​This counterintuitive creative technique has broad applications for strategy and execution
 
This is another “I” story, not a “we” story.
 
And it draws on the past—quite literally.
 
Years ago, I worked as a quick-sketch artist at a portrait shop on the Atlantic City NJ boardwalk. I used charcoal for black-and-white, and pastel for color.
 
This was before iPhones.
 
But hey, it paid the bills, handily, all the summers I was in college.
 
Now there’s a good chance you’ve never sat for a portrait artist; the whole “quick” part of the “quick sketch” is a lost art; heck, it was already getting killed off by Polaroid cameras when I was behind the easel.
 
Here’s the thing. The artist will ask you to pose, and hold that pose as well as you can. (Side note: Drawing babies is nigh impossible!) And while you’re sitting still, that artist is doing anything but. He or she is working frantically, trying to capture your likeness. You’d see the easel creak and sway, you’d hear the scratching of pencils and chalks, and maybe even smell the dust. You’d also see the artist doing some strange stuff. For example, I’d hold out a pencil at arm’s length, and use it (by aligning it) to measure the features on someone’s face in order to replicate the proportions on the page.
 
I would also squint.
 
This would always elicit the most startled reactions from my sitters:
 
“Why are you squinting?”
 
“Are you okay?”
 
“Do you need glasses?”
 
“Can you see?”
 
Making the case for clarity
 
First off, I had perfect vision back in those days. Second, I did not invent the squint technique. It’s common practice among artists, but since most people aren’t artists, they’re unaware of it. Which is a pity, because it’s really cool, and, as we’d teased at the outset of this article, surprisingly applicable to a wide variety of challenges.
 
There is no secret society of portrait artists. I will teach you this technique. You can try it right now. It’s cool.
 
Even if you wear glasses, your eyes pull in an amazing amount of detail. So much, indeed, that it can be overwhelming. Squinting eliminates the noise. Specifically, it’s great for delineating zones of light and shadow. People’s faces are very subtly contoured, and with your amazingly powerful eyes/brain combination, it can be hard for you to easily discern the “line” which divides the brightest and darkest parts. There are so many shades of gray; indeed, all the colors make the job even harder.
 
But when you squint, you instantly reduce everything you see into black and white, light and shadow. The harder you squint, the more binary and obvious it becomes.
 
Try it. Look at yourself in the mirror. If you’re sitting near a window, the window-side of your face will be lighter. You already knew that. But if you need to very quickly see where to draw in the shading, squint. Voilà. It’s right there for you to see. Now just scribble it on the page.
 
Going deep
 
People in business will often talk about the ability to acquire a “30,000-foot view” of a situation. Or the ability to “peer around the corner” of where things are going.
 
If they only squinted.
 
Artists have known these tricks for millennia. Don’t believe me? Consider the time-honored thumbnail. It’s a tiny little sketch you make of a drawing (or layout, or web page, or UX display) which purposely can’t even accommodate any detail. It’s a technique for forcing you to eliminate noise, clutter, and distractions.
 
See where this is going?
 
You can apply the squint technique, both literally and figuratively, to a host of challenges. Use it to filter out fine print and executional flubs in a piece of artwork-in-progress. Use it to discern and bifurcate your audience, much like we do via the simple two-button layout of our own home page. Employ it to carve up projects into tasks, and groups into teams. The only limits are your imagination, and as is the case with all raw creative endeavors, this technique is never constrained by budget.
 
What have you got to lose? 

​Can you actually profit from your time off? Of course!
 
The holidays are approaching. Fast. Scan your calendar: How many available days do you have left to build up this year’s bottom line?
 
The end-of-the-year crunch can feel like a terrible obstacle. But only if you let it. It’s actually a tremendous opportunity to build business. It all depends upon your approach.
 
A double-edged sword
 
Depending upon your workload, you could see this dwindling number of work days as not enough time to get your projects done, or not enough time to book sufficient work to finish the year with momentum.
 
But think of it this way: Your clients—and your prospects—face the exact same dilemma. Their calendars are no different than yours. And therein lies your opportunity.
 
At its core, this is really an exercise in calendar-carving. Or production control. Or psychological gamesmanship. Call it what you like; it’s about planning, now, what you intend to be doing for the rest of the year.
 
Divide and conquer
 
Here’s a safe assumption: Your clients (and prospects) are just as anxious about these dwindling days as you were (before you started reading this article, LOL!). What a lovely gift!
 
Start with the lowest-hanging fruit: the clients you know best. That’s because you’re already familiar with their annual rhythms, from budgeting to trade-show planning. This lets you “climb into their heads,” look at that exact same calendar, and easily deduce the things that have them sweating the most—and where you're best poised to save the day.
 
Hold onto that thought. We’ll come back to it in a second.
 
Next, think of your slightly-higher-hanging fruit: hot (or at least warm) prospects. While you won’t command the same level of intimacy with them that you have with the first group, you can still put yourself into their shoes without too much effort: Research their company (the “News” section of their website, with its press releases organized chronologically, is a great place to start—see what they were doing at this time last year) to find out about what kinds of activities command their attention at year-end—and at next year’s beginning.
 
Now, look at that calendar again, and find all the “hot spots” you want to concentrate on. That’s where we’ll begin.
 
Map it out
 
By the way, we have zero intention of disturbing your nice Thanksgiving dinner. That’s the best part of this exercise. Make it work for you. The “hot spots” we referred to above mean the most propitious dates, between now and year-end, for you to interface with these clients to set up meetings/discuss new engagements/make plans for the end of this year and the beginning of next year.
 
These should be pretty obvious to you when you look at the calendar. The day before Thanksgiving? Nope. Scratch that off your list. Again, put yourself in the shoes of your prospect: When are they looking to get as much done as possible before settling down to a (hopefully) relaxing long weekend? Ditto for the end-of-year/New Year’s holidays. Factor in ample time for clients to respond to however you reach out to them (whether email, phone, etc.), and for you to reply in kind/make your pitch. You’ll soon see that you both want to spend quality time away from the office, secure in the knowledge that you’ve taken care of business before you left.
 
The outreach you make will be tailored to the needs of the client that you’d envisioned earlier (when we told you to “hold onto that thought”). The better you’ve anticipated their needs, the more receptive they’ll be to your offer. And the flawless timing, on your behalf, is the icing on the cake.
 
Eat, drink, and—by all means—be merry
 
So what on earth were we suggesting in the subhead of this article, namely about profiting from your time off? It’s simply this: You’re more productive when 1) you’re not stressing over filling your calendar, and 2) you’ve had a chance to recharge your batteries. When you map out and successfully execute your year-end biz-dev tactics, you’ll have accomplished both. Which is pretty profitable practice.