A few years ago, my friend, V and I went to an interesting seminar given by Krystyna Laycraft. She has an interesting theory relating chaos theory with creativity. Her equation looks simple yet has great applications, Chaos = Creativity. And since we came out of her little 1 hour seminar, I’ve been able devise insights into some of my dilemma’s; insights into my psyche; and insights into business, all using this new paradigm shift. All I can say is “Wow!”.

Background

The reason for going was V had heard about this seminar and ask if it sounded interesting. I thought, “hey why not.” Next thing I knew, tickets where purchased and we where sitting in a small room of about 30 people and Krystyna started explaining chaos theory.

As a creative individual, I was hoping to use this to be able to re-open and kick start a small creative hump I’ve been having. But as I listened, and as V and I continued to discuss afterward through the night, some pretty interesting and powerful Ah-ha moments ensued.

It was a lot to take in. I wasn’t taking notes, so some of my information can have a few gaps, but this is my rendition and learnings from the seminar. I suggest, if you get the opportunity to go to the seminar yourself.

Why Chaos Theory?

The best an most recent example of chaos theory is the traumatic tsunami that just occurred. The tsunami is a perfect example of chaos theory in action. A particular moment, in contact with another unknown element, caused a particle in the water to go left instead of right . This caused a chain reaction causing more particles to change there motions which lead to more and more alterations. The ultimate result is that of a massive wave of tremendous proportions. This incredible moment was caused by a single moment it time and space. Imagining the powerful outcome of the tsunami being put to use in terms of creative energy or moments. Gravity, Electricity, Penicillin, Sticky Notes, Velcro: these are all tremendous achievements and inventions that where made possible with a single accidental moment. Something unknown, cause a trickle effect leading to a surprising and life altering outcome.

A Quick Lesson in Chaos
( by someone regurgitating new lessons )

Chaos has several different stages but tonight Krystyna focused on 2, the “bifurcate” and “attractors”.

The bifurcate – is the moment of divergence of a particular element or particle. Essentially it is that moment of left or right. It is that moment where a path must be chosen. Hence the definition.

The attractor – from how I understand it, is the reason that has attracted the moment of bifurcation. It is also the predictability of the outcome of the bifurcation. There are 4 of these attractors (“outcomes”)

1. Point – this is a single definite moment. A definitive point. It’s a 1 dimensional element. The outcome is always known and predictable. An example, would be death. It is a finite single point that we know will happen to all living things. When it happens is uncertain, but it will happen.
2. Circle – this is a 2 dimensional cyclical pattern. It isn’t a point, but is a predictable cycle. Every point in the circle will be reached, and once the cycle is complete the outcome will happen the exact same way as it did the last. It again is a predictable moment, yet, only through seeing the entire cycle can the prediction become accurate. I personally am having difficulty finding an explanation or occurrence of this pattern. I think is would be a repetitive cycle. The outcome is a completely predictable once the full cycle is known.
3. Torus – this is a 3 dimensional pattern. Picture it like a hollow donut. And in that donut is a single moment flailing and spiralling through the donut in a particular direction, i.e. clockwise. Now this type of moment isn’t predictable, but a general understanding can be gained. That moment will eventually end up back at approximately the same place but the precise position/outcome will be unknown. The example are the seasons of weather. We all know that it will go from spring to summer to fall to winter. But how long that will take, or how calm or severe is completely unpredictable. We know that there is a general pattern, but cannot predict its exact outcome.
4. Strange – This is where the fun comes into play. Strange is a 4 dimensional outcome. Meaning that the outcome can be completely anything. Anything in 3 dimensional space, plus any instant of time, could impact the result. These are those complete spontaneous moments where something impacts our path causing the bifurcation. And example would be, if I’m walking down the street and all of a sudden a pebble comes tumbling down a hill and into my path. All of a sudden, I trip on a pebble and I stumble and fall. The moment is completely unpredicted and may never happen ever again.

My Ah-Ha Moment

Now, after explaining the fundamentals of chaos, Krystyna continued to help explain the creative cycle and how it comes into play. I’m not going to give the whole seminar away, after all, she is the expert and it’s her theory so, you should listen to it for yourself to be able to draw your own epiphanies and conclusions. But, for me, it’s all about the strange attractors. These are the key. Essentially, within the creative process there is a moment of “walking away” from the problem or the endeavor. It’s a moment when you get away to take a break. You might not even know you’ve walked away from something to begin with. In every good ( or ah-ha ) outcome, there is a “my best ideas come when I’m in the shower” or “I always know the answers right when I wake up in the morning” kind of moment. It’s these spontaneous insights into solutions, or ideas for new creations, that only through something unknown, and spontaneous, could the resulting outcome happen. Essentially my epiphany is this, you have to drive yourself in head first into unknown moments. Force yourself to be in unknown situations and unknown places doing unknown things. By maximizing and increasing bifurcating moments in your life, will you increase the chances of interacting with that single small moment which could ripple into the next big thing.

Conclusions and Applications

Psyche – Now this theory is known and applied by psychologists to solve psychological issues. I’m not going to go into too much detail, as it’s more personal of nature, but by tracking back issues in times of those decisions, and looking for those moments, can you really see the root cause. And, from my years of trouble-shooting and problem solving, only after determining the root cause can a solution be devised.

Creativity – Creativity in nature is spontaneous. When we get creative, and how to tap into that creativity is one of great conversation. Causing conflict, trying new things, Asking strange questions, all of these can be techniques into the next thing. I once heard that by playing a little word game during a brainstorming session, a major phone company increased its revenues from pay phones by increasing the weight of the phone receiver. Odd solution, but studies proved it worked. The heavier the receive the more tiered the arm was holding it. Causing conversations to be shorter, causing more available time for more people, meaning more quarters.

Business – in any business a single moment can make or break a business. It’s the skill of wave riding that really determines the successful versus the detrimental. In everyday there are always solutions needed to problems. So, the possibility to increase the “ah-ha” or positive solutions is to increase the unknown elements or moments. Conflict is proven to be effective in the workplace. Here is a great explanation why. Conflict=Chaos.

If anyone has read Values Shift,
then reading the new finding from salary.com,
or the post on Worthwhile, isn’t much surprised at all.

Question: Which would you prefer, a $5000 annual increase in your base pay or the equivalent in time off?

Result: 35% – Time Off , 61% Cash

I finished Blink , and I found it enthralling. I just couldn’t put it down. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in finding out more on how we all tick.

In it, there is a site address to take your own Implicit Association Test (IAT). This test is a nice understanding of the unconscious decisions and feelings locked away. It’s pretty cool, mind you I’ve taken a bunch and I keep coming back inconclusive. What does that mean?

I’m trying to find way’s to compile the data better. Quite frankly there are a billion and 3 places to get it from. As I time myself, getting the data in, is a management nightmare. I was thinking I might want to create a specialized crawler for the purpose to look out for events. However, I’ve never build one, so I need to take a look and learn. I’m not sure if that’s even the best way of going about it. Any ideas?

Came across this on Alan Meckler’s Blog. It’s an interesting theory of the future and what could happen. It’s got a pretty freaky undertone, especially when Seth posted this.

Sure makes me wonder about the integrity and truth behind the future of all information, not just blogging. What year is this…1984?

[Update: Guess I should be paying more attention. There is a Blogging, Journalism & Credibility Conference going on. Nice.]

A sweet linux “switch” ad.

“When you’re holding the moon for ransom you value stability in an application”

ver at Worthwile, David Weinberger wrote the best play. It sheds light into the marketing minds behind those in depth phrases that mean so much yet nothing at all like

“Autonomy is the leading provider of software infrastructure that automates operations on unstructured information.”

That does wha??

Before I started down this path of computer and internet enlightenment, do you know what the most confusing product was for me? Oracle. Yeah that big giant of a company. I knew it had something to do with computers but what the hell was it? I would see these commercials that say “we use Oracle”, and “Less down time with Oracle”, but for the life of me I had no clue as to what that meant. When I found out it was a really powerful Database, I remember saying aloud “oh, that’s it?”

Marketing for the internet seems to be like a blackhole. It’s this complete void where only Stephen Hawking of the computer world could possibly come up with a way to make it make sense to the masses (note: there needs to be a “brief history of time” for the computer world and not another “Dummy” book). You’d think that to make the rest of the world understand, companies would hire individuals to their marketing department with these kinds of insights. But instead, from my experience, most companies (that is not fortune 500) have people writing about their product that probably have to call the I.T. line every time they open up attachments that say “click me” and wonder how they got a virus.

When talking to IT people, hire IT people to do it!

But there is a warning! They need to be able to talk to the masses, and not D&D freaks talking to other D&D freaks (no insult intended by the term “freak”, it’s just I never understood the whole thing). IT and marketing need to be a dynamic duo with lots of “BAM”s and “WHAM-O”s (because let’s face it, chances are the 2 people will fight…a lot). As was pointed out by Steve Yastrow on Tom Peters’ site the detriment could be you get phrases like:

“Our CEO is a bigger geek than their CEO”

Which for some is amusing, and might be something to be proud of but for others…? Is that your market or just the people you like?

Well, this morning I had a chance to catch up on some blog reading. When you’ve got so many subscribed, it’s easy for the unread ones to pile up. And this morning it seemed that every post I was reading had some mention to a novel: Blink. So I used it as a sign and went out to purchase it. And I’m glad I did. I’m half way through already, and it’s a page turner into the unconscious mind. And now posts like Tom Peter’s “Eye Sparkle Factor” make so much sense.

Steve Pavlina is easily running up the list in my favourite blogs. Why? Because
with an easy (and yet not easy at all) technique he helped me find my life’s
purpose in about 40 minutes.
Sure, his title says 20 minutes, but you’ve got to have all your personal baggage
in check if you want to reach that kind of speed. And sure enough, as the warning
went, when I was done I was bawling my eye’s out. Ya, I’m man enough to admit
that I was bawling like a kid who lost their first pet. It wasn’t pretty. Even
copying and pasting this little phrase brings a little tear to my eye, which means
I was successful.

To be at home with my head in the clouds and music in my heart

“Discovering your purpose is the easy part. The hard part is keeping it with you on a daily basis and working on yourself to the point where you become that purpose.”

Oh boy!

Secrets are funny little things. Somewhere inside us we like to hold onto the pieces of mystery which only we can answer or understand. Why do we do this? For control. I’ve had my own little secret which I’ve been only letting a few people know, here and there. Well, I’m letting it go. Reason being I’ve got something online. It’s completely at a development stage which means if it breaks, it’s to be expected. Plus, control is only an illusion, when you really take a look, the power is in you, not me.

Because I need to soak in as much feedback as I can get, I’m opening the bag out to you. Ladies and Gentlemen, I present, wherestheshow.com. The blog, blog.wherestheshow.com will be the focal point where I will be posting the updates, and request for feedback. So if you do have a chance to take a look, if you could post your comments here, it would be appreciated.