“So what is the deal with this website?”
“Why this weird name?”
“And who are you anyway?”
Yep, you are right. I should probably not be so rude and first introduce myself, so let us start with the last question. I am Tom, I am 30 years old when I started this blog. I am German, live in London, work as an Innovation Manager, I like green and I have great curiosity and lots of questions.
I guess the last bit is why I started this website in the first place. There are so many occasions where I find myself going “Hmm… Interesting” and then… the thought is lost… because… well… life happened. With so many things on my mind it is easy to loose track of what I consider the “deeper thoughts”. Yep, and the Facebooks, Twitters and the “10 most amazing things you won’t believe” posts don’t really help here as well.
Over the last few months, I grew more and more curious to follow up on some of those thoughts. And I realised that it can be hard to actually think about a topic deeply and thoroughly. I get distracted. I keep coming back to similar line of reasoning, drawing similar conclusions. I forget stuff.
Maybe for these reasons, I increasingly felt myself drawn to writing. Writing focusses the thoughts. It provides me with the rails to follow a train of thought consistently. It forces me to justify my conclusions. It allows me to come back to my thoughts, to review and refine my argument. Writing is an awesome instrument to figure stuff out. It helps to think deeply about a topic.
“But why the heck do I do this on a website?” you might ask. Why not keeping a journal? And why should you care?
Well, I can really only answer the first two questions, the last one is with you I guess.
Publishing articles forces me to think things through properly. I may get away leaving something halfway done if I am the only one who reads it in the end. I would feel stupid putting something half-baked on the web. Hence I see it as an incentive tool to battle my own laziness to think things through properly sometimes.
Also, there is somehow a deep gratification in creating something tangible. A builder has his house to look at, a baker has her bread to smell, a tailor has an amazing suit to try on. As a modern knowledge worker, I wonder what an equivalent of this source of gratification could be. And I think it can be the art of capturing something as elusive as an “Hmm… Interesting!” moment and make it accessible to others. Creating a website excites me. And with a bit of time investment, it gives me something to come back to and be proud of what I did.
There is another side benefit to publishing articles. And this is the innovation guy in me speaking now. It is amazing what happens if one idea you have meets another idea somebody else has. In that moment, the laws of mathematics stop working. 1+1 is not 2 anymore. The other idea triggers new ideas in yourself. Maybe something that you already knew but already forgot. Something from a different context which you though had no place here. Or maybe something completely new. 1+1 becomes 3 – at least. Sometimes even more. Sometimes for both at the same time (isn’t it amazing how ideas work?).
So there it is, my reason to start this website. I hope that some of my “Hmm… Interesting!” moments spark some of your “Hmm… Interesting!” moments. Or maybe you disagree violently. Or maybe you thought of something I did not even consider (there is probably loads!). Either way, I am happy to engage with you. Either drop a comments or shoot me an email.
Okay, enough intro. Let’s get this scary first post out there now and dive straight into some of my musings. Excited!
