You can’t make something from nothing. Physics says no. However, you can make something from something.“Get better at making shrimp and eggs by noticing your spice cabinet a bit more. And get better at being creative by learning to stop, notice, take from what’s around you, and then start imagining what might be better.” — Me from a 2021 postNoticing is an act that allows you to access a world beyond your immediate perception. By getting better at noticing you see things you might not have seen before — then the work starts.Now that you see things, what will you do with them? The creative isn’t creative because they are mystical and can access energy plains you could only dream of. No. They are creative because they’ve developed the skill of noticing. Learning how to notice doesn’t require a complex process — it’s simple — observe more, judge less. Simple things aren’t easy, and anything hard is usually worth it. I don’t know anybody that claims greater returns to judgment. Rather, the returns they often tout come from stilling the mind and listening more.

When you hike barefoot you suddenly become very aware of the world around you.Even the ant crossing the path.The bottom of your feet send information to your brain via your nervous system. Your brain directs your eyes to become super aware of the world around you before you put your feet down. Shoes are like a great filter that prevent you from sensing and seeing the world around you.What are the metaphorical shoes you wear every day? And what might they keep you from seeing?

I sat across the table from my dad and asked, “what are you thinking about, Dad?”

Dad: “Nothing,” 

Me: “I wish I could think of nothing as easily as you.”

Dad: “You just try too hard.  When you try to hard at a thing, it’s hard to sit back and enjoy it.  If you can sit back and enjoy a thing, you can think nothing of it.”

After he said that, I imagined you might find the idea insightful.

I’m watching my Dad lose his memories. And at first, I thought, “what are we without our memories?”

The more I spend time with him the more I realize that there is more to a person that their memories. While the person that is my dad is no longer how I remember “my dad”, that person does still perceive the world. How might I help him perceive the world in a way that brings him a smile?

Lots of things, and each person experiences and manages differently.Don’t be so quick to rush to judgment of how others handle traumatic events.Come back to sonder.

Dr. Oliver Sacks, in The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat, writes that scientists believed human mental processes included computation and abstraction. That’s it. Dr. Sacks, in examining a patient he refers to as Dr. P, identified that another mental process factor is judgment. If Dr. P. took his shoes off, he would think his bare feet are shoes. You can imagine Mrs. P.’s surprise when her husband tried to pull her head off her body so that he could “put his hat on.” His perception of the world via his senses is not operating correctly — he has agnosia. Dr. Sacks noticed that Dr. P. would hum to himself. Dr. P. could easily dress himself and carry on living provided he kept the music going in his head. It’s almost as if he perceived the world through music and sound. He could do the things he needed to do, he teach music, he could recognize his music students (if they moved around and he could hear them), but he couldn’t make the right judgments. Dr. Sacks writes that for too long doctors and scientists did not consider judgment a part of human mental processes. He writes: “Our cognitive sciences are themselves suffering from an agnosia essentially similar to Dr. P.’s. Dr. P. may therefore serve as a warning and parable — of what happens to a science which eschews the judgmental, the particular, the personal, and becomes entirely abstract and computation.”I say, of what happens to our work with people when we lose sight or discount judgment, uniqueness, personal, and sonder to favor process and numbers? I argue our work fails.

I don’t know physics… but I am aware that I can’t make more energy for myself out of nothing. All I can do is rest and recharge. I expend a lot of energy during the time. I enjoy my work as a leader, I enjoy the problems I solve, and I exert energy reading, thinking, and writing for you. I play music — and that requires energy. I’m out of energy now… I’m tired and the brain is drained of capacity for this week. Resting now with the hope that tomorrow I wake up refreshed. Ready to think, work on, and tackle something exciting and fun. Good night.

Dan, a product manager at Facebook, writes a daily blog like me. The other day, Dan wrote a piece about dogs and their sense of smell. Excerpt: We have about 6 million olfactory receptors, whereas a dog has over 300 million. I thought this would imply that their sense of smell would only be 50x better, but when I asked Claude AI it told me, “The number of olfactory receptors alone doesn’t directly translate to the overall sensitivity of smell. It’s an oversimplification to assume a linear relationship between receptor count and smell acuity.” - Dan’s DailyWhen one can sense so much more in the world than we ever could, how does that world appear to them? I play music, and for better or for worse, I know I perceive sound differently than some other non-musicians. I can hear some frequencies and how they work together because I’m trained for that. My sense of the world sounds different than another person’s.How does the world look beyond the margin of our perception? I’m left with this thought: I’ll never know; and therefore, I cannot discount the way someone else who can see more sees things.

There are bad drones — people who drone on and on about an idea. There are good drones — banjos, and bagpipes are too examples. I never understood the attraction to bagpipe music. I admire how the performers of the instrument circular breathe. Musically, I love how a drone adds both tension and release to a piece. As you listen to the piece below, you’ll notice how the drone notes change the vibe — from pensive and mysterious to joyous. Perhaps the pensive is the doubt and despair, and the joyous sound is the celebration of banishment. Either way… I hope you find the music as stimulating as I did.

I thought about ideas today. I struggled with a problem and thought to myself: “this would be a lot easier if I wrote out a problem statement.” That’s where I learned.The artist’s struggle is the battle to take what’s abstract and give it a form. Often times the idea, the phrase, the hypothesis, or the white whale you intend to slay is a figment of your imagination — it’s not real to you until you make it real. Once a thing has a form, it’s much easier to work it into something beautiful.