Hey There.Hope you recharged over the New Year. Welcome to the first issue of 2020. From now on I'll be sending newsletters on Mondays. So don't forget to check your mailbox at the beginning of the week.
Small weekly experiment at a time 03, 2020
I started my year by completing my studies and a think week in Vienna. When I told a friend that I'm going to Vienna, he asked:
Friend: What are you going to do there?
Me: I'll write.
F: Why, do you have to go to Vienna for this?
Sure, I could write at home, and I do. But I don't go to Vienna to write on general topics. I go there to do deep thinking. To reflect on the trajectory of my career, projects I'm perusing. I try to dig into the topics that slip by throughout the year.Thing is that a while ago I noticed that I'm way more creative when I change the environment. I'm not talking about going for a walk, to a local coffee shop or nearby park. I'm talking about going to a foreign place where you don't spend the majority of your time.My place of choice is Vienna. There's a certain magic that comes with all the cafes and libraries there. I've been going to Vienna for thinking for the past few years now, and I'm always surprised by the outcomes of the reflections and brainstorming. Since I visited Vienna probably at least once per year in the past 20 years, I can somehow transition into a different state of mind. Into creative state. Glass of wine or cup of tea, my journal and a pan and creativity runs wild. That's it. That's how I course correct every year. Pretty boring in some way.Is there a place-specific environment that sparks your creativity? Recharges you so much that you are afterwards booming with energy? Try changing your work environment a bit if you can. You know the drill. With small experiments 😉 Let me know-how.
New reading material
Over the holidays I read a few books. Pivot by Jenny Blake which is an excellent book if you're looking at how to reinvent your career. Blake is a coach and a formal Google employee that helps professionals to transition into a new career. The other book I read was Misfits by AJ Leon . AJ is a former Wall Street banker that decided to quit his job on the day he got a big promotion. Since then he's been travelling the globe, creating web pages and working on philanthropic projects. In his book, he talks about 3C-s:
Curating: organising our knowledge and belongings.
Creating: creating new things, objects, writing, photography, design, coding.
We tend to consume most of our time. We occasionally curate and rarely create. We decide to do something then get busy in the consumption and curation process instead of spending the majority of our time creating. The fact is that:Consuming is easy. Curating is slightly harder. Creating is hard.The book's message resonated with me because I often decide to pursue an idea then get stuck in the process of consumption or curation. I would learn a new thing, organise my knowledge then move to the next idea before I could finish the previous one.So in 2020, I decided to start tracking another metric besides the 15min slots of daily time, daily creativity. Every day I write down into an excel table what I created and check if I spend the majority of the day: consuming, creating or curating. What about you do you. Do you spend the majority of your day creating, curating or consuming?If you find a typo, have a comment or have an idea for improvement shoot me a message. 😉Till the next weekly experiment.ZigaP.s. If you like the newsletter, share it. 😉
