to produce on a creativity test.


So when you need to work creatively, turn off your cell phone, close all your browser tabs, and put a do not disturb sign on your door!  :-)  For employers, make sure that your creative employees have blocks of time where they don't have to go to meetings and won't be walked in on.  For parents, if your child is engaged in an activity, let them stay engaged.  Converse with them and answer questions if they ask, but otherwise, just watch their creativity flourish.

My second paper for the Harvard Extension course I'm taking in comparative education policy - I focused on the importance of play and child-led learning in 'nursery' education in the United Kingdom..

Was just reading great posts on Hiring the Happy and How to Screen for Happy  - I would agree that hiring people who are happy with their lives and themselves is a key to building a good work culture and community.    

Happy doesn't mean always the life of the party - but rather looking on the bright side of things - dealing with the situation on hand, learning from it, and moving forward with a positive outlook.  You want to look for people who "speak well of former employers, take personal responsibility for past career mishaps, and who will be okay whether or not they get offered your job".   No whining or complaining allowed!

A big trait to hire for that often goes along with happiness is a can-do attitude.  You want to find people who when given a task or a project, say 'yes, I can do that, and any parts that I don't know how to do right now, I will figure out'.  Having employees who take the ball and run with it, rather than needing to be hand-led through every step, makes life so much easier for the manager, and also just gets more done!  To find for can-do attitude, look for work projects or outside hobbies where they have taken initiative, ask applicants to complete screening tasks before hand, and get them doing real work during their interview so you can see how they react when on their toes.  A good retail sales person can be helpful and work the floor in any store, even if they don't know the product line (although you also want to find someone who has a special interest in your product line and your company's line of business.)

Although remember that being happy and can-do doesn't mean always in agreement - you want to find hires that who will get along well with their boss and co-workers, but who will fill any voids in the organization's skill sets, values, or priorities, which sometimes leads to differences of opinion on what's important.  A good leader can recognize where their weaknesses are (both personal and within their team), and hire people to step into those gaps, in order to fulfill on the organization's full mission.

Several posts have come out recently, reiterating the importance of interacting with children.  I'm excited to see more main-stream media getting this important information out in the news.

A piece in the NYTimes (http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/04/10/the-power-of-talking-to-your-baby/) highlights the classic Hart & Risley study showing the huge difference in quantity of child-directed speech that different babies experience, and its correlation with socio-economic status.  If all parents could speak more with their infants and toddlers, then perhaps the achievement gap would disappear or at least shrink.  The NYTimes article mentions a few studies being done with the LENA recorder to see if measuring the number of words spoken helps parents to be more conscious of their speech patterns and talk more to their children.

The Slate post (
http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2013/09/children_s_language_development_talk_and_listen_to_them_from_birth.html) describes more specifics about one of the projects, the Thirty Million Words Project, using LENA as well as specific training for the mothers about the significance of their words and the impact that their speech can have on their child's future.

Annie Paul Murphy's post (on her blog, on Creativity Post, and on Mindshift) makes the extremely important point that it's not just the quantity, but also the quality of the speech that matters.  One aspect is the positive vs negative ratio of what the parent is saying, but more relevant is the interaction, the back and forth, the 'turn taking'.

Another Slate post (http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2013/09/baby_app_ftc_complaints_are_missing_the_big_picture.html) talks about how 'baby apps' can be a positive influence on children - if parents use them as an interaction point!  The apps and videos don't make a difference (and may even have a negative impact) if the parent just sets their child down in front of the screen.  But if the parent engages with the child and the technology, asking questions about what's happening on the TV, helping the child to use the app and talking about what's happening, then this screen time can contribute to learning.  Also another study (Skype Me! Socially Contingent Interactions Help Toddlers Learn Language)  finds that young children can learn new vocabulary through screen time, if the people or characters on the screen are responding to children in timely and meaningful ways - aka grandparents interacting through Skype.

Interaction and participation makes all the difference - talking with your child, not just at your child, can give them a head start in life.