People who will be missed

From time to time people I met using socia media announce that for a period of time, they will take a break away from the keyboard - it could be due to vacation, business trips or simply that they need a break.
And in that situation it is often seen that they are met with the obligatory greeting that "we are going to miss you."
And that's all very good and polite, but sometimes it is difficult not to think: how many of these people would you actually miss, actually and for real, if they all of a sudden disappeared from your screen due to a decision to go sheepfarming in the Outer Hebrides?
I am of the firm conviction that it is not 20000 followers on Twitter that will make me a happy social media user. No - what makes me a happy Twitter user who feels that he gets something out of his online presence are the approximately 20 people that I follow, and who follow me, who are engaged in two-way communication, where we are able to inspire each other.
These are the people to whom I would any day write that I am going to miss them. They constitute only a fraction - very few percent - of my Twitter followers, but they make a difference far beyond average and prove that quality is preferable to quantity any time. Because we are able to inspire each other.
(Translated from Noget om savn)

The Tribe

Recently, it dawned on me that in my digital universe, something best described as synergy has suddenly emerged; a synergy between an old idea that I have been toying with for years and a phenomenon that is just on the brink of emerging.
After a long time, I started looking into what Twitter basically is and what can be used to, and I have become aware that on Twitter, there's a potential to find some interesting people. People, whose creativity one could appeal to and ask them to come up with their wild thoughts. People, who would be able to inspire each other with their posts and to develop each other's wild ideas with constructive comments.
I am well aware that maybe one out of 100 Twitter followers might be interested in participating in such a project. Might be ready to enter into such a tribal community, to stay in the jargon that surrounds the medium. But it is also not a project that will initially need dozens of people - so actually, it may just work. Once the critical mass is reached - and initially, it just needs to be a couple of people or so doing ping-pong with each other's ideas - it is "just" to set up a forum for communication and get going - and eventually, the snowball effect might just do the trick.
(Translated from Stammen, eller: The Invitationals, part 6, originally published October 12, 2017)

On the topic of higher aspirations

A very frequently asked question is: "What is good leadership?" It is a difficult question to answer. But you are in no doubt what good leadership is when you are face to face with a good leader - and that may actually be just getting a glimpse of the good leader.
To me the most obvious case I have been faced with in recent times was when I was part of an event where a CEO gave a presentation. He did not say it in words, but yet, with all the desirable clarity, he conveyed the message to me: that I was created for bigger things than those I did for him. But on the other hand, he did it in such a way that I did not doubt for a moment that I should not venture out to find the bigger things - because it was best for me to just keep doing the things I did for him.
I do not know how he did it, but I do not doubt that at that time I experienced good leadership. A person who is able to instill that feeling in people will be able to do anything with anyone. The difficulty is to figure out how to convey the message in a way that hits a broader audience - as it does not create a horde of enthusiastic followers just to touch something deep in this individual.
(Translated from Noget om lyst til større ting, originally published December 2, 2012)

On the topic of (never) failing inspiration

It happens so often that one sits staring at the flashing cursor - or, for us who are a little old-fashioned, the blank page - and blame oneself for the failing inspiration. Or even worse: blame the inspiration itself for its absence.
There is no reason for it - because we are very able to influence whether or not inspiration comes knocking. We can reasonably be sure that if we just sit and look at what we have not done - then inspiration will not come. But if instead we go out to seek new impressions; find something we can wonder about; and let go of our minds - then inspiration has a chance to find us. It does not have to be moving further than to social media to seek other people's input - an act that can suddenly move from procrastination and waste of time to be an excellent instrument to launch creativity with.
It may happen that we end up with quite a lot of effort needed to put the inspiration into words - but I would venture to insist that we never need to be at a loss for inspiration.
(Translated from Noget om (aldrig) at savne inspiration, originally published January 9, 2018)

Can I show you my hallucination?

At some point I read a quote - by some people attributed to Thomas Edison, while other people doubt it - and I admit, it might be stated in a fashion more contemporary than what Edison might have done it.
But still, it is a good quote, so I want to share it anyway:

Vision without execution is hallucination

Actually Edison - or whoever is responsible - has a point. All our grandiose ideas are worth nothing, if they are not realised. But still, I do not think that we should abandon all hope, just because we cannot execute our visions on our own.
That's where our networks become handy - and where we should be demanding towards ourselves. Because: if I have a vision so exceptional that I realise that I will never ever execute it myself, then I cannot help but think that I have a responsibility to consider, whether I know anyone present it to - even if to me, it is a hallucination, it might be that they know how to execute it. The quote does not demand that all parts of the process must be carried out by the same individual.
And every time we doubt whether our visions can be executed, we can consider another quote (which is generally agreed to be by William Blake):

What is now proved was once only imagined.

(Translated from Må jeg vise dig min hallucination?, originally published December 5th, 2011)

On the topic of sowing and reaping

Once again, a remarkable post of Rebecca Elvy's made me think - this time about the metaphor of reaping and sowing used about the things we do in our daily lives - and about when to reap and when to sow, respectively.

As so many other people, I am a descendant of a long line of people who were into farming - my grandparents, as well of two sets of aunts and uncles, earned their living from farming, and one thing that was for certain when we went to visit them was that we always were able to predict what they were doing before we came there, from just a glance at the weather and the calendar. Because in agriculture - at least in the Northern European part of the world, there is most definitely a time to sow and a time to reap.

And the metaphor of sowing and reaping is still very appropriate - because at certain times, we seem to spread our resources on the ground around us with no apparent return on investment, while at other times it becomes obvious that spreading our resources was a very good idea, because our effort comes back to us manifold.

But to us who have left farming behind, the world is quite different from what our ancestors experienced - because where they could easily tell from the weather and the calendar when it was time to sow, and expect a certain return to come at a more or less predefined time determined in detail by nature (apart, of course, from disastrous times of harvest failure), our situation is much less predictable. When we sow, we have no idea when the time comes when we will be able to reap (if ever), and have no certain reason to expect what we will be able to reap, if the time actually comes.

For me, the only conclusion is that given these conditions, we must sow whenever we have got any surplus of energy to spare for that purpose. We have no reason to believe - nor even hope - that we might reap anything from it, but still: what we sow will certainly make more use if we spread it, rather than hoarding it, only for it to decay (if you allow me to stay in the metaphorical universe of farming). 

And then again, we still might one day see that there will be something to reap from what we have sown. And we will realise that while this happens, we actually have fun, spending time in flow, sowing our surplus resources - and that we stumble upon people in the process; people that we inspire and who hope to inspire us in return.

So there is no reason to stop sowing for long - sowing develops us and the people who surround us, and we might actually reap manifold from it at some undefined point in time. Whereas hoarding what we could sow - or only sowing based on detailed calculations indicating that the related harvest is certain: to me, it just does not lead to anywhere constructive. Part of the fun, actually, is the thought of "I don't have any idea of whether this will lead to anything I can reap - and if it does, I have even less of an idea about what will come out of it."

(Translated from Noget om at så og høste)

On the topic of bicycles and mutual inspiration

Mutual inspiration as it best is just like riding a bike - the way the pedals are mounted on a bike, at an angle of 180 degrees between the two pedal arms, makes the two legs of the human body work together in a perfect way: once one pedal has reached the bottom moved by one foot, it has at the same time put the other pedal in the optimal position to let the other foot push it down, after which it it is time to wait while the other foot makes its contribution. In the same way as two people in committed conversation or other interaction constantly have the opportunity to bring the common understanding forward. If the human body had had more feet, the metaphor could easily be extended to conversations among several people.
The metaphor can also be used to illustrate when the mutual inspiration is less optimal. If the two parties fully agree, they will have difficulties bringing each other further onwards - similar to the situation when a cyclist stands on one pedal with both feet. It might move that pedal to the bottom position faster, but once you get there, progress is limited. Or if one of the parties does not contribute - well, you can sit ever so correct on the bike, but if one leg hangs down passively and does not pedal, you will not get anywhere.
But the important thing is: if you sit correctly on the bike, and both feet participate, you go forward in a way that feels like you hardly have to make an effort. Which is exactly as mutual inspiration works when it is at its best.
(Translated from Noget om cykelture og gensidig inspiration)

More on the topic of selfishness, generosity and symbiosis

The other day I looked at the view point that content consumers can be said to be generous, whereas those who produce the content on the opposite can be regarded as selfish, and I did this very much with my focus on the selfish creators.
But it is at least as interesting to look at the generous consumers - because is it true: are the consumers always so generous?
In a sense, yes. All people who consume the content that I have created, I have to at least acknowledge that they generously spend their time on me. That's why I like to return to the story of Adam Grant and Daniel Pink in the backyard: in this world, where time is often considered our most precious resource, we waste people's resources if anything we have created makes them spend time that they could have used better elsewhere. (And if I let people's resources go to waste in that way, I have to consider any wish I have that they read my creations to be selfish).
But of course there are more or less generous consumers. As soon as the consumer begins to relate to the content and provide feedback, the level of generosity increases. I agree that the generosity of the keyboard warriors (who just use the creators' posts as a starting point to bring forward their own more or less off-topic conspiratory assumptions) is of such a limited extend that we would be better off without it. But the closer to the subject the given feedback is - and the more constructive inspiration, the creator can get out of it - the more generously the consumer acts towards the creator. This is perfectly obvious in situations where sequences of comments develop into mutually inspiring conversations, but even a single click on a Like-button can be seen as generosity - as the consumer hereby gives an expression of the type "more of the same kind, please".
For the same reason, I prefer five dedicated readers than 5000 that I hardly notice are there - because I, along with the five dedicated ones, can share much more symbiotic generosity in our common interest.
(Translated from Mere om egoisme, generøsitet og symbiose)

What's that about pings?

(Translated from: Hvad er der med det dér ping-pong?)
There must be readers who have not been around from the start and who do not quite get what the blog's title - and the title of the blog it's translated from, and the name of the Twitter profile - is really about.
It all started a long time ago - before blogging became publicly available, which was why the project had to be hosted on a "regular" homepage, which in turn decreased the release frequency significantly - as an attempt to create mutual inspiration (you could call it a kind of ping pong) - while at the same time being a place for me to record my thoughts that otherwise ended up noting on loose scraps of paper.
Since then, a lot has happened - I've begun to translate selected posts, and occasionally spread some of them on Twitter, but the purpose is still the same as originally: mutual inspiration. Comments are still more than welcome, and the amount of comments I get enables me to still be able to relate to all of them individually. The reader may feel free to take this as an invitation.

#7ThingsIReadThisWeek

Occasionally - on very rare occasions - I am happy to observe that the distance between my ideas and my action is not always a marathon.
I have experienced a rare example of this kind of happiness this week, where I wrote on Monday how I could fantasize about creating a blog concerned with inspiring things I had read - and later today, I actually publish the first "real" post on #7ThingsIReadThisWeek.
The blog is in English - because I have to admit to myself that most inspirational things I read are written in English - but I cannot deny the possibility that from time to time there might be a link to something that's in Danish or otherwise non-English.
And the thought is - we'll see how long it lasts - that a post should be published every Sunday. So far, it seems to be going well; the post for today is ready for release. The coming Sundays will show if the initiative holds, or if I fail.
(Translated from #7ThingsIReadThisWeek)

On the topic of being a wall

Man is, as it has been known for centuries, not an island; if John Donne had not found out, we would have seen it again and again. I am in no position to deny that Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein can have made their groundbreaking discoveries on their own; there are no stories about who was doctor Watson to the Sherlock Holmes of Thomas Edison, and Johann Sebastian Bach is not known as a participant in an artists' collective - but we who are of more average intelligence do best, when we have someone to bounce our ideas against.
Not because I am unable to get an idea every once in a while - but actually, I find one of the most interesting things for me to do is to act as a wall to the balls that people around me need to bounce to refine their ideas. Most likely, I would have been better as doctor Watson than I would have been as Sherlock Holmes.
(Translated from Noget om at være en mur, originally published May 9th, 2012)

On the topic of possessiveness and co-creation

On top of the recent post on ownership and possessiveness, Rebecca Elvy made me think of a story I heard recently. Unfortunately, I cannot remember where I heard of it – but I remember that someone told me about the trick they used at this person's workplace in order to make people feel ownership without possessiveness. The trick is that they do not reward the good ideas people get, instead they reward those who contribute to making the ideas of the original idea generators even better. An idea is simply not rewarded before one person has conceived it and another person has refined it.
In this way, it is ensured that the good ideas are shared, and at the same time people will feel good sharing their ideas – because anyone knows that next time, she will have the possibility to refine someone else’s bright idea.
There might be downsides to this as well, of course, but essentially, instead of inspiring possessiveness, this approach breeds co-ownership and co-creation.
Which is a good thing for two reasons. Not only is possessiveness (which we established recently is the evil twin of ownership) discouraged – but it must also be remembered, (now that we are talking about “the ancestry of ownership and possessiveness”) that there is another unfortunate cousin in the family tree – the sentiment of “not-invented-here”, where people have an inclination to reject the ideas of others, simply because these are not their own ideas. The rewarding of co-creation is also quite good against “not-invented-here”, as it inspires people to be open-minded with regards to the ideas of other people – because they might be able to make them even better. It simply has a tendency to make people go from saying “No!” to saying “Yes, and…”, which is one of the pillars of creativity.
(Translated from: Noget om besidderiskhed og samskabelse)

Fishing and followers

After spending some time on Twitter, I have now started to notice a regularly repeating pattern. Followers coming out of the blue - without me really understanding why I should be of interest to them - following me for a couple of days and then disappearing again.
I have gradually come to the conclusion that they just come by to fish for followers - and since I'm not interested in following them, they simply disappear again.
It is probably very good that it is this way. Because I'm not the type who mindlessly follows people because they follow me. I follow people whose tweets can inspire me when they appear in my Twitter feed. Just like I hope people follow me because I can give them inspiration when I appear in their Twitter feed.
In particular, I appreciate people with whom I can engage in two-way communication - be it on Twitter or elsewhere - so that it can provide inspiration, food for thought and value to both parties. I would rather have five such followers than I would have 5000, who just come around fishing for me to follow them.
(Translated from Fiskeri og følgere)

(More) newcomer innovation

Actually, this heading intended for this post was "Why should the newcomers learn?", but standing on the shoulders of the recent post, it is now about newcomer innovation, but other newcomers than those in the recent post.
Because when an organization meets new people who come to it, there are two kinds of beginners - the obvious ones from yesterday, who are to learn how to act in the organization, and they less obvious yet not less interesting: those who are already part of the organization and who need inspiration to think differently - a field within which they can easily be as much beginners as the newcomers to they are facing.
The headline did not end up as it was originally thought. Of course, I do not imply that new people in an organization should not learn how the organization works, or learn how to work with it - but I'd love to use this post, on top of the recent one, to point out that the organization should take it as an obvious task to make sure to make use of all the useful new energy from these people before they unlearn whatever exciting arts they knew of before they sunk into the organization's conformance.
I explicitly write "a task". I could have written "a duty", I maybe should - but let me restrict myself to saying that unless you learn from the new ones before starting to teach them, you lose an important possible step in an innovation process.
(Translated from Innovation for (andre) begyndere, originally published December 26th, 2012)

Life's too short for people like me

At one point I attended an event on creativity, where one of the conclusions was - albeit phrased somewhat differently - as stated in the heading.
The reason is simply that you do not get inspired by people who say the same as yourself - mostly people who have the same background as you or in some way resemble you. Inspiration comes from people who are different than you are.
People who agree with you in everything, who are in the same point in life as yourself, are not able inspire you; you can use them to pat yourself on the shoulder, and although that itself may be very nice, it's not what moves the world forward.
What moves the world forward is people to disagree with, or to discuss with, whether or not it originates in constructive criticism or an curious question as to why you behave the way you do.
Even in the company of the people you agree with, you should look at the differences between you and them and examine them.
Because it is thereby you are going to consider whether your attitudes are rational, and to be inspired to do new and exciting things.
(Translated from Livet er for kort til folk som mig, originally published December 27th, 2011)

The territory under the hat

I am what you might call a sucker for quotes, to such an extent that I happily stop to write it down if I come come across some particularly interesting.
I met two such quotations on a wall at a large company, which I had a business purpose to visit some years ago. One of them, I later discovered, can be attributed to Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., an American physician and author, and it sounds in its simplicity:

Man's mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions.

And it immediately made me think that there is no need to think twice - it's just to get started stretching. And here the other quote - which I unfortunately have not found any source for - comes in very appropriately, as it states that

The greatest undeveloped territory in the world lies under your hat.

It is a thought I think it's worth staying with, as the country, in which I stayed when I read these two quotations, was India. Curiously, a place which is considered underdeveloped by many people; people, who perhaps have plenty of potential to stretch something under their own hats. If not, our part of the world might be lagging behind even faster than one might otherwise fear.
(Translated from Territoriet under hatten, originally published September 25th, 2010).

In slow motion

In the book "Naar man mailer" (which literally could be translating to "When you're mailing", but that would alter the pun), the Danish author Svend Aage Madsen and the Danish journalist Flemming Chr. Nielsen publish a number of mails, they have exchanged over time. Here Madsen describes how inspiration can be a mischievous phenomenon (in my translation):

I have experienced getting a first-rate idea while watching a movie on the television. Such a clear and obvious one that there was no reason to write it down. And then afterwards ... alas. Then I get the urge to look through the movie again, if it's a recording, hoping that the idea will appear again in the same place. Which it of course won't, because you are now seeking it.

I know the problem. And not only when I get a good idea, and not just in front of the television; it can be anything that flies through the brain at any point in time, just to have disappeared, when I need to use it. A classic is when at home, I stumble upon something, I want to say to someone else in the house; then I become distracted and the thought is gone. Hereafter, I can force myself to meticulously go through the same routines that occupied me when the idea arose, right down to the tiniest details, meandering through the rooms in the same as I went before, and still I simply cannot succeed rediscovering the inspiration. Possibly because it's been a combination of things, and it is not that easy to restore all the prerequisites; possibly something as trivial as because I just noticed that there was something on the radio at the time that I simply did not see as important, eventhough it was.
There is only one thing to say: write it down, write it down, write it down. And in sufficient details to afterwards remove all doubt as to what the notes mean.
(Translated from I langsom gengivelse, originally published August 3rd, 2010)

On the topic of constructive waiting time

A lot of people are concerned about the fear of the blank page - about having the urge or need to write, but not be able to do so.
I feel privileged not to suffer from such anxiety, and I think I know why. I am well aware that inspiration is something that can not be forced, inspiration is something one has to wait for, and use the time waiting constructively.
If at the same time, one has a plethora of stuff on the reading list, this is a match almost too good to be true. For how to spend time better while looking for inspiration, than by seeking inspiration, for example by reading something one finds interesting?
One should not wait for inspiration with idle hands. On the other hand, inspiration should not be left waiting when it arrives.
It will obviously not always turn up in an opportune moment, but as a minimum, enough key words must be written down to enable rediscovery of the inspiration when time and quiet is available to get it translated into text.
(Translated from Noget om konstruktiv ventetid, originally published February 2nd, 2010)

Plagiarism and inspiration

There is a thing which has been on my mind for some time - the difference between plagiarism and inspiration: why is it that something will be categorized as plagiarism, while others slip through the eye of the needle and are recognized just to have been "inspired"?
When one subscribes to the opinion that not only have most things been said before; most have also been said in a better and clearer way before, then one must simultaneously accept that most of the things one can acheive, must be acheived through inspiration - very little comes from nothing. So the important thing must be to make sure that one has something to be inspired by.
Somewhere, I have seen the quote that you have to read thousands of books, before you can write one, and most likely, this is true, then you will have been exposed to sufficient amounts of information (and quite probably also information of divergent nature and content) to form and formulate your own opinion.
And when you have formed and formulated your own opinion, then you can always start looking back at the things you were inspired by and use these as references, make sure that quotes appear verbatim et cetera - and then, you have not leaned on any single source, not copied, not plagiarized.
(Translated from Plagiat og inspiration, originally published January 18, 2010)

On the topic of originals, copies and collages

While discussing authenticity, I came to think of a quote, which we Danes like to attribute to Søren Kierkegaard - symptomatically enough, I think it actually originates from the English poet Edward Young, who died about half a century before Kierkegaard's birth:

We are all born originals - why is it so many of us die copies?

For that question, I think I know a good answer: we die copies, because we have gathered inspiration from people, we have met over time, from whom we have let inspiration rub off. And the fascinating part is that hardly anyone - maybe not even in totalitarian regimes, eventhough, fortunately, my knowledge of said regimes is limited - die as exact copies of a certain other person. Rather, we die as collages of numerous other people, who then again themselves were collages of those people who inspired them.
Which is quite fortunate, I think. Otherwise, none of us could reach higher by standing on the shoulders of giants of the past.
(Translated from Noget om originaler, kopier og collager, originally published October 17, 2015)