By Fatmanur Erdogan, Hurriyet Daily News Flow is “a state of deep focus that occurs when people engage in challenging tasks that demand intense concentration and commitment. Flow occurs when a person’s skill level is perfectly balanced to the challenge level of a task that has clear goals and provides immediate feedback.” So says Mihayl Csikszentmihalyi, professor and former chairman of the Department of Psychology at the University of Chicago. In a state of flow, you are completely involved in and focused on the activity at hand. You feel the confidence that comes from knowing you have the skills required […]
Bloggers: Turn The Light Onto Yourselves
By Fatmanur Erdogan, Hurriyet Daily News (click here Bloggers: Turn the light onto yourselves) You can learn a lot about people by watching how consistently they apply their standards of behavior. For example, take how people react to Turkey’s ban on YouTube. YouTube is the world’s most popular video sharing site, and many of us are puzzled by Turkey’s banning of it. We question our democracy. We blame the courts for not understanding how the web works. We get angry at the people who found a few of the videos and comments so offensive that they took the issue to […]
Hitting the Communication Bulls Eye
By Fatmanur Erdogan, Hurriyet Daily News (click here for Hitting The Communication Bulls Eye) As a communications professional with a background in management, marketing and psychology and who has been working as an expat most of her life, I have come to realize that most top managers around the world tend to overestimate the strength of their communication skills. They often think that since they communicate at work, and since they are successful at their jobs, they must be good communicators. However, more often than not they are wrong. They are rising through the ranks for various reasons, but they’d […]
Learn To Enjoy The Winds Of Change
By Fatmanur Erdogan, Hurriyet Daily News (click here for Learn To Enjoy The Winds Of Change) Almost every day, we can see cars going the wrong way down the street. To their drivers, the “Wrong Way” or “No Entry” signs mean little. These people are endangering the lives of the other drivers on the road, but they don’t stop there. They force the legal drivers to back up or otherwise reroute themselves, in order to accommodate their errors. If the law-abiding drivers resist, the wrong-way drivers often yell and scream and gesture such that those in the right feel guilty […]