Read this post at Presentation Zen (a blog worth following) on Jazz and Zen, and enjoy Garr's summary that included such (obvious after all) nuggets:
In structure there is freedom and spontaneity.
Restraints and limitations can be great liberators.
Simplicity is supremely beautiful, yet difficult to obtain.
Remove the clutter, strive for absolute clarity.
I do "see" it, being a fan of Miles Davis, Keith Jarret and many others - I do "hear" the underlying structure and how it allows them to improvise.
But I also sense the importance of the same principles in my daily life, mostly from the negative impact of daily clutter on my creative time and how trying to remember what I should remember stresses me out.
When you have to remember, when you have to find the information, when you have to tell - in short when you are the structure, when you are the framework for the work flow, your creativity and productivity will suffer and you cannot be a full knowledge worker.
When you have to be the context, you cannot be free.
On the positive side I do know that when I have a grip of a situation, when I know the boundaries and limitations, that is when I become creative.
When I can leave the structure to somebody or something else I thrive. When I can go with the flow and be a part of some other context I deliver faster and better.
But to go with the flow requires a flow, and a flow requires a riverbed.
In the last decades we have seen a tremendous bettering of work related communication methods; from email to collaboration systems and everything 2.0. But easy communication only accentuates the problem, same lack of time context exists - the increasing avalanche of emails messes even more with my head, the increased number of tools, applications and websites that I must remember to fire up to get work done just increases the stress.
And we know this. Still all the focus is on "easier finding of information", "more intuitive interfaces" and "better communication" - nary a word about work flow structure.
Where is that flow-of-work structure? Where is the time context that will do away with my todo list? Where is that private secretary that could be my "context" and pop in at the right moment and tell me what my next task is while giving me that neat binder with all pertinent information?
Precisely the issue we try to address with Thingamy. Forget about "business applications" and all such nonsense - it's all about supplying a time based work flow structure for the people working in an organisation so it will liberate them from the todos, deadlines, budgets, clutter, stress and having to be the context. Thus spontaneity and creativity could be allowed to flourish. It's about recreating that private secretary so we can focus on the important stuff and be the best.
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