Non-Obvious 2017 Edition. Rohit Bhargava
did I realize that each of these stories says something unique about the state of employee relationships with their employers and empowerment.
There was a theme, but it was only by setting those stories aside and choosing to analyze them later that I had enough perspective to see that connection. Being fickle isn’t about avoiding thought—it is about freeing yourself from the pressure to recognize connections immediately and make it easier to save an idea for later analysis.
REAL LIFE ADVICE (3 WAYS TO BE MORE FICKLE TODAY)
1 Save Ideas Offline – Thanks to wonderful productivity apps like Evernote and other smart technology solutions, there are many ways to save information digitally, but they can sometimes be lost in collections you never return to and the connections between them are hard to visualize. Instead, I routinely print articles, rip stories out of magazines and put them into a single trend folder which sits on my desk. Saving ideas offline allows me to physically spread them out later to analyze more easily.
2 Use a Timer – If given the chance, most of us will naturally take the time to analyze something that we see or find in a moment. Being fickle is partially about intentionally delaying that process and using a timer can help. The other benefit of literally using a timer when you are consuming some type of new media is that it forces you to evaluate things more quickly on a top level and then leave them behind as you move to something else.
3 Take Notes with Sharpies – Many of the articles and stories I find throughout the year are marked with just a few words of notes about the theme of the article and story. I use a Sharpie marker because the thicker lettering stands out and encourages me subtly to write less. This same trick can help you to make only the most useful observations in the moment and save any other ones for later.
WHAT TO READ
The Laws Of Simplicity by John Maeda – Maeda is a master of design and technology and his advice has guided many companies and entrepreneurs toward building more amazing products. In this exactly 100-page book, he shares some essential advice for learning to see the world like a designer and reduce the noise to see and think more clearly. “More appears like less by simply moving it far, far away,” he writes when talking about the power of software as a service or the value of Google. I believe the same principle applies to information and ideas; sometimes you just need distance and time in order to fully appreciate them.
How To Make Sense Of Any Mess: Information Architecture for Everybody by Abby Covert – I have read many books on the art of organizing information, but this is one of my favorites for its smart reasoning and simplified approach. The methods shared in this book by the author (who goes by the pseudonym “Abby the IA”) are based on over ten years of teaching methods and worth reading and sharing with your entire team.
How to Be Thoughtful
In 2014, after 10 years of writing my business and marketing blog, I decided to stop allowing comments. For some readers, this seemed counter to one of the fundamental principles of blogging, which is to create a dialogue. Was it because I thought I was too important to answer comments, or was there something else at work?
The reason I stopped was simple. I had noticed a steady decline in the quality of comments over the 10 years that I had been blogging. What was once a robust discussion that involved thoughtfully worded responses had devolved into a combination of thumbs-up style comments and spam.
Thanks to anonymous commenting and the ease of sharing knee-jerk responses, comments had become thoughtless instead of thoughtful—and people were starting to notice. So I turned off the comments.
Being thoughtful means taking the time to reflect on a point of view and share it in a considered way.
The web is filled with this type of “conversation.” Angry, biased, half thought out responses to articles, people or media. Being thoughful is harder to do when everyone seems to expect thinking to come in real time.
Yet the people who are routinely thoughtful are the ones who gain and keep respect. They add value instead of noise...and you can be one of them.
REAL LIFE ADVICE (3 WAYS TO BE MORE THOUGHTFUL TODAY)
1 Wait a Moment – The beauty and challenge of the Internet is that it occurs in real time. We have an idea, and we can share it immediately. It’s easy to think that if you can’t be the first person to comment on something, that your thoughts are too late. That is rarely true. “Real time” should not mean sharing a comment from the top of your head within seconds. Instead, you should aim to redefine it so your comment is still relevant beyond the particular moment you write it with social media. This means you might choose to take 15 minutes (or longer!) to think about how you want to share it.
2 Write and then Rewrite – Anyone who has ever had to write for a long time will tell you that the ultimate way to get better is just to force yourself to do it even if whatever comes out isn’t particularly polished. When it comes to being thoughtful with writing, even the most talented writers take the time to rewrite instead of simply sharing the first thing that they write down.
3 Embrace the Pauses – One of the things speakers try to learn as soon as they spend any time standing in front of an audience is how to become comfortable with silence. It’s not an easy thing to do. Yet when you can use pauses effectively, you can emphasize the things you really want people to hear or remember. This same principle works whether you are on stage or just engaged in a conversation. The trick is to use those pauses as times to find the right words so you can be more thoughtful when you eventually do share your point of view.
WHAT TO READ
Brain Pickings by Maria Popova - Popova describes herself as an “interestingness hunter-gatherer” and she writes Brain Pickings, one of the most popular independently run blogs in the world. On the site she publishes articles combining lessons from literature, art and history on wide ranging topics like creative leadership and the gift of friendship. Every year she pores thousands of hours into publishing thoughtful pieces and her readers reward her by donating to support the continued ad-free operation of the site. The way she presents her thoughts is a perfect aspirational example of how to publish something thoughtful week after week – and a model I was inspired to try for myself in my weekly curated email newsletter.
How to Be Elegant
Jeff Karp is a scientist inspired by elegance … and jellyfish.
As an associate professor at Harvard Medical School, Karp’s research focuses on using bio-inspiration—inspiration from nature—to develop new solutions for all types of medical challenges. His self-named Karp Lab has developed innovations such as a device inspired by jellyfish tentacles to capture circulating tumor cells in cancer patients, and better surgical staples inspired by porcupine quills.
Nature is filled with elegant solutions, from the way that forest fires spread the seeds of certain plants to the way termites build porous structures with natural heating and cooling built in.
Ian Glynn, author of the book Elegance In Science, argues that elegant proofs or theories have most or all of the following features: they are simple, ingenious, concise and persuasive; they often have an unexpected quality, and they are very satisfying.
I believe it is this idea of simplicity that is fundamental to developing elegant ideas. As Einstein famously said, “make things as simple as possible, but not simpler.”
Being elegant means developing your ability to describe a concept in a beautiful and simple way for easy understanding.
A good example of things described beautifully is in what talented poets do. Chances are you don’t spend much time with poetry. That is a missed opportunity. Great poetry has simplicity, emotion, and beauty because words are taken away. Poets are masters