I recently enjoyed reading The Healing Power of Nature, an article in TIME magazine by Alexandra Sifferlin. One of the points in the piece was that a study found that people who spent 60 seconds looking up at towering trees were more likely to report feeling awe than those who looked at equally tall buildings.  

The inspiring thing about that study is that after just those 60 awesome seconds, those subjects were more likely to help a stranger than the subjects who were looking at buildings.  Effectively, the awe had charged them up.

This got me thinking about how powerful and important awe is, and that I should really spend more time outside instead of surrounded by 5 monitors. But this is our busiest time of year in development, as we ramp up toward our next release of the Spitfire Project Management System.  Honestly, I spend considerable time thinking about awe during release season.  We want to be sure the release will have enough new stuff to awe both the tech crowd and the users in the trenches!  Have we pulled it off yet?  Is there time to pack something else in, for one more wow?

We know it is important to inspire some awe in our users at release time for a couple of reasons.  Planning an upgrade takes time and energy, and therefore motivation helps. More importantly, we want to inspire better ways of getting day-in day-out tasks accomplished.  Overcoming the inertia behind how things are “always” done sometimes takes a little awe to inspire the change.

While I’m at it, I should be honest and admit that awe flows in both directions. Specifically, everyone at Spitfire appreciates seeing and hearing what our clients do with our software. Some of those inventive solutions genuinely awe us!  This charges us up to provide great new features.  So, thanks!

If you’re not part of the Spitfire family yet, I encourage you to take a look at our software. Our sales team will do its best to awe you.

Remember—according to that study it only took 60 seconds to become awe-charged. Maybe, after seeing our free demo, you’ll be inspired to help a stranger, or help your business processes.  Either one sounds like a win.