#531 thinking in dots

Yesterday I received an email from a friend with the subject line: "Starting to view the world through a "how might she blog about this" lens.  She went on to say that she was listening to the sound of endless leaf blowers for the umpteenth day in a row and it got her wondering if people even use rakes anymore -- or in my area if they use shovels instead of snow blowers -- and how technology has changed yet another aspect of our lives.

I previously received an email from another former staff member who commented that he saw lots of FedEx trucks and thought about the arrow in their logo (as I described to him as part of a workshop I did a decade ago). He wondered how THAT could be a dot about how you could use branding to solidify your message or how once people see things it makes it hard NOT to see them (e.g.: he can never NOT see the arrow embedded in the white space of the FedEx logo).

In the keynote I just gave I said that if you want to be more attentive to the world around you, you should start writing a daily blog.  Apparently, just reading a daily blog sharpens your observational and analytical skills!

Readers know that my sister was going to write my blog if she lost a wager we had.  She won, but I really wonder what she would have written about.  I have no doubt that she would have come up with something great; I think all the readers would have something to write about.  Once you start paying attention, there are ideas everywhere.

Try it for today.  Pretend that you have to go home from work tonight and write a blog entry about something.  What would your observation be?  What lesson could you derive from it?  What organizational advice would you give?  

Whether you ever write a blog or not, make it a habit to keep learning from what is around you -- every day.

-- beth triplett
leadershipdots.blogspot.com

@leadershipdots
leadershipdots@gmail.com

[Want to share your blog idea? Post them as a comment or mail them to me at leadership dots@gmail]

Thanks Wendy and Brian!!