Filling Your Well of Ideas

With a significant portion of the association community (although not me) in Cleveland this week for ASAE24, I’ve been thinking about ideas and how we all go about getting them.

One of the challenges of solo consulting is that solo consultants need to generate a lot of ideas – for our clients most importantly, but also for articles and blog posts and conference presentations and whitepapers and ebooks and LinkedIn and all those other places we’re tasked with creating “thought leadership” for the community – while, sometimes, operating in a bit of a vacuum.  It’s not as if we have colleagues we’re with every day where we enjoy those moments of inspiration that come from serendipitous interactions, often not as a result of “so where do YOU think the future of AI lies?” type conversations so much as of “I just read the most interesting book” type conversations. And even for folks who work in teams, in an era of pervasive remote work, those types of chance interactions don’t happen the way they used to.

How do I fill my own well of ideas? 

1. Several years ago, I realized that I needed to schedule one event per year solely for my own professional development. When you’re a consultant, it’s easy to fall prey to only attending professional development events where you’re being paid to speak (or at least getting a comp registration and travel funds). And that’s understandable – when paying to attend an event comes directly out of one’s own pocket, it’s wise to limit those expenditures – and, as I wrote several years ago, when one is at an event where one is being paid to speak, it’s also wise to participate as fully as one is able (go to sessions other than your own, talk to people). But for those paid gigs, I realized that I tended to be primarily focused on making sure I delivered good value for my clients, so my attention was mostly on prepping to give a good session, and I often can’t stay much beyond the day on which I give it. So I made attending one thing that’s just for me, where I just participate, both a schedule and financial priority. Aside from the opportunity to focus only on my own learning, I also get to relax into conversations and relationship building with other participants in ways that seem less accessible when I’m there as a “sage on the stage.”
2. I am a voracious reader, and rarely of business books, which I find to be largely a waste of time. I still read the print newspaper every morning. I subscribe to (and actually read) a variety of high-quality magazines, from the New Yorker to MIT’s Technology Review to The Atlantic. I read fun fiction. I read literary fiction, including books that have been translated from other languages. I read quality non-fiction. I re-read books that changed my life at earlier stages of my life. One of the things I’ve missed about the return to relative normalcy post-pandemic is I have less time to read now. Not that I’m eager to go back into lockdown, but I do miss the slower pace that allowed more time for reflection. Relatedly….
3. Unplug. Regularly. One of the habits I’ve lost from the lockdowns was taking a daily walk. At the time, it was one of the few options available for exercise and for leaving the house, and I was dedicated – rain or shine, heat or cold, I was out there. Stanford University researchers conducted a famous study about a decade ago that demonstrated that walking specifically increases creativity. Since I’ve resumed more typical forms of exercise, sadly, my daily walks have vanished, and I find that I’m doing a poor job of setting aside time for letting both my body and my mind to ramble, away from technology and other distractions. I’m pretty sure there’s a lesson there.

As I also wrote in that earlier post:

Our brains, our psyches, and our hearts need time away from the electronic hamster wheel. Different people need different amounts of time away and at different intervals of frequency, but we all need some time out to process, think, recharge, and refresh.

Where do you go for inspiration?

Photo by Jesse Bowser on Unsplash