Perspective, hammers and cat videos
and more in less than 3 minutes.
Welcome new & old subscribers alike to this Wednesday’s lateral thinking exercise. Unrelated, we passed the 1500 subscriber mark yesterday evening, thanks for joining me on this journey.
Time to shake things up again and try a stretch question. These are meant to help you look at common things from a new angle or just power up your thinking muscles.
If you’re looking for the riddle-type exercises, take a look at the archive here.
How are looking 👀 and exploring 🕵️ different?
One example, as usual, at the end.
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Perspective
One of the most undervalued skills, in my opinion, is being able to see the bigger picture.
It sounds like utter bullshit, which is why almost anyone who’s diligently working on the execution part will dismiss this as managerial mumbo-jumbo.
Yet 9 out of 10 times, when you’re the one who has to implement something, you lose focus.
Like the saying goes, if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
But despite being able to hammer down almost anything, a lot of times just switching to a screwdriver will same you time, effort and brain cells.
So whenever you feel you’re swamped, try to step back. Give yourself 20 minutes or an hour and ask yourself:
Is there a more efficient way of doing this? Can I make it more efficient by myself?
If I can’t, what tools do I need?
You might just end up outsourcing your own job and surfing cat videos (true story).
Potential answer:
When you’re looking for something, you know exactly what you’re looking for, so the best possible outcome is that you find that specific item or thing.
When you’re exploring, you’re wandering with the sole purpose of observing, which means you might find things you didn’t even know to look for.
Any other ideas on how these are different? Feel free to reply to this email.