Droplets Forming: Changing the pattern

Monday, June 22, 2009

Changing the pattern

"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."

- Albert Einstein

I first heard the above quote as one about neurosis instead of insanity. The effect is the same: do you repeat a pattern of behaviour and thought, and expect a different result to last time?

I know I do. Every project, I'm expecting that this time I will magically be willing to follow through, to see it to the end. The initial buzz always makes me believe it. Or I will make a resolution and expect to keep it.

I have noticed that the real times that make the difference are not those promising, idealistic times at the beginning of the project when everything is blue skies and hopefulness. The real crux points are when I am bored, tired and resistant to the work, repelled by it, rebelling against the cords that bind.

Those are the times when things need to change. I listen to myself there and believe that I don't need to work on it now, that I can leave it to next time. Fool.

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Quotes

"Books won't stay banned. They won't burn. Ideas won't go to jail. In the long run of history, the censor and the inquisitor have always lost. The only sure weapon against bad ideas is better ideas." ~ Alfred Whitney Griswold

"If at first the idea is not absurd, then there is no hope for it." ~ Albert Einstein

"We are told to remember the idea, not the man, because a man can fail. He can be taught, he can be killed and forgotten but, 400 years later, an idea can still change the world. I've witnessed first hand the power of ideas, I've seen people kill in the name of them, and die defending them...but you cannot kiss an idea, cannot touch it, or hold it...ideas do not bleed, they do not feel pain, they do not love." ~ Evey Hammond in V for Vendetta

" Ideas are somewhat like babies--they are born small, immature, and shapeless. They are promise rather than fulfillment. In the innovative company executives do not say, "This is a damn-fool idea." Instead they ask, "What would be needed to make this embryonic, half-baked, foolish idea into something that makes sense, that is an opportunity for us?" " ~ Peter Drucker, The Frontiers of Management (1986)