Jeoan

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Change hurts.

What is it that humans fear more than anything? Ghosts, serial killers, public humilliation? It`s different for all of us but I’d probably say change. Or at least it’s on the top list. Wait a minute, aren’t we all open minded people who want new and exciting things? No.

 My moms loves to tell the story of how I used to hate every time she got a haircut when I was a kid. I would start to cry and yell ”you`re ugly mom, just keep your old haircut!”. I was terrified that she would change, even the smallest thing because I liked the way she was now. So why change?

”Don’t fix it if it ain’t broken”. I guess you’ve hear that line before. So how do we know when something is broken? Or to turn it around: Is anything perfect?

 We are all creatures of habit and it’s not wierd that it is that way, in fact that’s what evolution has tought us. Our ancestors didn’t survive because they took chances and tried to change things around: ”Hey, we’ve never tried those weird red berries noone eats, let`s give them a go.” Those where the people who taught the rest of us a lesson. The examples we use to illustrate failure. Don’t change things, because then you might die.

Our brains have been trained through thousands of years to evaluate risks and to do it in an instant. Should I go towards this or run away? Is this a friend or an enemy? Do I really need to try those red berries in order to survive or can I keep eating those green ones that I know works (even if they taste like dogshit)?

This behaviour, to this day still prevents us to take risks and not just when it comes to berries. Be honest, how many things in your life do you sometimes change? It’s because you ”like them” I know…and why do you like them? Is it partly because they make you feel safe and give you comfort? Is it because you know what to expect from them?

I`m not  saying I`m different, I`m not.

Change is meant to be hurtful to protect us from making mistakes but it also becomes one of our biggest limitations. It’s the fear that keeps us in unhappy marriages, shitty jobs and stops us from achieving our dreams and eating those weird red berries. Today many choices translate to mundane things like wich brand of toothpaste we choose or what pizza we eat but still: It`s very hard when things change. Just look at the record industry, their unwillingness to change has cost them everything. Because the more you have right now the harder it is to change. The risk keeps growing with every asset and as long as we are making money don’t need to change. Or do we?

What happens if we are forced to change? We stand there unprepared. If it worked yesterday, it should work tomorrow…right? No need to think more about it. Sadly that’s often not the case. Especially with the growth of our world and technology.

So how do we prepare for that inevitable change? I believe we should embrace the fact that even if you know it’s best for you it IS still going to be hurtful. Don’t wait for something to go wrong to take a step back and evauluate what you do, in work and in life. You might think it’s a clichè but if you do then why haven’t you at least tried it?

 ”If it’s not a struggle, it’s not worth doing” a wise man once told me and I agree. So do change things, or else you might die. Or at least you won’t discover that after that moment of hurt, those weird red berries are actually awesome!

An insight into insight.

The topic of my thoughts in the last week has been mostly about the human mind. It never stops to amaze me in it`s complexity and diversity. Reading “Your brain at work” by David Rock has given me so many ideas to why creative thinking sometimes is really hard and sometimes so easy. Giving your brain the right circumstances to work is however maybe not something new to many people. I mean most know how they work best. Not too much information at once, keep your focus and take short breaks etc. and I share many of those. I know what to think about when I get unfocused, I know how to stimulate my brain when I get bored but I don`t really know why that works!

The amount of information the “thinking” brain, or the prefontal cortex can handle is surprisingly small, as well as for example the amount of tasks that you keep there. Rock calls it “the stage”, referring to actors on a small stage: There is a limited amount of actors that can fit on this stage that is your prefrontal cortex. Knowing it`s limitations and how to get “actors” on and of your “stage” is according to Rock crucial to be effective. It is also the place where alot of reflection and self insights take place, concious insights that is.

Being an aspiring strategist, lover of human behaviour and constant searcher of insights I find this especially fascinating. The part when the brain literally goes quiet for a moment and the explodes with a connection is a mental orgasm that is among the most rewarding things of creative work for me (well the orgasm is mostly mental too of course but you get where I`m going). I´m not going to spoil the book but Rock has some great tips on insights and preparing the mind for insights as well. I think they are great partly because I`ve been doing them for a long time without really knowing why or what I was doing and I so get to pat myself on the back a bit, but also because in order to understand how to be great and do meningful work we need to understand the tools we have and how to use them. Insights may sometimes seem to come from nowhere because they just “appear”. One morning in the shower your brain just goes “click”. That is not just a coincident, it`s not just random and it`s not just that click. It is a long process all the way from filling your brain with data and connections to priming it for insights and conclusions. It comes from combining, connecting and processing your data & knowledge, your experiences, your visual memories etc. etc. basicly what you have collected in your brain and making a new connection in a cognitive (“unthinking”) state that is then passed on up to your prefrontal cortex for a burst of “Aha!”.

You know that information pamplet you read about recycling, that documentary on discovery about how cans are made or that thing in school you learned and thought “I`ll never ever get to use this information”? Those things just might be the key to your future insights in literally any subject. That`s a great reason for being interested in ANYTHING.

I`ll end on a quote by Louis Pasteur, first shown to me by Strategist, planner and Hyper Island lecturer Saher Sidhom: “Chance favors only the prepared mind.”

The mathematics of “Why?”.

I`ve always hated math, for as long as I can remember. It wasn`t just because I wasn`t very good at it but I never felt that it was interesting. It just “wasn`t for me”.

In the last months or so I`ve been getting really into strategy: in brand, marketing, social and even economics. It just fascinates the hell out of me. To see behavioural patterns, draw conclusions and find creative insights is a pretty profound thing in human society. That`s all great great beacuse I love human behaviour, I love creative, I love things that can change our society and I love analyzing and calculating possible outcomes. Wait a minute now, WHAT? I love analyzing and calculating possible outcomes? Isn´t that math, because I know that I HATE math!

This has led me to think alot about math, because alot of strategy is in one sense or the other math. So how come I hate calculating numbers but I love calculating numbers? That makes no sense! The answer is for me actually very simpe. One word: “Why?”

The reason I love research and strategy is that it has a purpose to me, it tells me WHY people do things. The second most important thing in the before sentence is “people”. I can spend hours with numbers on web statistics, customer reports, target groups, competitors and not be bored because it gives me a sense of just that: Why people do stuff and why I do stuff too.

I can honestly say that I never thought of math like that before and no teacher has ever given me purpose in math class. Some have tried to convey their passion for math and the importance of me knowing it with things like: “it`s great for you to use in future job”, “You really need to know this” or my personal bad teacher favourite “You won`t pass the test and get a bad grade otherwise”.

That doesn`t give me anything. To me that`s not a reason. In my mind a number in itself is nothing: 259 204. 59. 10 124. The root of, plus, minus an so on.

That`s nothing. Or in my mind, it`s nothing yet. Because when you add a purpose to math that gives me knowledge about what the numbers actually are and how they relate to things I see everyday. They become “real”.

“259 204 people died in hamburger related car accidents last month”. Wow, that`s alot! So how many people eat hamburgers in their cars while driving as a total and how many procent of them died from it? What is the calculated risk of eating hamburgers while driving? Now it`s getting interesting. Why did they eat hamburgers while driving and would they have if they knew the risks?

Yeah, I know it`s the “if Pelle has 11 apples and Kalle has 4, how many apples do they…” thing you`re thinking, that most textbooks use and many teachers too. Not to me. To me the interesting part is not the apples but Pelle and Kalle and why they have said amounts of apples.

Wich decisions and actions has led Pelle to have more apples? Is it because he researched wich trees had the most apples to pick from? Is it because he went there more times and probabillity led him to have more apples? Because no matter how you see it, there`s maybe a underlying mathematical reason to why he has more apples. Amount of times going to pick apples, time spent there picking apples, amount of fruit on the tree etc. gives a calculatable probabillity to why he has a higher amount of apples for example.

I guess you see the pattern in “Why?” in my mind here and I`ll stop going on about the god damn apples already!

But case and point: If you find yourself hating math, maybe it is that you haven`t seen your purpose with it yet. Maybe you haven`t found how to really make it interesting for you.

Recently, I started to love math but mostly when it includes two things: People and (you guessed it) “Why?”.

new tourdiary coming this evening!

There will be a new tourdiary uploaded this evening (or morning or whatever it is for you at that time depend on where on this planet you are currently located).

Find out what the tourmanager Olle looks like while puking, how good Karnivool are at swedish, why Marcus should focus on the fat girls and what it sounds like when a drunken norrlänning sings a queen song! Don`t miss!

Dags att köra tillbaka till gbg igen, slut på vilandet!

Testing tumblr and messing around with it, I love it so far!