I was reflecting upon my old website this morning (which is currently archived, although I may import its content again in the future) and I realized something. So much of the best stuff I’ve researched over the years is not within it. It’s still stuck in my head.
Why?
Primarily I wasn’t in the mindset of sharing knowledge as I was acquiring it but rather I just shared when I had larger insights. Put another way, when blogging, there’s always seems to be this focus on long form writing rather than short form writing (which is more popular on social networks).
Secondly, and more importantly though, a lot of the larger insights I was having at the time, I couldn’t fully make sense of and thus figure out where they “fit into things” in terms of how to categorize them.
This second point, I think, is extremely important because it touches upon something that I’m realizing more and more, as I journey from a Self-Authoring Mind to a Self-Transforming Mind. And it relates to something Steve Jobs said.
You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future.
Steve Jobs
So you often won’t make sense of things and understand them in the moment of first experiencing them but instead you‘ll make sense of them and understand them in reflecting back upon them over time.
Yet this realization pretty much goes again most personal knowledge management approaches (at least what I’ve read) and even website practices. You create categories and tags upon your website and when you add new posts, you categorize and tag them. This, however, assumes you know where the content fits into the larger context of your website.
But what if you don’t know how something fits into the bigger picture because you don’t fully understand it yet, since you haven’t made sense of it yet?
For example, before my Life as an MMORPG framework emerged, it was just bits and pieces at first. Then patterns emerged and then I saw relationships between the patterns, thus revealing the bigger picture overall.
But here’s the thing. If the sense-making and understanding occurs afterwards upon reflection, where do you keep these thoughts and experiences in the interim, until the sense-making occurs later?
In other words, these are liminal thoughts, with no solid ground or space to be contained within yet.
Yet what’s saddest of all though is that if I had written way more short form posts, highlighting these key moments of insight and connection on my journey, these would have effectively been the building blocks of my framework with which I could have connected together via links to provide a bigger picture of how my work emerged naturally over time on my website.
And in the process, it would show how things often don’t make sense going forwards, as you stumble around trying to make sense of things in the moment, almost like you feel lost in a maze, but rather by reflecting backwards.
That above anything else is what transitioning to a Self-Transforming Mind is trying to teach me about the struggles of articulating my work.
It’s telling me to let go and trust that even though things often won’t make sense in the moment, they will make sense later upon reflection, as the insights emerge over time.
Or put another way. Everything has a place and a space, even though you may not be able to see that place and space yet.
And this doesn’t just apply to what you’re working on but with regards to your very self as well. In other words, while you might feel lost now, a larger purpose can emerge over time.
BTW two examples that I think relate to this are as follows. The first relating to individual thoughts within you forming ideas and the second being individual people within society forming newer systems.
Nick Milo’s Linking Your Thinking website which relates to idea emergence occurring from small atomic notes that connect and link up, creating larger ideas.
Berkana’s Two Loops Model, created by Deborah Frieze and Margaret Wheatley, which shows how when a dominant system is dying out, a newer emerging system usually is born from individual outcasts from the older system becoming pioneers that connect up and create the new system over time.