If you’re a new reader here, you might wonder why I’m not posting here as regularly as I used to. There are several reasons. First, I’ve just finished my first term of full-time teaching, and I’ve been spending a lot of time working on ideas with the students in my seminars. Second, and perhaps because of this, I’m feeling like a lot of my ideas are wearing out. Rereading posts from a few years ago, I recognize shapes of big ideas that are still sailing through my consciousness. I still think they’re good. I just don’t know that I have all that many new ones.
I’ve been wondering this for years: do we only get one (or two) really good, big ideas in our lives? Where do they come from? What do you do when your ideas run out?
Sadly, I’m afraid as our understanding of the world around us improves, our ability to think outside the box actually decreases 🙁
And I suppose our ideas do wear out. Brilliant ideas don’t usually come out of thin air, they come out of our reflexions on our environment. As more and more people are exposed to whatever new environment the ideas are about, the less unique and potentially game changing the ideas become if we didn’t have the time or energy to pursue them early.
As for what to do about it, let us know if you figure it out 😉
In the mean time, I personally try to be content with the fact that as we get older we tend to get an enhanced ability to act directly on events around us (through increased credibility, experience, and financial resources) to make up for our decreasing amount of time, energy and new ideas.
Luckily for those of us who like to think they can make a difference, there will never be any shortage of problems to solve in this world.
This is more of a macro-level response, but worth checking out if you aren’t familiar with the book. He gave a good TED talk on the same subject. Steven Johnson isn’t the deepest thinker around, but he’s perfect for YouTube.
I remember talking with you after class one day about how the best ideas often go through a long incubation period. Johnson references Tim Berners-Lee and his initial proposal for the internet (10+ years in the making). Same thing goes for Assange and Wikileaks, Yunus and Grameen Bank, Arianna and the Huffington Post, etc. All these people were doing and thinking about interesting things, but they didn’t connect the dots and hit on a big idea until their 30s, 40s, or 50s. We’re under the spell of Zuckerberg, and the idea that the frenetic intellectual energy of youth produces the best ideas. That happens sometimes – and certainly much more in the digital age than before – but it’s still the exception rather than the rule.
I don’t know many 90 year olds who are just hitting their intellectual stride, but I’m sure there are a few of those too.
P.S. It may be having the opposite short-term effect on your personal dev, but your students certainly appreciate and are energized by the thought and prep you put into class! 😉
Thanks Benoit and Ev for providing two very different responses to this. Ben, as usual you are even more pessimistic than I am, but also strangely more optimistic. Ev, thanks for reminding me about the time and connection factors. Now that I’ve recovered from the teaching term and have been more able to slide into quiet contemplation, it’s easier to understand how much I gained from having to put together coherent collections of ideas each week.
I’d agree too that the opportunities for instant response (and the implication that this means instant innovation) can make the natural mulling-over period feel really long.
Finally, I’m still convinced we only have one or two main themes that run through our thinking, over our lives. What’s interesting is how these themes interact with the various different contexts we encounter, over a long period.
Now, off to read and think before the midwinter feasting begins.