Innovation: Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
Simple words that have probably been the mantra of many a successful person. I ran across these words as the title of a blog post written by Tim Kastelle and tweeted by Harold Jarche. I kept going back to it and re-reading it this week. Part of it was that I liked the quote about Bob Dylan weaving the rope and climbing it at the same time as a metaphor for his innovative songwriting persona. The article references Peter Sims, author of Little Bets, who contends that you shouldn’t wait until your idea is perfect to act on it, but should act on it now, in the present with what you have and where you are. Ahhh, there is the main point I keep fixating on. How often do all of us do that with various aspects of our lives?
My “idea” is the creation and beginning of this blog. I want to create a venue to share my thoughts about learning, social media (SoMe) and various other random topics. Now, I’m in no way suggesting my blog is the pinnacle of innovation. Far from it. What I am saying is that rather than noncommittally thinking about writing a blog and instead lurking on everyone else’s blogs, I am going to, pardon the tired expression, “just do it.” Instead of me waiting for the perfect time, the perfect WordPress theme, the perfect set-up where I have everything blogerrific, I should “just blog it.” Shameless, I know.
So, without further ado, that’s what I’m a-gonna do. Hello World!
I’m out here a thousand miles from my home
Walkin’ a road other men have gone down
I’m seein’ your world of people and things
Your paupers and peasants and princes and kings
B. Dylan, Song to Woody
Copyright © 1962, 1965 by Duchess Music Corporation
Good luck David! My experience is that if you use the blog as a place to work out what you think and how to best say it, that you will then get benefit from doing it. So I think it’s great whenever a new blog gets started. This post today by Hugh MacLeod hits some of the other key points in favour of blogging:
http://gapingvoid.com/2011/08/19/its-not-my-content/
Thanks Tim. I’ll definitely check out the link.
Great to have your voice in the ensemble. Looking forward to it! Tim K has shown a lot of us the wisdom of just doing it, and leaving the worry that our ideas are half baked aside. Or perhaps being half-baked means they are still one for improvement.
Blog on!
Phil
Thanks for the welcome Phil. Glad I finally hit that ‘Publish’ button.
Welcome to the blogosphere. I had much of the same feelings as you- that was- to try to wait until all the perfect things were in place. It was actually reading Harold’s work and realizing the true principle of “Perpetual Beta”, that I came to the right conclusion- the process, not the product is what provides the most benefit.
Yes, my blog is to share and ideally to engage others in discussion. But as I continue, I find the key value to me is processing and organizing my thoughts to actively build my own learning. Consumption and curating are levels of engaging in the learning process, but synthesizing new thoughts is where I start to put myself into it. I expose my thoughts and thought processes, expose them to the risk of being challenged…but that is the best way to really grow and expand my thinking in new directions, right?
Hope you discover you blog experience to be valuable.
Cheers,
@criticallearner
Thanks David. I agree with you wholeheartedly, especially the exposing your thought processes at the risk of being challenged part. That’s a hard nugget to swallow, but an essential way to learn and maybe see things from a different perspective.