Ideas spawn as soon as you stop thinking about them, and only after you experimented and done your research. After the work’s been done, the best thing you can do is allow your ideas to bake. Sleep on them. Turn your focus to something else while your brain connects all the neurons and turns them […]
Tag Archives: ideas
Back of the envelope…for starters ✍️✉️
It doesn’t matter where or how an idea emerges. What matters is that the concept exists somewhere on paper, a napkin, an envelope, a Tweet, or a blog post. We can’t begin to assess and dissect our thoughts unless we can see its basic framework and bones visually. I’m not writing it down to remember […]
Ready, rock steady
The more you work the more you make, at least it appears that way. But Søren Kierkegaard thought wiser: “Of all ridiculous things the most ridiculous seems to me, to be busy — to be a man who is brisk about his food and his work.” Søren Kierkegaard Henry Miller also disdained overworking: “I’ve found […]
Does automation make us less human?
How much of our thought process do we want to relinquish to artificial intelligence? Even Gmail’s auto-replies takes the burden out of typing in two-word responses with pre-populated text likes “yes, great,” “sounds good,” or “awesome.” Soon enough the computers will be the only ones conversing and high-fiving each other. Just as the painter imitates […]
What does it mean to be me?
Sociologist Erving Goffman believed that all human interaction was a theatrical performance. In his most famous book The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life , Goffman called his analysis the study of “Dramaturgy.” Dramaturgical analysis is the idea that we present an edited version of our selves when we meet others in person. All the internet’s […]
Everything starts on paper
Everything starts on paper. Whether you are using post-it notes or loose leaf, paper is ideal for getting down thoughts and mapping out ideas quickly. In fact, some Google employees prohibit phones and use paper exclusively to brainstorm. The magic of writing in analog is a controlled speed, flexibility, and focus. “Everyone can write words, draw […]
Thinking in fragments
Half-baked ideas are valuable ideas. Messy minds and messy processes generate new ways of thinking. We create through the imperfect. “A small drop of ink makes thousands, perhaps millions think,” wrote businessman and self-help book author William Clement Stone. The more ideas we have, the more we have to play with. Brainstorming is, therefore, a democratic […]
Textbook wisdom
Theories are productive ways of thinking even if they’re proven wrong. They lead to other research. Take the theory of evolution. The topic itself lends to all types of discussions around race, identity, brain and body development. Aren’t we all just pond scum who lucked out on terra firma? This is not to say we […]
Everything goes in the queue
The queue is more of a scrapbook than a notebook. It’s a hopper of brain farts and observations brewing in all formats: text, images, video, and sound. It’s… Where ideas get stored and intermix Where content molds and takes shape Where visions incubate until the timing is ripe Where some concepts never the day of […]