Why Bother Working ?: March 2014

Steven Johnson, author of Where Good Ideas Come From, has an easy solution for combating procrastination or feeling creatively stuck. He keeps all of his hunches in a single document accessible from anywhere, and he reviews it, in its entirety, at least once a month.

In a funny way, it feels a bit like you are brainstorming with past versions of yourself. You see your past self groping for an idea that now seems completely obvious five years later.

…The key is to capture as many hunches as possible, and to spend as little time as possible organizing or filtering or prioritizing them. (Keeping a single, chronological file is central to the process, because it forces you to scroll through the whole list each time you want to add something new.) Just get it all down as it comes to you, and make regular visits back to re-acquaint yourself with all your past explorations. You’ll be shocked how many useful hunches you’ve forgotten.

Johnson calls this his “Spark File.” The Spark File makes brainstorming easier, since you essentially have a backlog of ideas to rummage through at any given moment. Plus, having a single document for your Spark File (as opposed to maintaining a notebook) forces you to scan over past ideas, potentially sparking new insights as you work.

See exactly how Johnson utilizes his Spark File over on Medium .

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Aaron Dignan: Digital Isn’t Software, It’s a Mindset

About this presentation

The most dominant companies, no matter the industry, are digital-first. Think Netflix over Blockbuster or iTunes over Tower Records. So how can we take advantage of this trend in our work and with our own projects?

Aaron Dignan walks us through how we can have the right mindset to thrive in the future: We need a purpose, a process to support it, the right people, and (most importantly) these need to combine to make products that serve a community larger than any employee or organization. Dignan shows off plenty of examples and tells us what to adopt for our own work. “When we look at the companies that are really dominating, this is what they are doing.”

About Aaron Dignan

Aaron Dignan dressed up like a superhero for 180 straight days of the first grade, which marked the beginning of his life as an iconoclast, observer, theorist, and performer. Now, as a founding partner of the digital strategy firm Undercurrent and based in New York, he advises global brands and complex organizations like GE, PepsiCo, Ford, and Estée Lauder on their future in an increasingly technophilic world. Aaron’s first book, “Game Frame: Using Games as a Strategy for Success,” was released in 2011.

Links

Undercurrent
99U Talk
Game Frame
@aarondignan

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