This quote, from the book Not Knowing by Steven D’Souza and Diana Renner:
To arrive at the simplest truth, as Newton knew and practised, requires years of contemplation. Not activity. Not reasoning. Not calculating. Not busy behavior of any kind. Not making any effort. Not thinking. Simply bearing in mind what it is one needs to know.
– Mathematician G Spencer Brown
… reminded me of this quote from Duchamp by Calvin Tompkins:
His finest work is his use of time.
That was Marcel Duchamp’s friend Henri-Pierre Roché’s comment on Duchamp. While Duchamp is probably most famous for his piece Fountain, which he made quickly, two of his greatest pieces of work, The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even… and Étant donnés both took well over ten years to create.
And during much of those periods, from the outside it looked like Duchamp wasn’t doing much.
Efficiency is the enemy of innovation – we need slack to innovate.
And so: are you taking the time you need? Or are you busy.
Personally, I’m way too busy right now – I need to fix that. Maybe you do too…
Tim- I have been equally suffering a build up of tensions, crowding in on me. My suggestion was go on a Walkabout. I wrote about this in my blog post recently
http://paul4innovating.com/2015/04/15/walkabouts-are-needed-for-learning-and-testing-ourselves/
We should never be that busy, we need to shed some of the load somehow
That’s a good post, thanks Paul. Looks like our thinking has converged again!
I recently read this article of Effectuation which says its not that efficiency and innovation can’t go hand in hand.
http://www.remo-knops.com/book/review/corporate-effectuation-blekman/
What are your thoughts on it
Regards
Ashish
That’s a great post. Effectuation is a great approach to entrepreneurship and a really important concept. Ultimately, you have to be able to manage both efficiency and innovation. It’s something I’ve written about a lot, and so has Ralph Ohr: http://timkastelle.org/blog/2015/02/innovation-and-organizational-culture/