M Power is a Melbourne based public relations company that believes communication empowers. Karen Morath is the founder and Managing Director of M Power. M Power provides consulting, training and communication services to organisations largely in the locality of Melbourne

This is m-news, M Power's monthly e-newsletter. It's in its fifth year and goes out each month to hundreds of people who work in or run organisations and understand the power of effective communication.

m-news includes information about related themes - four snippets about business, organisational and individual effectiveness, communication and public relations.

M Power is a Melbourne based public relations company that believes communication empowers. Karen Morath is the founder and Managing Director of M Power. M Power provides consulting, training and communication services to organisations largely in the local government and private sectors.

The ‘fast four' for May are

1. It's just about life
2. A quote we like
3. Tips for dealing with a blank screen or a blank mind
4. Book review

1. It's just about life

Peter Sheahan, author and comment-maker on all things Generation Y, says Gen Yers aren't interested in being 'top of the heap'.

He says they are about consuming experiences, living their life, travelling the world, trying different jobs, learning new skills and different languages.

They are not into the concept of life balance that aims at keeping work and life in equal check.

"It's just about life," he said. (Source - AFR Boss, May 2006)

We can't help what generational mindset we were born into but we can choose to apply at least a little of the Gen Y thinking.

Here are some ideas for starters

take as many (more than?) holidays as you can. Schedule at least two each year and get creative about long weekends too.

ensure you do as much of what you like as you can. If it's baking or playing squash or reading biographies or to your kids or watching foreign films, don't just do those things in your leftover time. Who ever has any of that? Schedule it.

imagine yourself in 10 years. What will you have hoped you have done/experienced/achieved? Make plans now to do/experience/achieve them.

have a complete medical check up, especially if you are over 35 and drop everything now and book one if you are over 40 and have never had one. It takes surprisingly little time.

make sure there is time in your week for doing nothing or going where the wind blows you. A moment of reflection or just time out can nurture or energise, whatever you need.

2. A quote we like

"Leadership is not magnetic personality - that can just as well be a glib tongue. It is not 'making friends and influencing people' - that is flattery. Leadership is lifting a person's vision to higher sights, the raising of a person's performance to a higher standard, the building of a personality beyond its normal limitations."

Source - Peter Drucker

3. Tips for dealing with a blank screen (or a blank mind)

Most people need to write something at some time - a note to someone, a major report, even a quick email.

Whether it is an occasional part of your life or, like mine, something that affects your children's opportunity to eat, here are three simple things that you can do to help overcome a blank screen or mind.

1. Never start writing without a clear idea of what you are about to write. It will be a frustrating, unproductive experience. Write in your head first (at least the first couple of sentences) and when you sit down to write you will have a start. Of course this means you can do something else at the same time. Get up from your desk and do almost anything - go to lunch, grab a coffee, tidy your office, call your mum, read the paper. An idea will be brewing.

2. Make some notes first. Pick up a pad and pen (or a laptop) and move to anywhere but your desk - outside is great, on a couch in reception, in a coffee shop - and write some key words or phrases that you think might be good to use. You will have made a start that will help when you start writing seriously. Or write the whole piece like this if it starts to form before your eyes.

3. Don't worry about language. A major obstacle to producing written work is finding the 'best way to say it'. Use the spoken word and get your ideas out of your head. They will probably only need a slight polish once they are on paper.

4. The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand

This book - the most compelling novel I have ever read - is evidence that some of the great lessons of life and leadership and of personal success are in the pages of novels rather than the business press. It is about character and integrity and we marvel at these traits in the book's leading man - Howard Roark. Perhaps it equally says something about our 21st century definitions of success that the poster boy for principles and vision is a hero in a work of fiction written in 1947?

To buy the Fountainhead from Amazon click here.

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