3 Essential Skills

3 Essential Skills To Enhance Your Work Performance

Your performance in all aspects of life can be improved if you master these essential skills. The irony is, most people couldn’t avoid falling into the trap of "Paralysis from Analysis".
Most of us are aware of this peril, but how many know when to put a stop to the seemingly endless analysis and say: "OK, this is enough, we've got the key points now. Let’s get on with execution."
Peter Drucker, one of the great thinkers of modern management, observed that young executive stalled in their career because they lack the essential skills to walk into a situation and grasp the whole picture at once - the gestalt.
It is amazing how much details we failed to notice, when our perception is clouded by our pre-occupation with analysis. Our own thoughts are quick to perform analysis that often get distorted by our values, judgments, and experience. As a result, we are distracted from hearing, sensing and seeing the obvious that is just in front of us. By neglecting the change in voice tone, tightening of jaw muscle, tension in the shoulder, or subtle change in the eye, we often hear the words without getting the real message. Excessive analysis does hamper perception sensibility.
Our performance in work and life in general would be greatly improved if we develop the three essential skills to enhance perceptual sensibility – our instinct, creativity and imagination.

Instinct
Our instinct is powerful tools that can help us gain a lot more information than our usual senses. It can tell us things in our environment that directly affects our well-being.
Sometime, certain information or thoughts just come to our mind, prompting us to take certain actions that greatly impact the course of our life. Instinct is the higher kind of knowledge that comes from direct experience. When instinct is at work, we just know it without any need to figure anything out or to analysis the situation. Our heightened sense of awareness receives all the information we need without us trying too hard.
With the right knowledge and tools, instinct can be developed.

Creativity
Creativity not only help us solve problems and increase our effectiveness in our work, it adds color and beauty to our life.

Many people never thought that they are creative. We failed to realize that everyone has a mind that is a huge creative force. Creativity is a natural and constant process of our mind. However, creativity is often inhibited by rules and restrictions that are imposed on it externally. It can be nurtured with a spirit of adventure, as well as the willingness to experiment and change the rules.
A simple way to kick-start the development of creativity is to make changes to things that we do day in and day out as a matter of rules or habits. In our daily life, there are plenty of opportunities to find new ways to do the same old things. By consciously looking out for ways for improvement, we activate the creative genius within us to start exercising its creative muscle.
Remember: An enriched life with a variety of experiences can foster greater creativity.


Imagination

Imagination is the language of the subconscious mind. It helps direct our creative force.
There are two ways to use our imagination: Reflective or Active.
Using imagination in a reflective way tune your attention inward to develop intuition. On the other hand, using imagination in an active way helps build your vision and creates the outcome you want.
With constant practice, you can build an arsenal of essential skills: instinct, creativity and imagination, to effectively enhance the level of performance in every aspects of your life.