Not all who wander are lost

May 01, 2016 4:10 PM

I’m not a planner by nature.

I’m just wandering through life, looking for the next open door.

But don’t let the free spirit fool you. My approach to work less spontaneous and more intentional than it sounds. There is a structure and an awareness and a discipline. There is initiation and momentum and follow through. Not all who wander are lost.

At the beginning of each year, I’m always ambitious to carve out new creative outlets for my work. Chomping at the bit to pursue multiple landscapes to harvest my genius and express my aesthetic sensibility and let my artistic energies expand.

But in those first few weeks or even months, I never quite know what form the work will take. Maybe a book. Maybe a curriculum. Maybe a musical album. Maybe a movie. Maybe a new project I’ve never even tried before. All I can do I listen for wants to be written. All I can do is pay attention to the clues life leaves behind, making note of the major inflection points along my journey, and figure out what I’m supposed to make next.

There’s no strategic planning retreat. There’s no target market needs analysis. It just happens organically. The work finds its own shape. Often times before I even have a name for it. But once the decision is made, once I find that open door and realize, ah ha, so that’s what wants to be built here, I jump in full force. I make the critical shift from an emergent strategy to a deliberate one, creating structures and plans and rituals and goals and tasks and organizing principles and other left brain machinations to help buttress this new project to completion.

And at that point, I’m not wandering anymore.

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How does your relationship to planning affect your work style?

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Scott Ginsberg

That Guy with the Nametag

Author. Speaker. Strategist. Inventor. Filmmaker. Publisher. Songwriter.

[email protected]

www.nametagscott.com