It's a great technique: Whenever you have a problem to solve, or need to come up with a fresh idea, challenge yourself to come up with at least three ideas, not just one. Or if you are a team leader, challenge your team to find three ways of doing something, not just settling for their first plan.

I had a client who has been landed with the job of liaising with his company's European offices by phone, which from Sydney means late night phone calls, often for two or three hours, sometimes more. He gets limited time off in lieu, but the main problem is that he has a young family who miss out on his company at night, and he is left feeling both tired and resentful. When I quizzed him, it turns out this has gone on for over four years, up to four nights each week!

I challenged him to find a way of stopping it, and soon. His first solution was to write an email suggesting they find someone in Europe to give this support (though he already knows there is no budget for this). His second solution was simply to refuse to do it any more, effectively threatening to resign. A high risk strategy, that one.

When I explained that I always ask for three solutions, he thought for a few minutes and said, with a look of dawning possibility on his face, 'I could tell them I am not available after next week for phone discussions outside Sydney business hours, but if they summarise the top three (there's that magic number again) challenges or concerns at the end of their phone meeting and email it to me, I will respond by email within 24 hours'. He left soon afterwards, already drafting his memo in his head...

That was a couple of years ago now, but I have never forgotten the speed with which he solved his problem one he was introduced to this tool - or the profound effect the solution had on his life.

The thinking behind this most excellent technique is that we often settle for the first halfway decent idea, either because of time pressure, laziness, or lack of belief in our ability to come up with a really innovative winner. By being 'forced' to have at least three ideas, we give ourselves a fighting chance of digging deeper to something really fresh. 

The trick is not to edit yourself at this early phase, to be as wild as you can. It's not as if every idea has to be practical, a proven winner, or even cheap or legal - those considerations kick in later. For now, the wildest idea is likely to be the one that contains the seed of the really brilliant solution.

Of course, we don't always need to dig this deep; often, what you did last time, or a small variation on that, is just fine. But when you do need some fresh thinking, this is one of the speediest and most effective tools I know.

So, what are your three ideas?

If you want to implement a change in your life, it takes more than just making a decision in your head. (Nothing new there...)

Nearly two years ago, I ran an experiment for a month. I made one little change to my life every day - with a commitment to continue every change at least until the end of the month. And each change had to be organic, to arise from that day, not be pre-planned or taken from a list of 'shoulds'. Changes included gratitude practice, walking, culling my ‘to do’ list and meditation.

I blogged about it at the time and it was pretty successful, with a number of the changes still in force today.

But I realised that it was a big ask, one change every day, and by the end it was very challenging keeping 28 new balls in the air...

So this year I decided to pick a number of larger changes - gym, meditation (that one only partly stuck around from last time...), eating habits and so on.

It’s month three now and it has worked a treat. Having a whole month to embed a habit (especially a big change) is brilliant. You get to stick at something long enough to start rewiring your brain, and the sense of achievement carries you into the next challenge.

This idea applies just as well to business changes, and I am making some biggies there as well. One a month, and a year later your career (or business) will be all shiny and new...

And then on the weekend I read an article in the paper, about an American guy who has been doing this 30-day challenge thing for three years. He has adopted a vegan diet, learned to play the ukulele, gets eight hours' sleep a night, does something nice for his wife every day - he has even climbed Mount Kilimanjaro as one of his a 30-day makeovers.

Now, I have no interest in the ukelele or going vegan, I don’t have a wife - and I climbed all the way to the top of Mount Kilimanjaro myself twenty years ago. (I’d love to get a guaranteed eight hours a night, though...). But of course these challenges need to be tailored to your goals, to be the things you’d love to change about your life - or the things you’d like to add to it, like mountain climbing or meditation. I’m inspired now, and I’m making a list to carry me through the rest of 2013. 

What about you?

I watched a very excellent TED talk the other day by Dan Ariely. It was full of great stats and stories about how we value our work, resulting from his very serious research using origami cranes and frogs (truly...). Really interesting stuff, worth a look. He is also very entertaining, which is always a bonus when it comes to talking about very serious research.

The thing that hit home for me was the bit about the IKEA effect. (Mercifully, this did not involve online demos using allen keys and white particleboard, though we did see some of the origami frogs...). It turns out that we (over) value work into which we have put blood, sweat and tears, even when it’s flawed - think that lopsided table, or the (my) IKEA bookcase where the back panel is upside down and back to front. 

In the writing world, this is linked to the aphorism known as ‘murder your darlings’, the need to cull precisely those phrases - or whole chunks - of your writing that you have fallen in love with. You know, that brilliant turn of phrase, or that screamingly clever little paragraph. My thinking about this has long been that it’s because they make the rest of your writing look pretty average, and also they are all about you (and your extraordinary talent) rather than the story you are supposed to be telling. I guess Dan Ariely might gently point out that it may also be necessary to murder your darlings because they are not actually quite as brilliant as you believe. Sobering thought.

More business-y examples of the IKEA effect might include the totally gorgeous and cool Powerpoint slides you created to wow the boss, or the exceptionally brilliant report you slaved over for days and days, or that truly great idea you had about marketing...

A spinoff from this research is apparently a tendency to overvalue our internal corporate solutions, and to undervalue an external consultant’s views or suggested solutions to a problem.

I love the idea of the IKEA effect, and I can quite see its application to my world. But I want to have a chat to Dan Ariely about one thing that seems to run counter to his research. 

It’s this: Some people have a tendency to be harshly critical of their own work (never me, of course...).  This can lead to perfectionism and never being satisfied that a piece of work is finished, or good enough to be sent into the world. Equally, we may overvalue the words of ‘experts’ or others in our lives, and assume that almost anyone knows better than we do.

For me, all this also links into the inner critic, a pesky little devil I have frequently written about. You know, that voice that speaks inside your head, telling you that your work is awful, or that everyone will laugh at your great idea, or that Susie is always better at this stuff than you are, so what’s the point...

So, maybe some of us lean towards the IKEA effect, and others go the other way? Or maybe we are seduced by our own work in areas where we have some confidence, and subject to attacks by the inner critic when we try something new, or which we really care about? Or, are Americans more prone to overvalue their own work and Aussies to underplay? I’m not sure, but it’s intriguing stuff. 

What do you think?

• Do something with your body. Go for a walk, dance, clean out a cupboard or do the gardening. 
• Even if you can't exercise, at least think about something quite different - phone a friend for a chat, spend time on a quite different work task, make a cup of tea or talk to a colleague about something else. This gives the right brain a rest and a chance to roam free, doing what it does best, without pushing from you.
• Have a quiet cuppa, run a bath (subject to water restrictions of course), or take granny's advice and just 'sleep on it'. It's amazing how often the solution to last night's overwhelming dilemma just pops into your head early next morning. Keep a pad and pen by the bed so you don't miss anything...
• Slow down, relax, have some fun. This is of course generally a good idea, but it also stimulates the brain in helpful ways and allows new possibilities to become apparent.

I used to be an ‘all or nothing’ type. I would only take on the all-consuming challenge. I would leave my bedroom until it was so messy that it took a whole day to clean up. If I needed to diet I would fast for a week. I believed there was no point doing something unless you gave it all your energy and attention. I never understood the hare and tortoise story - where was the fun in plodding on and on, a bit at a time? My school pencil case was adorned with the John Keats quote, ‘I would sooner fail than not be among the greatest’ and I had a T-shirt that said ‘No guts, no glory.’ 

Not any more.

It started when I became a mother, and my ‘free’ time was snatched in 5- or 10-minute chunks, often with no warning. Slowly, I discovered that you can in fact achieve a great deal in 5 minutes. And I discovered that ‘good enough’ is generally good enough. Now my son is almost grown, but I still use my 5-minute principle to get things (good enough) done.

In fact, I have come to realise that just doing a little bit each day towards your goal is much better than waiting until you can divert huge chunks of time to one project. It’s much less disruptive, and much more sustainable. It is also manageable, and much harder to procrastinate about.

I was reminded of all this now that it’s week eight of my gym program. Little by little, my fitness is growing. Little by little I am introducing new habits of exercise, eating and drinking. Little by little, I am meditating again. Little by little, I can see the changes. I like it. Tortoise is good.

And then I came across a couple of articles about continuous improvement at work, about how you only have to improve something by one-half of one percent each week, to achieve 26% improvement in a year. These articles then went on to do very clever things with maths and compounding and stuff, and conclude that this means you would double your performance or skill or productivity or whatever every 2.7 years. And apparently this also means (thanks to those very clever things with maths and compounding and stuff) that you would increase by more than ten times in ten years. It’s amazing, really...

So, what can you do just 1/2% better this week?