Tag: ideas

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Stray Thoughts – 5/8/2018

Five Things

Here are five things that are swirling in my head:

  • This is America from Donald Glover (Childish Gambino) is interesting, you’ll have tons of easter eggs in the video and song. Another striking thing is how profoundly different the content is from his personal life and his career pre-Atlanta. Did living in Atlanta and doing the show change his sensibilities? Probably. I would love an Oral History on the creation of Atlanta. Also, how much of this success is attributed to the mainstream (white) acceptance garnered pre-Atlanta? If it were post-Atlanta Donald, does any of this happen?
  • I recently saw Tully and loved it. A couple of things stuck out:  I believed that childbirth is the end, like a fairy tale, and this movie walked me through how that is not the case. Yikes, I needed an education. Mental health and sleep are linked, and both are critical to your well being. I’ve noticed the difference post-depression, personally and with better sleep I produce better, bar none. Three, there were no villians and the movie stuck you in the grey area, this felt human, more so than the box office juggernaut, Avengers: Infinity War (loved this one too, but for popcorn reasons).
  • The soft racism of “new” tech is grating on me. I dealt with far less of it when I worked for all Trump supporters (seriously) in old tech. Now working with startups I am more apt to get questions about my musical taste than professional expertise. Talking to black folks mid-career and hearing similar stories. Making me think about a pivot, but I wonder, to where?
  • Coming back “online” after a depression episode sucks because you feel like there is so much to catch up on. I have three medium articles (2 product, one personal) and an email that needs to go out to everyone. Also, still producing this video series after 8 months of tweaking, testing, and changing (so different than last year, I hope you’ll subscribe). Oh, I still have two things out here, one for Jopwell’s The Well and another on my Medium Page.
  • Reading technical books this month. I finished Steering the Craft and started working on the exercises. They have helped my writing already. Ursula K Le Guin was a master, may she rest in peace.
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Take Your Idea to the Gym

What happens in a gym?

Work.

Being focused in a gym means a little short-term hurt for long-term results.

You are purposefully beating yourself up to get stronger.

We have to do the same thing with our ideas.

What is an idea gym?

  • Salon – A salon is a group of friends that discuss ideas. They critically discuss them, as opposed to just talking. Put your ego by the door. The idea is strong ideas, weakly held.
  • Yourself – Self-talk works. Try to probe the idea in your head for weaknesses. Where did it come from?
  • Market – Put it out as is. Stop building at a date you set and put it out. No polish.

Like the gym, the first few times, it’s going to suck. You aren’t going to like being “sore.”

However, no pain no gain.

Remember that transformation you’ve seen when someone went to the gym, with focus, for a year? Now think about that same change for your ideas.

Powerful.

 

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No, it Wwasn’t Free

Everything has a cost.

There is a rule in accounting. All transactions have a debit and a credit. You can’t do one without the other.

To call something free is to dismiss the “credit” side of a transaction.

If you just saw half of the movie screen, your imagination isn’t going to replicate what happened on the other side.

That “free” lunch?

You gave up time, money, or another resource to make it happen somewhere in the chain reaction that got you to that restaurant table.

When you dismiss a part of the equation, you miss the picture.

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Ideas

Give freely.

Give your ideas away, and do so often. Don’t hold on to them.

When you hold on to them, you suffocate them. Talk about them and give them room to breathe. The idea will appreciate it, and often, the people around you will appreciate it as well.

When I say this I often get the response -“What if someone steals the idea?” My response: so what?

An idea is a point in time. They can’t mimic your executive abilities. They can’t take the map in your head. All they have is a place to start.

By focusing just on the act of “stealing” you’ve stolen something from yourself. You’ve stolen your time, and that is worth far more than an idea.

While you pout, they execute, and those who execute, win.

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DTDTD (Digest Think Do Think Digest) Framework

 

[bctt tweet=”DTDTD feeds itself with each iteration and its a great way to control a closed loop. “]

Human beings have a model based infrastructure for our impulses, because we have to. Our senses are “attacked” upwards of a trillion times a second by stimuli, and instantly, we take what is in front of us and apply everything to a framework discarding the things that don’t fit. That’s how we see the world. If we neglected to do this, we enter a state of sensory overload, and everything becomes noise.

So, you don’t get the picture, and if you thought you did, sorry to jolt you out of it, but realize that we all see the world a little differently based on the models we have in our heads. Yes, models, with an ‘s’.

The great thing about understanding that we have multiple frameworks is knowing that we constantly add and manipulate them. We edit and upgrade it all the time with our memories and what we learn.  Like computers, we update and install software.

I’d like to introduce a new one I have thought about for the last few weeks to the list of frameworks you use, and it is one that I found that has great implications to your work.

Introducing the DTDTD(Digest Think Do Think Digest) Framework, a tool to take on a new project that lets you get information, contextualize, execute, and then round-up feedback in a calendar, requirement driven way.

Note: It is critical that you outline and understand what your requirements are before beginning. This factors in because each round of DTDTD REQUIRES putting an end date down. If there is no requirements, DTDTD can trap the work in one of the steps because resistance has a wide berth, especially because there are no hard time limits based on the reading. 

 

  • Digest – Once you have the outline, time to digest everything. Start with trusted sources (classes,trusted blogs, your network, great books) and start pounding away at those resources. The key takeaway here is that you want to gather a ton of voices in your head. Write down the most helpful. Don’t think too much here, just go.
  • Think – Now you sit down and consider the resources you pulled in the first step. If something didn’t help you much, remember feel free to toss it out.  Write down the questions you have, and try to get specific answers. Remember, for specific answers, you need specific questions, so consider this a great primer on your question asking skills.  It’s also a great time to call in accountability partners, mentors, and get a checklist going.
  • Do – Time to execute. Follow the plan, make your mistakes, find out you missed some important things, cry a little in the corner – all the fun stuff in life. The important part here is to get to the end. Finishing here is far more important than anything else. You digest later, the important part is getting to the end of that checklist.
  • Think – After finishing that checklist,dance. Mission complete. Now it is time to digest what you just did. Don’t go seeking feedback from others just yet, spend this time focusing on the questions you had by doing the work.  Get a point of view on why you did the work.
  • Digest  –  Self reflection done? Time to go see what the world thinks. Go to your network, people you trust, and close advisers first. With those people, get the most critical feedback you can. Understand that great feedback works two ways, both sides have to trust each other. Just as much as it stings to hear negative things, trust that they want to help. Once you get the feedback, from them, consider the feedback from others and see if it matches. Sit with it for a while and try to understand it. This feeds into the next ‘cycle’ – if you want to digest for the next go around, the feedback along with the great resources help build a better something better.Remember, only constructive critical feedback matters here – discard anything hurtful.

DTDTD feeds itself with each iteration and its a great way to control a closed loop.

How this scales and how this affects your work is up to you. Big projects can go through 15 cycles of this before the outside world , and smaller ones have one, there is a lot of flexibility here.

Another important note: This is one framework. There are a ton more that the world have written about, remember you have plenty (even if you never studied frameworks). Do not force yourself to deal with one – recall that “to a hammer, all problems look like a nail”

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Ideas and Story

I hate that I can’t really talk about ideas fluently.  They often get into my head, stay there for a while, gain some steam, and leave just as fast as it came. There is nothing better to me than getting a fresh idea and nothing worse than losing one.

The great thing about ideas is they make themselves available throughout the day. Each time you come into contact with something, you get the opportunity to have an idea appear. This process happens in the back ground (thank god) and the time can vary from idea to idea. I once had an idea pop up in my head months after walking in the Brooklyn Art Museum, I only remembered the origin of the idea when looking at a subway map (odd I know – have to love New York). These ideas come up quicker when you are uncomfortable, as if being uncomfortable was a tax for getting better ideas. Same with new experiences (which are often uncomfortable). I try to schedule in new activities through the week and see what sticks. Its fun.

That is all well and good, except ideas don’t mean anything at that point. The idea is imaginary. Value comes into turning that idea into reality. One of the ways to do that is through learning how to craft the idea into a story. Building a narrative with the idea keeps it in place. If you’re determined to work with that, I think it gets harder and harder to lose it. It gets harder and harder to lose that idea to the void. Sometimes it hurts, because growing hurts.It is easy being bad but learning how to deal with bad ideas puts you on the path of good ones.

It stands that I have to get better at telling them. Making those ideas stick, and putting them in places where they cannot leave so easily.

 

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Reading For Ideas

Reading is the idea machine. People have written many things, from life’s secrets to how to cook the perfect scrambled eggs, and usually for the price of 10 dollars, you could have access to that very idea.

For the last 3 months, I have spent time at night reading before bed. At the start of the year, it was 10 minutes, but the practice has grown and I have recently moved it to an hour. An hour gives me about 6 books read a month. It hasn’t been a heavy investment, just an hour before I go to sleep I turn off everything that can ever bother me and just read.

These books are a cross-section of disciplines, ranging from the cognitive sciences, philosophy, business development, language etc. Sometimes the subject is heady – I can’t devour this all at once, only a few pages at a time. It can also be lighthearted and fun, and I can’t wait to devour every single page.

Either way I try to limit myself to spare my energy. These ideas are heavy, connecting thoughts from each discipline together. It is exhausting, especially after a full days schedule. My willpower takes tests, but I do feel it grow stronger with week, and without struggle there is no progress.

Even after 3 months, the advantage is clear. The result;my ideas get better, gaining more insight into my daily actions, how I act, respond, and what I do.

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