At some point in my content creation journey, I encountered a profound idea from Derek Sivers:
“Obvious to me, amazing to others.” – Derek Sivers
When I first saw this quote, I thought it made perfect sense. We’re individuals for a reason – each of us has autonomy. Hence, we perceive life through authentic lenses that depend on who we are – our preferences, experiences, opinions, beliefs, and whatnot.
Here’s a fun way to think about this concept:
“Read to collect the dots. Write to connect them.” – David Perell
We all collect dots through experience. We build our outlooks through it. But think: are the dots we collect similar? Maybe. It’s undeniable that convergences in our experiences arise at select points. But from a broader vantage, our ‘dots’ are unique. Our lives extensively differ from one another. Unless we speak, feel, contemplate, and learn the same way, we will have distinctive stuff to share. In short, our experiences influence the variation of what we share.
On a similarly consequential note, we must understand that, in the digital age, our content diet largely influences our experiences. What we share comes from a wellspring of information we consume. Accordingly, the quality of what we share hinges on the grade of information we consume.
Unfortunately, the 21st-century status quo revolves around collecting unworthy, sometimes useless dots. We live in an era of fleeting information: one made of memes, gossip, mawkishness, and vacuity. On the more extreme side, trendy information sometimes is characteristic of outright idiocy and negativity.
Only a few consume meaningful content, which is perfect for providing serendipitous moments to people. Meaningful content, when shared, allow for instances comparable to Archimedes getting up from his bath, naked, running down the street, engulfed by passion and excitement for his discovery of a Physics law.
I say this because, like other prolific thinkers, Archimedes lived remarkably. He did so by amassing quality wisdom and adventure.
See, had the principle of buoyancy been evident to Archimedes’ peers and not to Archimedes, the world would have one less genius streaker whose contributions to the intellectual space remain essential.
Had Archimedes not submerged himself in his intellectual pursuits – having collected superior dots compared to his coequals – he would merely be another inconsequential person in Ancient Greece.
Each dot collected by Archimedes leading up to his Eureka moment has contributed to his scientific finding.
So, let me ask: do you collect quality dots?