Chasing Rabbits
Eureka revisited
- A good idea never comes out of nowhere, but is always a reaction to an existing problem. The Eureka-moment that I wrote about in the first blogpost was not some kind of deus ex machina hitting Olaf and Alessandro on the head. No, it was inspiration that drove them. Eureka is actually the Greek word for having found something. Archimedes famously cried out ‘Eureka’ after discovering the scientific law that bears his name while he was taking a bath. It’s an exclamation of joy after you’ve finally found the thing that you were looking for. Whether you knew what you were looking for or not.
When Alessandro and Olaf were working on the Job Connectors, they realized that they were always looking for work after their client had finished a job. Alessandro had the same problem when he was working for himself. While he was working for one client, he had no time to actively search for another one. But he already knew that he would need a new client when his job was done. That’s the same as looking for a new house after you’ve already sold your old house. Not the most efficient way to look for work.
It was this problem that inspired Olaf and Alessandro to look a bit further. The Job Connectors was not a solution, but just another employment agency. In order to fix the problem, they needed to take a step back and try to look at the problem in a different way. Or better yet, take a step back so they could finally see the real problem. The problem with that however, is that nothing is more difficult than trying to solve a problem in a totally different way than you’re used to.
Wittgenstein
Normally we are stuck in a certain way of thinking. When we try to solve a problem, we use the tools that we know. You can compare this to the way we search things with Google. Google remembers everything that we look for online and tries to narrow our search based on our previous searches. That’s not necessarily bad, but the consequence is that Google doesn’t show search results that are outside of our search index. The same kind of thing happens in our brain when we try to solve a problem. We use the methods that we’re used to, but we can’t look outside of our own search index. With the passing of time, our problem solving skills becomes less flexible.
Ludwig Wittgenstein, one of the most important philosophers of the 21st century, also noticed this problem and he tried to clarify it with the picture of a Duck-Rabbit. When you look at that picture, it becomes clear that you can look at an object and without the object changing you can still see something else. And therein lies the solution. To solve a problem you do not necessarily have to look in a new direction, but you need to look at the problem in a new way. Of course, when you don’t know what a rabbit looks like, you can stare at the picture all you want but you will never see it. So you need someone to show you that there’s also a rabbit in the picture to help you distinguish the two animals.
Catch a moment
To me, that’s inspiration. When someone is able to show you something that you were totally unaware of. Because we need people to inspire us in order to make progress. Otherwise we are just going in circles. For me it happened while I was reading Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five. It is a great work of fiction that goes beyond the rules and regulations that literature is normally restricted by. The irony of this is that the protagonist of Slaughterhouse Five, Billy Pilgrim, has become unstuck in time. He is someone who is totally unable to control time and even has time-spasms. Basically the exact opposite of what we’re trying to achieve. But the point is that Vonnegut showed me something that was not conceivable for me before I read his book. He has shown me (and everyone else who read his book) a new way of writing and inspired me.
And now we are trying to do something similar. Floown is an answer to the problem of not being able to indicate when you’re available while you’re working for a client. But for us it is also a new way of looking at time. A new way to manage time and take hold of it. What if time is not something that just ‘passes by’. What if you were able to catch a moment in time like Mocky[1]? And what if you can be more resilient to the changes around you? We are trying to show people what else is possible and hopefully we can eventually make you see the rabbit.
Originally published at floown.com.
