> where have you experienced intentionally designed serendipity?
I really like twitter's for this! For example, stumbled on a retweet of Gordon Brander, who has been posting pretty thoughtfully about designing systems for serendipity at https://subconscious.substack.com/
Setting yourself up to encounter powerful ideas seems like a weirdly important piece of creating serendipity.
Great read Seth! But I think you missed a fourth approach there:
Step 1: Take a big, ambitious idea and swing for the fences, go all out, and just hope that you've got it right and that somehow something innovative comes out of the pressure cooker of trying to do something impossible.
When everyone runs out of fuel without much to show for it, go for Step 2:
Step 2: Take the big, ambitious idea and narrow it down (significantly!, like -100X) until it becomes something safe and easy that you know you can deliver on.
If you chance on succeeding with Step 2, go back to Step 1 immediately without any reflection on why you succeeded.
That could be a whole post on its own - the problems that come from rigid adherence to procedure and process because you don't actually know why what you did works. Extremely common, especially in companies that are scaling.
> where have you experienced intentionally designed serendipity?
I really like twitter's for this! For example, stumbled on a retweet of Gordon Brander, who has been posting pretty thoughtfully about designing systems for serendipity at https://subconscious.substack.com/
Setting yourself up to encounter powerful ideas seems like a weirdly important piece of creating serendipity.
Thanks for the post!
Oh wow. Gordon's one of my favorite follow on Twitter...no idea how I missed his Substack up until now. Thanks for sharing!
Great read Seth! But I think you missed a fourth approach there:
Step 1: Take a big, ambitious idea and swing for the fences, go all out, and just hope that you've got it right and that somehow something innovative comes out of the pressure cooker of trying to do something impossible.
When everyone runs out of fuel without much to show for it, go for Step 2:
Step 2: Take the big, ambitious idea and narrow it down (significantly!, like -100X) until it becomes something safe and easy that you know you can deliver on.
If you chance on succeeding with Step 2, go back to Step 1 immediately without any reflection on why you succeeded.
That could be a whole post on its own - the problems that come from rigid adherence to procedure and process because you don't actually know why what you did works. Extremely common, especially in companies that are scaling.
This was a good read Seth