Sep
3
I Want a Visible Brain
I try to keep my office rich with inspiration. I've got a whiteboard on which I jot down musings, beginnings of ideas, frameworks I like. I pin up constructs and new principles to my walls, where I can see them. I surround myself with books.
And yet, even with so much visual stimulus, I still find myself suffering from the recency effect. Last In, Last Out (LiLo, to all you accounting and Lindsay Lohan fans out there). I'm more likely to apply the last thing I learned than a something I came across last year.
Friday, I was trying to create an organizing principle…and it just wouldn't come. I was struggling until my eye happened to come across one thing I'd written on my whiteboard and then the cover page of a trend document from December that I'd been meaning to file. All of a sudden I saw the connection and everything became clear.
But what if I hadn't seen them both at the same time? It was pure serendipity.
And that's when I realized, I either need a visible brain - one that lets me constantly sweep through a full catalog of insights at any given moment - or a Flickr brain - one which let's me metatag everything and serve them up as needed.
There's got to be a solution out there. Does anyone have any ideas?
September 4th, 2007 at 6:12 am
Hello -
In response to your question how to achieve serendipity more than once as it were, I offer a thought.
It is true we tend to defer to the last thing we learned or the last ‘AHA’ moment — in an effort to store past thought and ideas in a more tangible way I have created an idea notebook for which I capture quotes, thoughts, articles, my notes anything that catches my interest even if not relevant to the moment. When I find myself in need of fresh material to brainstorm - I take out the notebook to review my visible brain and find links and connections for new and relevant thinking.
I hope this helps.
Jan
September 4th, 2007 at 7:12 am
Jan:
What a nice, low-tech solution. I can do that! Thanks, Julie
September 4th, 2007 at 2:43 pm
Julie:
Motivational posters, yellow post-it-notes, odd bits of paper, ripped-out articles from magazines, torn-out yellow pages, my current 2 or 3 books with several page corners folded over, all strewn around my desk, do it for me. BUT they do it by surreptitiously filtering into my mind and lying there until I wake up in the middle of the night or early in the morning, having asked myself to come up with the right answer, idea, concept, theme, etc when I lay down. These overnight replies are always off-the-wall, adventurous, exciting and (so far, after many years) ALWAYS right. So …. for me it works overnight - I have to let it marinate like a good dish prepared ahead of time. The imaginative equivalent of garlic, pepper, sauce, liqueur and whatever else you want to add, break through and filter into the waiting gourmet dish of my sleeping brain.
So…. advice: have a pad of paper and pencil (and flashlight to ensure that what you write down will be legible tomorrow) by your bed. As you go down for na-na, give yourself the job/question/theme/idea/concept you are looking for. I know this is nothing new, but IT WORKS, particularly if you trust “the system”.
Good luck!