It’s a whole lot easier to get into creative,

focused action when you’re already moving.

When I move around and let myself have the

adventure of going to new places, my mind

opens up and I can get into creative, focused

action much more easily on projects I’ve been

avoiding. And it’s a lot of fun!

Doing some onerous paperwork while riding on a

ferry from San Francisco to Sausalito does not

feel like work, believe me. Now I am lucky

enough to live in San Francisco with a lot of very

beautiful places to go to on buses, trains, and

boats.

But you can take yourself on a FocusTour

anywhere and any time you want, wherever

you live. No matter how boring and mundane

your day may seem to be, a FocusTour can get

you looking for adventure in your normal, day-

to-day life. No need to travel to the four corners

of the earth for it.

I call it a “tour” because you are taking yourself

out of your usual haunts. We get stuck because

we’re thinking in the same old ways. Being in a

new place makes it much easier to think in new,

creative ways.

And there are new places to discover no matter where you live or what you do. In fact, I think discovering a delightful surprise in a mundane place or on a mundane day or while doing mundane work is really the greatest adventure of all.

Also, key to FocusTours is to remember that people are most open to new creative ideas and new ways of thinking when they are relaxed. That’s why so many people get their “aha’s!” while in the shower or while driving a car—or while they are taking a walk.

Now I know these FocusTours are easier to do if you work for yourself and have more control over your time. But even if you need to spend a lot of time in an office, you might want to steal yourself away from time to time to get creative, focused action work done on big projects, even if you have to do it on your lunch hour.

And if you find yourself having to work on a weekend, it can be a lot more palatable (and productive) if you do it at one of these FocusTour FocusCatalyst locations.

Where can you go on a FocusTour? Here are some ideas:

FocusTour #1: CAFES

Working in a café is a very popular way to change your location to change your

thinking. Nowadays you see people working in cafés all the time.

It’s a phenomenon called “Third Places.” That phrase was coined by sociologist

Ray Oldenburg in his 1991 book, The Great Good Place.

Oldenburg says the First Place people live their lives is in their homes. The Second Place is at work. And the Third Place is where people work and socialize, like cafés.

No wonder Starbucks founder, Howard Schultz, is very interested in the concept of Third Places. It’s also probably why you see more and more Starbucks adding “living room-looking” spaces with easy chairs and patterned rugs to their stores.

I really got into the concept of Third Places myself when I was vice president of

marketing and sales for a Third Place company called Gate 3 WorkClub in the

San Francisco Bay Area.

It was a new kind of workplace—a membership-based club for people who worked alone or for a corporation. Vice presidents from Silicon Valley who didn’t want to commute 100 miles every day were members, as well as freelancers who lived nearby.

Gate 3 WorkClub featured state-of-the-art technology and abundant social networking opportunities in a beautiful 14,000 square-foot building. Members had access to all the business services they needed. They could work solo, with their team or mingle with a diverse group of fellow members.

Alas, in 2004, it was a concept that was still ahead of its time. But it’s one that’s

growing more and more. It’s now called "coworking." See FocusCatalyst.com for

more about it.

Without a Gate 3 WorkClub option, I like to go to different cafés—to mix it up. All

I care about is a good cup of coffee and a good plug for my battery-challenged laptop.

FocusTour #2: NATURE

A local park. Even a school yard. By a creek. By the ocean. In a forest. You can drive to these places and work in your car.

FocusTour #3: HOTEL LOBBIES

Big fancy ones are great. You can get a ton of work done there—work that otherwise you’d totally avoid if you were in your office—all while surrounded by luxury.

I also like going to hotels in tourist areas. Sounds strange, I know. Most people avoid tourist areas like the plague. But as I see it, everyone there is on vacation and in a good mood. It can be energizing to be around them.

Of course, it doesn’t have to be a luxury hotel lobby in a tourist area for it to be a great place to take yourself on a FocusTour. Just about any decent-sized hotel lobby will do.

FocusTour #4: SHOPPING MALLS

At shopping malls you can alternate work time with window (or real) shopping for a break. Really. You can use shopping as a problem-solving and productivity-inducing activity. It just depends on how you focus your thinking.

Take a sticky problem in your head for a window shopping walk around a mall and you just may come up with the “aha!” solution you’re looking for—even while you’re looking at shoes or books or chainsaws or whatever you’d like to buy.

FocusTour #5: MUSEUMS

Many museums have wonderful cafés these days. Work there and you can alternate it with time looking at the art in the museum or going to the museum store. I consider yearly museum membership as really great, cheap office space rent.

FocusTour #6: LIBRARIES

An oldie but a goodie. Libraries are great Third Places to work in. Just make sure you spend some break time there reading a book or magazine you really enjoy.

FocusTour #7: PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION

This is the dirty little secret many folks know about: Sometimes we do our best work on an airplane while traveling to a business meeting.

As long as we don’t have a chatty seat mate, we can work on a plane in lovely

isolation. That makes focused action much easier. No phones ringing. No one bursting into your office. Just you, your laptop and a whole lot of enforced creative, focused time to get a lot of work done.

But you don’t have to wait until your next plane trip to experience the same thing— anytime.

I find getting on any form of public transportation can make me much more creative and productive.

I’ve been known to sometimes hop on the commuter train from San Francisco to San Jose and back (50 miles each way) just to get some work done I’ve been avoiding. I’ve done the same with ferries, light rail trains, regular trains and buses.

The bottom line is that moving to new places helps you to think in new ways. You can turn working in any place, even a hometown you’ve lived in for 30 years, into a mini vacation—and a wonderful adventure—if you take yourself on a FocusTour there.

FocusTours are so important to me that they are how I conduct many FocusCatalyst seminars. Every month I do a FocusCatalyst FocusTour in San Francisco, taking participants from the San Francisco Ferry Building to Sausalito and back on the ferry, teaching them several FocusCatalysts along the way.

And every quarter I take clients on an all-day FocusTour from San Francisco to Yosemite National Park and back via Amtrak’s daily one-day trip there.

In fact, a one-day Amtrak trip to Yosemite I took years ago was my catalyst to the whole idea of FocusTours in the first place.

I came up with the idea because I had a whole lot of what I call “yada yada work” to do for a big marketing client.

We all know what “yada yada work” is. It’s that onerous and frustratingly important paper or email work that may not take many brain cells to do and is so darn boring you’ll do just about anything to avoid it.

In this case, it was a big stack of research I had to read for an extensive marketing strategy I was developing for a client. The idea of sitting in my home office by myself reading it all just depressed me.

Then I discovered the one-day San Francisco to Yosemite trip. ( A trip I swear only tourists know about. I’ve never met anyone who lives in San Francisco who’s heard of it. On the trip I’ve met tourists from all over the world but never anyone from California.)

It dawned on me that it would be a lot more easy, creative and fun to do all that research reading while I was on the train to Yosemite than doing it while sitting in

my office by myself.

Besides, I’d get a 3-hour walk in Yosemite Valley in the middle of the day. Heaven.

So I tried the trip and it worked! I got all my work done and had a wonderful day doing it.

Now my clients have discovered what a creative, productive adventure it is to do a FocusCatalyst FocusTour to Yosemite, too. Each leg of the trip I teach them how to use a different FocusCatalyst.

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