I sometimes wonder how you come up with all this content. I find writing one article quite difficult even when am motivated. How then do you manage so many? -
This is a question I got today and it was a timely one because it is something I was going to write about anyway. I answered this, but more is required so I will expand a little more:
It is simple. Write. The more you write, the more you will explore and one thought leads to another until you are in a place that is unfamiliar but connected to all you have ever done and that place will lead onto places that will be all you will ever do. People limit themselves by trying to be correct.
Yeah, that is not really going to cut it so I will add some flesh. The reason I was planning to write this post before the comment arrived was because of a class with a client yesterday, actually, many classes with clients over the years. My training method is much like my blog, random. There is no set list of activities, no guidelines, no limit on content range or depth. It goes where it goes.
Many of my students over the years have hated the way I train. They want structure, a topic provided beforehand so they have time to prepare, time allocated for this, content engineered for that and the space to order their thoughts and fashion a response. No.
The reason so many people want these things is they want the best chance possible to be right, not the best chance possible to think new, out of the ordinary and discover what lays as of yet, undiscovered in themselves. They limit their thoughts to a narrow band of average because it is comfortable.
If everyone agrees with your innovative idea, it is not innovative.
In the same class yesterday we were talking about innovation and it became clear that they were less innovative than they had imagined. I explained it through a normal distribution. The thing with normal distributions is that they show how normal something is. People like what is familiar, relatable and comfortable. If one has an idea that all people agree with, it is very close to the mean of the distribution and the further one moves away from the mean, the less people will agree. The most innovative ideas could be the type that absolutely no one else agrees on. The people who back these end up billionaires.... or homeless.
It is good to have everyone agree with an idea but, it doesn't mean that the idea is good and the in general, the development of an idea isn't to improve it, it is to compromise it. When people disagree on elements of an idea they want to change the idea into one that is acceptable for them. The larger the group, the more compromises get made and under the guise of refinement, what could have been outside of normal is now well and truly average. Bland, boring and unlikely to set the world on fire. But, acceptable.
What the hell has this got to do with content?
The acceptable part is what is key here as most people want to be accepted by the group in some way and they will compromise their own content based on this. To push the boundaries of thinking is to go into areas where thoughts aren't often thought and it is uncomfortable. It is uncomfortable to think, it is likely also going to be uncomfortable for others to consider, let alone accept and this means opening the self up to criticism and, being wrong.
No one likes to be wrong and from a social standpoint it is even worse as those that are wrong are seen as incompetent and valueless. However, this all depends where they are wrong which is something that most people are incapable of considering when what is being discussed is outside of their normal. They dismiss it as wrong based on intuition (what is habitually known) without a lot of investigation. Einstein was wrong a lot yet, those that actually know, know that his wrong was a lot of right because it was wrong in areas that furthered the questioning of the unknown on the pathway to right, right?
Producing based on the produced
So, this is where it leads on a personal level for me. It is about exploring what I know until I find the edges and then pushing a little bit further into the unknown. To get to the edge in the first place I have to discover what is along the path of the known which includes a great deal more than I would have suspected to begin with. It doesn't make what I know correct of course which is why it has to be further investigated, not just accepted.
This is why the more I write, the more I can write as with each piece of writing I push on myself a little more and creep the boundaries outward. Combine this with the content I read here including the very thoughtful comments I get and there is a near endless supply of content topics available. The only thing that really slows me down is my typing ability, time constraints and the fact that I already seem like a borderline spammer or someone on speed.
There is no secret other than work.
This isn't an easy path I have chosen as it opens me up to a whole range of pressures including from the community that I am hoping to be a part of. The problem with my process is that it puts my thoughts out onto the blockchain and as we know, once out, it becomes law. Humans aren't very good at keeping an open mind and generally punish changes of mind quite heavily. I am okay with that because of the approach I have chosen.
Putting my thoughts out there will hopefully fall onto the path of others looking to explore their own boundaries too. Perhaps we can push each other to become our best in our own right. What I mean by own right is that your path and my path might be very different, we don't need to be the same. There are many approaches to this life and I tend to take one where I balance my own success with that of others or perhaps it is more, tie my own success to helping others be successful in what they do. This is essentially what my business does.
There is no secret other than work.
Through my life journey so far I have discovered that I am definitely not star material and don't even desire to be such. I am a workhorse that pushes myself as much as I can and pulls on as many threads I can find. I am caring less and less about what those threads are attached to and even though I have my specializations and expertise, I am having an absolute ball dipping my toes, feet and occasionally falling headlong into things I have very little background knowledge of prior.
People spend so much time worrying about being correct that it limits them to being the most average self they can be, not the fullest. I f we could all take the approach of exploring who we are and the willingness to fail regularly, we would also find that we are much more accepting of the failures of others. It is easy to judge if you believe you have never made a mistake and if it is true that you never have, you aren't trying to live life hard enough.
Now, get writing and it will inevitably become a road filled with failure, pain and a quality and contentment of mind you may never have thought possible. Writing is the easy part, facing those dark corners and standing at the precipice is where you will discover what you actually have inside still....
Your best.
Taraz
[ a Steem original ]