I’d never seen ads in a book before, actual color ads.  The text of 1000 Books to Change Your Life was illustrated with book covers, drawings, and paintings - but occasionally those color illustrations were ads for book stores, restaurant guides, and other such things.  I wasn’t sure what to think.

At first it felt a bit like a violation.  This is a BOOK.  Those aren’t supposed to be there.  Which only revealed how differently I viewed the book as compared to other reading matter….

But why not in a book?  Advertising is everywhere else.  The ads were relevant to the audience.  They weren’t any more obtrusive than in an average magazine.  If I lived in London, where the book was published, I would definitely be interested in going to some of the book stores.

I can even see how ads for online games could fit in a cyberpunk fiction novel, or perhaps relevant suppliers in a book on manufacturing.  The biggest issue would be that of timeliness - books are expected to last longer and be kept more than magazines.  Would readers accept finding these ads years later?  Would that really matter to the advertisers unless the books were not purchased as a result?

I was curious about the author, but there wasn’t one - just a buried editorial credit and a larger graphic showing that the book was a Time Out Guide.  So I visited their website.  This book was just one offering from a UK group that published travel guides and also a handful of magazines about specific cities, primarily in Europe.

And my view changed.

It was still a book, but the bound pages became less of a BOOK to me.  The hold of a reverence that I hadn’t even realized that I held lessened.  Instead this guide to many different books somehow became a really thick magazine, while still remaining a book.

Context mattered.

This is certainly a lesson repeated and not a new discovery.  I’ve reframed questions and writings to influence the perception of information.  But this time the emotional jar of it stood out for me.  I’m curious if I can remember other times when I’ve actually felt perspective change suddenly instead of gradually.

The best article on how to name your blog is Darren Rowse’s Choosing the Domain Name for Your Blog.  For myself, I began with a goal of finding a name easy to say and to remember.  As I brainstormed I was influenced by scarcity, the idea of “concrete”, and generous use of a thesaurus before I chose Inventing Elephants.  This post rambles through the iterations of my thought process.

My first idea was thinkbetter. 

That was what my goal boiled down to, after all.  But it was already taken.  For a while I thought of seekingsynthesis, referring to the idea of bringing more than one idea together and coming up with something new.  The alliteration was pretty neat too.  But then I read up on the philosophical concept of synthesis and the name didn’t seem to fit well enough, in addition to looking complicated.

I played with all sorts of word combinations about improving thinking.  I mined the thesaurus and used a couple online tools.  But nothing impressed me.  The closest I got was seekingthinking, but that was disturbingly hard to say.

Concrete.  Concrete.  Concrete.

The word just kept popping its head up, based on a recent reading of Made to Stick by Chip and Dan Heath, and none of my previous ideas met that criteria.  I turned my thoughts towards that direction and with a little mental ”click” I remembered the metaphor that I had used a couple years ago in trying to write an artists’ statement a couple years ago. I saw the fable of the blind men in the elephant in a different way and how well it could fit into what I wanted to say. 

I could call my blog seeingelephants!

When I searched for the phrase and its variations I found some interesting, but not unpleasant, connotations related to traveling long distances and having an unusual experience.  I also found a blog with a similar name, and some claimed domain names.

I decided to see if I could vary the concept to include a little more originality.

I considered taking concrete a step farther with a name such as fiveelephants of justoneelephant, but they seemed so blah.  I wanted something that conveyed a sense of process and action. 

So I pulled out the thesaurus again and started running through verbs, jotting down a substantial list.  I discarded some intriguing options that almost made it such as visualizing, envisioning, engineering, and imagining because they didn’t quite fit.  Inventing seemed to have that aspect of making up something original, but implied taking the concepts a step beyond into reality in a way that imagining did not.

I waited a couple days to let the idea of inventingelephants bounce around in my subconscious until I was sure I wouldn’t find an objection to it.  Then I bought the domain name and directed it here.

Inventing Elephants it is!

I would have lost out if my earlier ideas had been available and I had stopped pushing the creative process.  How many times do any of us do that?  What else might I have missed doing better because I didn’t take one or two steps further when they didn’t seem necessary at the time?

“No, we can take care of it.” 

This was the answer a colleague gave to the question of “Do you need more resources?” during a project meeting about process optimization.  It was true that small amounts of work could be fit in among other tasks, but in R&D we had speculated more than once about what might be accomplished if there was a position dedicated to process.  This colleague had even made similar comments once or twice.

No, we wouldn’t have gotten that new person if we had asked for the position, due to budgetary considerations at the time.  But that wasn’t the point.  The day before another colleague in a similar meeting related to a product rollout had an immediate answer to the same question about where he would like new salespeople and what marketing campaigns should be run to support the new product.

It was a matter of mindset.  Of thinking within what seemed feasible or riding the train of thought further into what could be.   And it was a difference that hadn’t been driven home to me until I discussed the meeting with my manager afterwards.

If I don’t ask for resources then I can’t receive them.  I don’t know what the long-term or company-wide plans are at a more strategic level above me on the corporate ladder. 

If I imagine what I would need for my perfect solution, essentially look at the bigger picture, then scale back to what is realistic, I may come up with a different and more effective use of current resources than I started with.

There is no reason to avoid thinking large and long-term in order to answer the question of “What resources do I need?”, no matter whether the subject matter is personal or job-related, even if those thoughts are not shared with others.  At the least I will understand the situation better.  I might even come up with something new.

These posts have been proving more difficult to write than the blogging that I’m used to.  I have a few in progress and ideas for others but feel that I am slashing my way through the undergrowth in the process.

I am more accustomed to describing what I’ve done and why I did it in relation to a physical result - the creation of a piece of art.  The entire process is low stress because there is no wrong answer or even a wrong way to think.  It’s more like wandering through the fields, interrupted only be the occasional stream and hidden tripping hazard.

For example, one of the posts I’m working on is about another website and how I intend to use its knowledge and format.  Each time I return to the site to make sure I have my facts right I find something new that refines my opinion and presentation, so I keep returning to rewrite my post.

Another post is about a personal experience in my job.  I could relate the story very simply and easily, but expressing the implications is taking more effort.  Partially, I’m having trouble wording what I want to say.  I’m also struggling to decide if I should just write what I felt I learned at that instant, or if I should try to pull in more information and make it instructive.

A third I just started today, in response to another blog post.  I thought I had a very clear opinion, but as I started to write I realized that what I was intending to say had little relevance to the original post and didn’t feel that I would actually be adding to the conversation.  I could still develop something interesting from my original idea, but need to decide if I should put the effort in there instead of elsewhere.

In a way I’m glad that I’m facing problems and failing in what I attempt, because it means that I’m stretching myself in my efforts to reach my goals.  Unfortunately, it also makes it difficult to keep this blog updated!

Ooooo, I can think!

That was my reaction after the epidural kicked in.

Before that moment I had discovered that pain can be a fugue state that doesn’t even really feel like pain.  It can be this place where noise is a necessary accompaniment to something that doesn’t have a name.  In the middle of it you don’t realize that your brain is working differently, not until there’s a moment between pains where everything briefly clears up.

I never felt so grateful for clarity as in those moments after the medication was applied.  My interest in knowing what was going on around me came back, along with my ability to reason about it.  Even my vocabulary came back.

I’ve known for many years that my physical state affects how well I can think.  My effectiveness can depend on the time of day, how long it’s been since I’ve eaten, and how much sleep I’ve had recently.  But what else?

Am I ever in a state where I can’t think properly and don’t realize it?  Not because of pain, although that experience prompted the question, but for some other reason?  How can I notice such a state, if it does exist, especially if it is a wide-ranging condition?

My best solution at the moment is only to keep asking questions and looking for answers.

P.S. - My first child, a little girl, was born at 4:16 pm on December 24.  We’re home, happy and healthy, and discovering new routines.

Is an elephant like a snake?  A wall?  A fan?  In the fable of the blind men and the elephant each man gives one of these opinions, and others besides, depending on what part of the beast they touched.  They argue, each convinced that they are right, none comprehending that they know only part of the whole.  Sometimes, I feel like one of those blind men, only capturing a glimpse of what I should be seeing.

In 2008 I will focus on improving the way I think so that I can:

• ask the right questions and evaluate the answers
• apply general theory to specific practice 
• combine disparate ideas into something new 
• increase my awareness of additional options and influences
• collaborate and communicate more effectively
• and simply be more effective at whatever I undertake

This goal spans all of my endeavors, from my current job as a product formulator to making the most of my MBA classes and then to my artistic growth and personal concerns.  I have learned pieces and bits from personal experience, reading, and my engineering background.  But I have never focused on true improvement, just going along with what was going on at the time.

I want to put the pieces together and see the elephant.  But it’s not only about understanding the elephant that someone else knows is there.  Ultimately, the idea is about taking parts and concepts and realizing that they are, or can be, parts of a greater, yet unrealized, whole.  In a sense, I want to be inventing elephants.

The posts in this blog will be tied together by my goal of improving the way I think, but they might range widely in topic.  Many will be about thinking itself, often in the context of the business skills I am learning, but others will be efforts to develop and express my thoughts instead of letting them flow unexamined.