creativity – projects | within projects

PhD and me – timed luxury

Diversify the thinking

Two weeks until my Transfer report is handed in. I am feeling the pressure, but I think in a good way. I am thinking clearly, or at least finding my voice. So, when I read the attached at 6am {here} – a story of Rishi Sunak seemingly wanting his positivist mathematical brain to become a population of the same – my writing awoke before I did. Some “unquantifiable” part of me was awake – and I think it offers a reasonable rant. I will park it here. I will be back in August…

…

Wrongheaded “having or showing bad judgement” is a term that springs to mind. My journey back into academia has been via the scientific and quantitatively orientated project world. But it’s philosophy and the social sciences I now seek to apply.

If I pass my first year of my PhD (it’s definitely an if not a when) I will have achieved something different. I’m attempting to introduce a different perspective into a space. Heidegger and social psychology in a project management place. Built from what industry thought project management should be: an industrial complex that saw answers from the industrial military complex, to turn all that was innovative into optimisation of cost. Well, maybe that was wrongheaded, too.

I certainly came about this all wrongheaded. I took my degree (a pass but a failed attempt towards the sea) and went into industry. I learnt to insure projects. Sat with those managing and enabling projects. Learnt enough over thirty years to realise what I saw is broken. So I came back to academia for other perspectives: “Wrongheaded me perhaps needs a new head”

But academia seems broken, too. Another place serving an industrial complex that saw answers from the industrial military complex (and turned all that was innovative into optimisation of cost). And most all of what is broken is the standardised metrics and positivist positioning that underscores that same optimisation. If you want new ideas, don’t expect the automatons to find them. Wrongheaded.

So all is wrongheaded here. A non-sense:

— Optimising. Maximising profit. Minimising cost. That includes turning university into a sausage machine, to then wonder why sausages don’t sizzle on their own. Wrongheaded.

— Nonsense and nonsensical thinking that includes:

society level claims to be scientific, yet blind to the evidence of all going wrong.
a politics advocating free choice and then cutting off both the funding and possibility of different thought.
industry scaling back to zero its part in building the space. Train young people into those industrious automaton needed; alongside not instead of means to be creative.

Wrongheaded x3

I am reading all there is available about project management; and how it connects to the wider academic discourse. Now I read all the practical applications it connects to. I see the contemporary academic is being encouraged to think differently, apply methodology anew, or find alternative perspective. Yet, most-all quantitative learning (positivist positioning) seems now out there in the world. Why are we so sure mathematically derived answers will find different reasoning? Or are we so very sure mathematically driven answers is all there is? Wrongheaded.

Maybe it’s time to let university experiment differently. Humanity 2.0 needs more than one head. That’s rightheaded

…to be continued

Show and tell

A trickster mask unpacked

This is how I created the Trickster image that ends each of my blog entries. I also share some other work to emerge from the same learning journey this represents.

I do more than just work and research from my desk…

There is a dabble of psychology here. A reflection upon flow. Mostly however, this is just a tentative peak into my creative process. Amidst those tougher moments I am sure we all have to make our way through from time to time. In any collaborative process, communication is key. Sometimes that communication and understanding is necessary from within…

Free hand shapes can be drawn in VisioPro. This mask and cave-drawing were adapted from numerous stock images, mouse controlled freehand. Thereafter repurposed, fragmented, shaded. All within VisioPro.

Jack-a-lope (unpacked) – completed 7th February 2021

Visio (Microsoft Visio Professional 2016) is a tool I use for preparing workshop materials in my consulting role. I find using such software as artistic mediums both a means of creative release and reason to be learning new skills I can bring back to the workplace.

I discovered easier ways to fragment images using Visio – YouTube full of tutorials on how to create logos in using this tool. It takes a little practice but basic shapes such as this are surprisingly straight-forward. If considered in the context of flow, these skill improvements are incremental, but each leads to the next, empowering an inner confidence to try more difficult things.

Jaq O’byte (see below) was produced using similar start points of imagery, and built up over several days. I was having a tough time in my head in these few days. Visio becoming a creative outlet. With some increasing ambition as new tricks, tips, and visual effects were learned, discovered, applied and adapted. Even on the tough days flow becomes easier to find when basics are built upon over time.

These characters are more than random images. They each became intermingled with narratives, short-stories, and psychological examinations with my therapist. Typically these moments of high creative activity become directed toward wider thought, but inner struggle directed me inwards. The art-work sometimes cause and sometimes effect of the ebb and flow. Much of this is symbolic and with personal meaning. Maybe I will elaborate on this at some point. But not today.

This logo began life as an ambitious attempt at explain how critical controls between parties need a connecting piece to be shared – projects | within projects was in mind as this emerged on a page.

A project of integration to connect two projects of control (completed 16th March 2021)

Thanks for reading to the end. Not directly research or work related, but hopefully a little more visibility upon a process. A little understanding of how behaviours turned toward inner need can become productive. A little trust derived from better understanding of such demands and needs.

About Me

In psychology we are required to look beneath the mask. This blog series is attempting to unmask some hidden parts of projects to engender a more collaborative way.

Find my professional mask here:

art, creative, creativity, depression, digging deep, flow, positive, show and tell, visibility, visio Pro