Should you refinance your mortgage?

MAKING IT UP

AS YOU GO ALONG

Beware of having a "master plan" for your life, warns business and creativity consultant James Ogilvy. "A life with a single `grand goal' robs you of your freedom because it demands that every action serve that end," he told the World Future Society

Such single-mindedness stifles creative thoughts and actions that could lead to more satisfactory results. Besides, the ability to be creative will become an increasingly important skill in the workplace as more and more jobs succumb to automation. "A capacity for innovation is as important in an information economy as the need for standardization was to the industrial economy," maintains Ogilvy, vice president and co-founder of Global Business Network, a California-based consulting group.

He says that he is not advocating the abolition of goals. Rather, he believes that people periodically should revise them, so that they can stay in touch with the realities of the moment. Artists of all types, he points out, have been using this approach for centuries. Musical improvisation is one such example. "You don't always know exactly where you'll end up when you start."

Ogilvy points to the lack of success by highly organized science and research because too man goals and deadlines are impose "On a dollar-per-patent basis, big science doesn't do as well as the less-bureaucratized passion of garage inventors.

"We shouldn't cease all planning but we should give up drawing up master plans for our lives, for sooner or later it's time to cease preparing for life and begin living it."

RETURN TO NATURE

FOR 1996 COLORS

Softer, warmer shades will surround us in 1996 in the cars we drive, the clothes we wear, and in our homes, according to Color Marketing Group, Alexandria, Va. The nonprofit international association of color designers say trends to look for are yellow's warming influence on greens browns, and reds; an upswing in the influence of metals and minerals, manifested in a resurgence of browns and grays; and a broadening of the focus on environmentalism into all aspects of nature. The following are among the new colors expected to be big:

* Highway - a medium neutral gray with a hint of warmth.

* Treasure - poised between brown and green, this rich, burnished deep gold is a pivotal color.

* Buckskin - a medium brown touched with red. Warm and dry, this desert neutral is a cautious transition into brown.

* Caffe latte - a soft, medium red-gold. Warm and comfortable, this red-influenced neutral is rich, yet harmonizing.

* Victorian secret - innocent yet romantic, a soft yellow-touched pink hinting at a new direction for rose.

* 'Round midnight - a no-risk alternative to traditional black with a blue undertone.

* Lucia blue - a soft medium blue touched with green, this color is a natural evolution of teal toward classic turquoise.

* Plantain - a fresh, light yellowgreen, from nature with a touch of the tropics.

* Wintermoss - a complex, grayed yellow-green that borrows from natural architectural elements such as rocks and minerals.