Steve Jobs’ said this to Stanford, and the world absorbed it as its motto.
“You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards,” he said, to eager students, pushing them to not over-plan their life, and take it as it comes.
This idea of connecting the dots is not new – it lies at the heart of creation. You do the things you gotta do, you look back and find that somehow, without realising, a pattern emerged. One thing led to another. One thing fed into another. Each thing mattered. Every decision, including the doubts and fears it led to, made sense in this pattern, one that became uniquely yours.
Everything beautiful is a result of connecting the dots.
Good conversation. Good content. Good journalism. Good cooking. Good driving. Good crisis management. Good betting and gambling. Good stand up comedy. Good business. Every activity we are a part of, we connect the dots to create unique selves that we then bring to the task at hand.
An infinite potential of creative solutions emerges from such an approach. Permutations and combinations that defy linear thinking in magical ways.
But. There is a but, like always.
You can only connect the dots you have collected. You can only draw from your experiences, interactions, content you have watched. If I say thoo thoo and you say Hawk Tuah, I know that we have the same dots – pop culture as we see on Instagram.
With n dots, there is only a finite permutation combination available. If you are so inclined, the formula is nPr = n!/(n-r)!, where r is the number of objects selected.
In a given geography, cultural and religious community, class context, language barrier, there are a finite number of dots we would collect.
I stay in Malad West and attended Carmet of St. Joseph High School, a girls only convent school. Just recently, I made a friend who stayed in the same neighbourhood, and attended the boys only convent, St. Annes High School. We were new friends, but it was like we knew each other’s lives. Same tuition teacher for Maths and Science, same after-school addas, same genre of romantic stories between the students of our respective schools.
A finite number of dots we had collected in the formative years of our lives.
***
Today, I spend a lot of my time in online communities, around books, literature, films, stories, performance arts, music, and the like. Around conversation about Culture, that often abused word, as Aakash Rohilla, another of my friends puts it.
Film buffs who watch the same 10 Instagram influencers and their MUBI inspired film recommendations. Book lovers who read the same books as the 20 paid influencers of the bookish community. Coffee connoisseurs who visit the same 15 coffee shops between Andheri and Bandra. Food lovers, who have yet to enter a local restaurant where dishes are priced below Rs 250 too.
We share the same digital geography and neighbourhood, and as such, the dots we are collecting are eerily similar to each others. That’s a great thing as a community, terrible as a creator/artist. No matter how much I try, my frame of reference, my potential to draw connections, my ability to create serendipity is reduced greatly because my peers and I are living near homogenous lives.
And because community holds the divine power of comfort and complacency, the fewer unique dots I collect, the more reduced my chances of doing so in the future.
***
Urban people like myself fall further into this trap, as we chase the blue ticked viral content for consumption. But both the growth of our creative faculties, which also stems from the growth of our critical thinking faculties, stems from going on your own path. Choosing what you like (even if it means that post has got one like), having the courage to follow your unique interests, even if it means we do not meet a lot of peers doing the same, at the start. Asking the questions you have, chasing the things you are curious about. Existing in an orbit, that’s entirely your own, an orbit that only you can create, and you can only create if you choose to put yourself in a search and scout mode.
Content is our diet. And most viral content is the equivalent of fast food chains – find the average mediocrity to appease to everyone. But taste buds are not explored through it, you don’t understand flavours in a McVeggie. It takes a gourmet or freshly made burger to help you understand why mayo and ketchup and go differently with different tikkis.
The food is the same. You are still eating a burger. You are still watching an opinion about a film. Perhaps that film is also the same one everyone is talking about. But it is a perspective that 99.9% of the content ignores. It is in that .1% of the margins where you begin to differentiate. Understand that nothing is universal.
***
So where do you go collecting your unique dots?
To start with, move away from the bestsellers. Do not buy a book from the Nielsen book list or the ranked shelves in a book store. Do not read a review before you watch a film. For music, listen to a top 40 list. Find an artist you like. Go search for more songs by that artist. Follow the collaboration trail. Find someone else in the same genre. Don’t just listen to Tim Ferris on business, but see who inspired Tim, then see which philosophy or first principle that leads to. Read the business principles from 1400s in the archives.
You don’t have to do it all the time. You don’t even perhaps need to do it for everything. But pick any one area of your life where you decide to tell yourself, “I will not rely on anyone else to give me information about it. I will not go buy what everyone believes, thinks. If I agree, I will find out why I agree. If I disagree, I will have the courage to admit it to myself at least.”
Put yourself in the search and scout mode. Hunt for the content you like.
It is the most delicious meal you will have.