In the past four weeks I have had been looking at the ways in which I have been completing projects and facing a looming set of deadlines. Much of the work that I engage in deals with a client. That client may be in the commercial sector or it may be a lecture that needs to be delivered to a class. What continually gets lost in a sea of meetings and daily deliverables is the time spent on research and development. I believe that shrinking budgets, shorter timelines, and a climate of economic urgency, can potentially create a creative environment that looks to the daily bottom line more than advancement of the field or a company’s knowledge capital. This has lead me to think about a few ways in which I might be able to limit investment on the seeding of new ideas. So, here goes my pre-holiday New Year’s resolution.
1. PARTY WITH MY PEERS
I hope to conduct a working group that meets to talk about and design products or services that I have always wanted to build, but have not have the opportunity to do so. This group will most likely start by being extremely social, meet no more than hour, write no code, have no agenda, but turn out a series of sketches at the end of the session. I believe this has been called brainstorming in the past– not sure what the experts in collaborative development call it these days. My hope is to just capture ideas that we are passionate about and see if there are commonalities present that we haven’t observed before– in an environment that is inviting and fun.
2. READ SOMETHING NEW
I have been ordering and reading at least one book per month that is related to my work, but not in my sweet spot. My goal is to push my understanding of current technology/theory and look for ways in which I can expand my existing skill set. Plus, this gives me an opportunity to shop on Amazon, and who doesn’t like shopping?
3. DO SOMETHING NEW EACH WEEK
I have been working very hard to keep my Moleskine notebook filled. Yes, that is verging very close to the hipster side of things, but seriously, I try to sketch out a couple of new thoughts and approaches on a weekly basis. Some of them are flushed out, some are just dreck, and some are just for my own personal amusement. (BTW, if anyone is flying from Toronto to Chicago and finds a red Moleskine book on American Airlines, send it back to me!) I have been pretty good with this one and the discipline is in doing something on a regular basis– no rules and no expectations on what may be a good or bad idea.
Let me know if you have any other thoughts or observations.
