Snapshot of the Day » Creativity

Improvise, Adapt and Overcome

Luis — Wed, 18 May 2011 03:16:42 +0000

Today an unexpected situation happened when I arrived to the gym where I daily go. I forgot to bring my indoor sport shoes with me. I only had my outside shoes that besides not being allow to use them, they did actually look good when you are in sport outfit. So I had 3 choices, break the rules and do exercise with those shoes, go back home missing one day of gym or actually go without sport shoes and still do my routine. I opted for the last one. Missing a gym day was definitely a no-no although for some that would be the only option. No in my case, so I really struggle between doing my exercise with my shoes or without any. I chose the later because either way I would get notice but the I did not infringe the rules about wearing outside shoes. I am pretty sure some of the people who were there noticed me, but I did not care. I only make sure I was careful enough to avoid any potential injury which actually wouldn’t had made any difference if I was wearing shoes. Anyway, I did have my daily gym and was happy I accomplished what I planned.
I adjusted, improvised, decided and acted against the challenge. That’s the best way to deal with similar situations a lesson that always I will try to keep in mind.

A Simple Act

Luis — Sun, 05 Dec 2010 14:12:06 +0000

Today, another important milestone was reached. The final printing of 2 products that I contributed with their content was finally accomplished. This brings me a great satisfaction because these products represent an original idea I had back on December 2009.

Besides its utility and nice layout, “A Simple Act” also fulfill a personal goal which is trying to make a contribution to the community and society by providing something that inspire them and others in their daily life. The calendar and the agenda, contains inspiring actions to cheer your day or the day of others.

A Simple Act is a product developed and designed by my wife in cooperation with Toronto Star and it will be sold in Chapters-Indigo across Canada very soon. I hope you like it or buy one as a gift for someone special.

Finally saving the best part to the end; one of the illustration happens to be designed by my older son Gabriel (7 at the time of drawing) which made him and us so proud of his talent. I belief he will follow the steps of his talented mom very soon.

Smiling faces

Luis — Sun, 24 Oct 2010 03:27:00 +0000

Yesterday in the morning my son and I were rushing before dropping him in the school. When we step out of our house right down the entrance my son pointed out a smile face made of some leaves the wind had blown.

Finding smile faces it is not as trivial as it seems to be. It might require some imagination as well as paying detailed attention to our surroundings, but more importantly I think, to have the right attitude.
The lesson I learned from this experience was that if we focus on positive and inspiring things like these smiling faces, they will start appearing everywhere. It is like when you concentrate in the color red for a couple of seconds and then you start noticing red everywhere.

Whether you focus on the negative or the positive it will become self-fulfilling prophecy. Keep looking for the smile faces and they will keep popping out.

[click] Oct. 22, 2010(Fri) 08:12 am

A great productivity tool

Luis — Thu, 13 May 2010 01:51:58 +0000

Recently I found an excellent and very useful tool that help me collect and store lots of resources and ideas. The product is called Evernote a very useful external brain (does how they call it) where you can store text, image, sound, web pages, pdf files, spreadsheet, etc. The application also has a mobile version for Android, iPhone, BlackBerry, Palm, Windows and Mac and most recently iPad.
You could actually retrieve any stored information anywhere and anytime as well as capture anything you might find useful. By applying tag you can even set subcategories that can help you retrieve information better. Most of the features come with the free version; however, the premium version give extra features such as optical character recognition in your PDF files, https encryption, extra limit to upload files, among others. One of the thing I recently started to do is selecting recipes from different bloggers and saving it in my recipes folders that help me build my weekly menu. An excellent tool I highly recommend it.

Personal Projects

Luis — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 20:35:16 +0000

I just found this interesting speech about personal projects and how to make it happens. Some time we need to remind our self that a great idea it is just simply that: a great idea. Nothing will happen if we actually do not take action to implement it.

[click] Apr. 08, 2010(Thu) 04:41 pm

School, future and creativity

Luis — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 13:37:45 +0000

Literacy is very important skills that every single child should learn, but as important as that so is creativity. Unfortunately, schools are not focusing on it enough. What are your thoughts?