Free life, a clean sheet of paper
Have you ever thought about what you might do with a clean sheet of paper?
A while back, I was on a client visit, and one of our “tour guides” said something that sparked my interest. This organization is creating a new product line, and for the first time in their industry’s history, they are approaching this new product with “a clean sheet of paper.” In fact, they are approaching it from an entirely new perspective.
This one comment got me thinking: How many times have we gone about doing a job or a task the same way because “we always do it this way”? How many times, because of rushed time schedules or convenience, have we fallen into old patterns? While they may be tried and true, and one can have confidence in some process that we know works, what are we potentially giving up? What might we be missing?
The history books are riddled with people who have come up with new ways of looking at the status quo, and revolutionized industry. Henry Ford, commonly accredited with the assembly line, switched perspectives and simply moved the car and not the workers. And I’ll lay you odds, perhaps without knowing exactly what he was doing, Ford gave it up to his subconscious and reticular activating system to solve the challenge.
So, what do you have coming up that might benefit from “a clean sheet of paper”? Give your reticular activating system the goal of finding a new way to accomplish a challenge. You may find yourself doing something as simple as finding a different way home from work, looking up, and finding your own revolutionary new way of looking at the future.
If you knew then what you know now. What would you be doing differently now?