#ThinkfullyHabit: Look right in front of you
We all know it’s good to take proper breaks during the day. There are endless articles giving endless reasons around increased mental and physical wellbeing, better work-life balance and improved performance. The focus is usually on the beneficial impact on our bodies and brains. However, it can also be the case that the activities we do in these breaks provide just the opportunistic spark of practical inspiration we need. Whatever we do, we shouldn’t waste these sources of inspiration right in front of us.
“I can look at anything and think how can I translate that into a hairstyle? It’s like having an antenna on the top of your head, it never turns off. You are always looking, but sometimes you just see something, and you go, I know, I know what I can do with that. ”
WHY?
Take the example of Masahiro Hara who worked at the automotive components company, Denso Wave. One lunchtime, around 25 years ago, he was playing the ancient game of Go - the game of strategy where players arrange stones on a board. It was while playing that he had an idea to resolve a problem his company was having. They had been receiving requests from factories for better ways to manage inventories for their extensive ranges of parts. The problem was that the barcodes they used could only hold around 20 alphanumeric characters at a time, which meant that some component parts required as many as 10 barcodes for one item. This approach was becoming very labour intensive.
On this particular lunchtime, Hara recounts, “I was looking at the board and thought the way that stones were lined up along the grids could be a good way of conveying lots of information at the same time.” It was this idea which gave rise to the QR code with its two dimensional patterns of tiny black and white squares. QR codes store 200 times more information than standard barcodes and have completely transformed how we can access websites and services. They have been central in handling the current global pandemic, being used in several countries’ contact-tracing apps and in the last couple of months, the Chinese leader Xi Jinping, has called for a global approach to issuing health certificates for international travel using QR codes*.
Hara's story illustrates just how effective it can be to take inspiration from something right in front of you and apply it to something else. It really is as simple as asking and answering one killer question. That question is:
What ideas and inspirations can I take from what I’m doing that can be applied to a problem I’m trying to solve?
It really doesn’t matter what you’re doing. It could be a game of Go, a chore, a hobby or any other activity. Whatever it is, it's a potential source of inspiration. Being able to make these sorts of links goes to the heart of how our human brain works. Our brains can't help but make links and connections, they are literally filled with billions of nerve cells called neurons (86 billion at the best estimate), all linking, connecting and communicating with each other via their synapses**.
As soon as we realise we have all the inspiration we need around us, we can stop worrying about where to go to find inspiration and start looking at what’s right in front of us.
REFERENCES