Creation of new is playing with a purpose

The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity. The creative mind plays with the objects it loves.
- Carl Jung

I ran into this quote today and thought that it was simply excellent. When the "zone" hits and you are creating anything new, be it a program, a system, art, music or a new business model it feels like playing. When you watch someone who is really good at it, they almost seem to be having too much fun... it can't possibly be work that way right? I have always found so much enjoyment in these types of activities myself that to describe it as anything else is pretense. When your brain is in the right state, you are relaxed, the deep parts of your mind, where the real horsepower is, can bubble up thoughts and put things together that your conscious mind simply can't.

This phenomena was described to me recently as operating with the power in the frontal cortex (the default conscious section) is roughly equivalent to using the change in your pocket. When you are in "the zone" and your deeper mind is able to work it is more like the national product of the United States of America. That's one heck of a difference.

If you never play with your inner child they atrophy. Or potentially worse, get bored and go off in random directions. Kind of like any muscle in your body when you don't use it your mind gets tired too and you can't be as readily be creative... plus personally I think it just makes you prematurely old. If you ever want a dose of reality on your brain aging check out the Brain Age games on the Nintendo DS.

The moral of this post... play every day.

Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge - Darwin

Have you ever watched on tv or listened on the radio to one of the spots on Stupid Criminals? The premise is those criminals that get caught because the things they do are just plain dumb. For example, here in Texas a man convicted of robbery worked out a deal to pay $9600 in damages rather than serve a prison sentence. For payment, he provided the court a check... a forged check. He got 10 years. If you have time... do an internet search... and laugh.

A research paper pubished in 1999 is very relevant to this topic and I thought I would share. The postulation of the paper is that in cases where one is ignorant, that same ignorance keeps you from realizing your ignorance. The graphs in the paper are very telling regarding people's regard of their own abilities. Even after tests were administered people still felt they were in the quadrants that they were not.

So... why is this relevant in a technically focused blog? I bring this up because if you consider the rate at which technology moves it requires a near constant diligence and research to stay current. So far Moore's law that processor speeds will double and halve in cost every 24 months has tracked fairly close. Software architectures seem to have an average lifespan of 2-4 years. As processors get quicker more and more levels of abstraction are able to be added and new algorithms are enabled. Bill Gates has often been attributed with saying "640k aught to be enough for anybody"? (He denies having actually said that BTW) Now we have services that handle thousands of transactions per second with message payloads of well over 10x that.

The meaning in all of this is that work in technology needs to be one of constant improvement. Both in ourselves as well as our systems. We need to be constantly learning, innovating and expanding. We can't let ourselves individually or as a company become complacent and be ignorant of the fact that we are ignorant. We need to be blissful because we love what we are doing and are growing as part of something larger than ourselves... not because ignorance is bliss.

Assume that your skills need to be refreshed every two years... and act accordingly.

A case for the Designated Scapegoat

Have you ever considered why it is that when we consider systems we assign it attributes such as he or she or "misbehaving" or otherwise letting us down? I have. Why you ask.... darned if I know, I have a lot of random things float through my head and some of them are actually are entertaining. Hopefully this is one of those.

It seems that we as humans have a fundamental psychological need to explain things. So in order to explain them we put attributes either internal or external to explain why things happen. Maybe it is because from the age of "really small" we ask why? (and those of us who have children know the number of times we answer that question becomes numbing.) In psychology this is referred to Attribution Theory.

External attribution is things like "the devil possessed the machine and crashed it" or the ever popular "the data center is on a burial ground of some kind and it causes the servers to crash". It may not be true, but it helps us to deal. Or certainly to laugh at our misfortune.

Internal attribution is, in essence, blaming yourself. The easy example is things like "I am a sinner, please forgive me." We see this a little less in technology though it does pop up as well with the occasional person who perpetually places blame on themselves.

This fundamental psychological need is why I am suggesting the role of Designated Scapegoat on all projects. If a designated scapegoat is assigned at the beginning of any project we can simply move on to the fixing of problems since don't have to waste time in meetings deciding who or what is at fault. All of the posturing, political planning, set up, stonewalling, denial etc can cease and we can simply move forward. All blame can preemptively be assigned to the Designated Scapegoat and productive work can begin immediately. My experience with this role suggests that your Designated Scapegoat should be someone who is generally a good natured, understanding and who everyone knows in their hearts is beyond reproach.

Imagine how instead of a two hour meeting where people discuss why it is not their problem you start the meeting off with "Gee Chris, that was a mess up, I can't believe that you crashed the servers across the globe all at the same time." Chris then responds "Yeah, you know in Project Manager school we learned that the best way to crash a system is to push the button really hard, right in the middle." Then blame and attribution discussions are done and conversation can move to actual observed behaviors and problem resolution. What a time saver!!

So as a productivity aid for your next project assign a Designated Scapegoat up front, save yourself from Attribution Theory and all those unnecessary meetings. Focus on fixing problems, root cause analysis and long term fixes. Jump right past the blame game with this easy step.