HYPOTHESIS: Design Thinking will help me become an “Influencer” in 365 days
Well, the rumors circulating between the three people who haven’t blocked me on Gchat are true: I’ve decided to become an Influencer. What’s an Influencer, you ask? We’re going to find out.
Because on January 3 I read a tweet about a podcast about a book that said:
Many of us feel stuck: in the wrong job, the wrong relationship, the wrong city — the wrong life.
That sounds like me! And maybe that sounds like you. So my plan to get unstuck is to become an Influencer, because Influencers (in my mind) are by definition not stuck. Or maybe they are and they’re just not telling us. That’s why I’m embarking on a year-long mission to find out. (More on all this later.)
Anyway, the host of that podcast — Shankar Vedantam — said a great way to get unstuck was to appropriate the Silicon Valley concept “design thinking”:
Design thinking is about recognizing your constraints, realizing there isn’t just one answer, and then trying something: “Building a prototype,” getting information from it, and then trying something else.
The idea is you try something very practical, something you can do quickly, send it out into the world and then learn from how it performs. You come back, iterate and then go back into the world again.
Wow — even after Silicon Valley has already given us so much, there’s still more for us to take! So, let’s give this a shot. We’ll explore the world of INFLUENCER(s) one week at a time. We’ll use iterative design and my barely mitigated ego to test small hypotheses, then I’ll report the results back to you. Granted, I still have a TON of research to do—and I fully expect this project will pivot frequently, and (hopefully) become much less about “me” —but even rudimentary understanding of design thinking shouldn’t stop me from diving in quickly to this low-stakes project.
I’ve set the goal of 365 days (January 23, 2018). If I can’t — without irony — call myself an Influencer by that date, I will have failed. But perhaps I’ll have become unstuck in the process. So with that…
Week 1 hypothesis: My Friends are Interested in This Hypothesis
It’s entirely possible this whole experiment could die fairly soon. If interest is low (or hostile) I’ll happily shut it down. Early data is mixed:
Anyway, over the following week I’ll be looking to reactions to this piece on whether people in my circle will find this experiment compelling.
Recommend and share, or tag an Influencer! Or just unblock me on Gchat and tell me there.
CAVEAT: This whole experiment might seem a petty, self-indulgent distraction — especially in a time of political turmoil. That’s possible/probable! But any ability to enact change relies on our ability to become “unstuck,” so perhaps along the way we’ll find that spheres of influence can amplify voices and enact actual change. Or maybe they won’t! That’s what I want to find out.
