Facibus On Blogging

I’m starting to transition Facibus On Blogging to the more generic (and hence more saleable) on-blogging.com domain. In setting up and testing the Blogging in the News page, I came across an article in The Age’s book column by Sophie Cunningham called Caught in the Blogjam (and Darren Rowse if you read this, you will be pleased to note that she uses live URLs ). Anyhow, this made me think about how I use serendipitous discovery in my own life.

What was the discovery?
Caught in the Blogjam is a dramatically extended speedlinking post - Sophie talks about the blogs that influence her life as a journalist, an Australian, and as a reader. She mentions a lot of authors that I consider significant but have never bothered to follow in the blogosphere (which is odd considering the amount of time that I spend both blogging and reading).

What is the significance of this discovery?
Caught in the Blogjam has settled my future plans for the abookthing.com domain - a blog that talks about blogging for book authors, and looks at author blogs. It makes such perfect sense that I cannot imagine why I didn’t think of it before.

Enabling serendipitous discovery in your life
Wikipedia has an article on serendipity that talks about what a wonderful thing it is:

Serendipity is the effect by which one accidentally discovers something fortunate, especially while looking for something else entirely.

It then talks about the history of the term without actually giving us much to go on in terms of enabling and taking advantage of serendipitous discovery in our lives.

In my professional life as a consultant I’ve found that it can be enabled through some of the following:

• Constant observation of not only the stated client problem but the whole environment,
• A readiness to accept that any solution is interim, and that there is always a better solution available for some time in the future, and
• Workarounds for current problems can point to the future solution but not always, and
• The solution can be found in the oddest places, including right in front of my nose.

In simple blogging terms, this means:

• Reading a wide range of material (including other blogs) with an open mind,
• Thinking about how every other thing in your life relates to your own blog, and
• Having faith in your ability to think great thoughts, so that when it does happen, you are prepared to take yourself seriously.

And what happens when you make a serendipitous discovery? How do you take advantage of it?

1. Record it: Unless you have perfect memory and flawless recall, the answer is to write it down. That which is not written down is truly lost forever - please trust me on this (although anything that is discovered once can usually be discovered again). I used to keep a notebook and pen with me constantly, and sometimes I still record things this way. Mostly now I send myself an email via my phone.
2. Frame it: Put the idea into context - in the case of blogging, I write a draft post with the discovered title/subject and enough notes in the body so that I can still use the idea in a month’s time.
3. Reframe it: Another opportunity comes up when the original idea is considered in other contexts - I discussed one way of doing this in Reframing: The sweetest idea for content ideas.

I am not sure if everyone’s mind works the same way that mine does - I know that serendipitous discovery works for me. I’ve come to expect it to happen yet am still surprised when it does.

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