Serendipity and Learning

When I started writing a blog years ago, I wrote a few posts and I thought what next! The ideas seemed to have dried out. But no. Just as I finished writing, in came the next set of ideas and the next and the next. Creativity has to be used - like a skill it is something you have to access again and again and build over time.  And now, this blog is nearly 10 years old, 400 odd posts....

The value of jotting down an idea has been immense. Everybody knows this, but I realised another aspect of thinking. While working on a problem ( as I am at this given point in time), there are spaces of ideas, blockages, struggle, marination and flashes of insight. What I have felt is that unless the "current" idea/approach/thought is written down, expressed or captured in some form a new idea cannot flow, because this current idea is "blocking the way" in a manner of speaking. Like a traffic jam, unless the way is cleared by writing it, capturing it - the new idea cannot pass through. And it may disappear - as will that great idea that you got as an insight, but you thought no way you will forget it. So, jot them, clip them, write them, note them, snap them, whatever it takes... 

There is a trend if you have noticed when you read a set of books - the business pron as they are called. It started from the first TED talk gang. When any one of them writes a book - they cross reference the others book. So, a book by one will refer to a bunch of books by the others and so on. It obviously helps in cross selling and is a great product placement as well. Now, nothing wrong with that. The books in question are products of deep research and almost the placement is fairly relevant. Cut to today. Over the last 15 years, with the democratization of information, anybody can pour out aphorisms and platitudes and construct a jargon based construct for anything in question. And the recent covid crisis has brought many termites out of the woodwork.  You can see them dripping wisdom on Linkedin. They exhort you (in the middle of a pandemic of which there has been no equivalent in our living times) to adapt or perish. They have already declared that the agile will inherit

I have written about Zero before . The app is downright simple. All it does if really activate a timer appropriate to the fast you have chosen, apart from tracking history and all that. The fitband I have does the same thing - it adds a number to the step and aggregates data. Both these are driving behaviours. The button is the enabler. The band is the enabler. The data keeps you going. For instance, seeing the streak on the band or on the fasting app is a great motivator. Wondering a good way to get off junk snacking now! I