THE CONSTELLATION
The Container
For much of my life, I made my thoughts fit the vessel.
A notebook page. A PowerPoint slide. An email. A Teams message. A meeting that ended at a certain time.
I never thought much about what that meant.
I was a paper-and-pen notebook person for years. I wrote constantly in meetings and whenever an idea appeared. But I can remember reaching the bottom of a page with a thought still unfinished and unconsciously compressing it because I didn't want five words sitting alone on the next page.
That seems insignificant.
It doesn't anymore.
The thought was
negotiating with the container.
And so much of the way we have worked has been built around that same compromise.
We learned to ask: How do I fit this into PowerPoint? How do I explain this in an email? How do I reduce this to three bullets? How do I make the idea conform to the structure available to me?
I increasingly think in the reverse.
What type of experience
should hold this thought?
Maybe it is six words.
Maybe it is a photograph.
Maybe it is a conversation.
Maybe it is an interactive experience.
Maybe it is a book.
Maybe it is a drawing.
Maybe it is something that does not have a name yet.
And maybe the thought should simply remain alive for a while longer before we decide what it needs to become.
That reversal has changed something in me.