An Incomplete Manifesto for Growth

1. Allow events to change you. You have to be willing to grow. Growth is different from something that happens to you. You produce it. You live it. The prerequisites for growth: the openness to experience events and the willingness to be changed by them.

2. Forget about good. Good is a known quantity. Good is what we all agree on. Growth is not necessarily good. Growth is an exploration of unlit recesses that may or may not yield to our research. As long as you stick to good you’ll never have real growth.

3. Process is more important than outcome. When the outcome drives the process we will only ever go to where we’ve already been. If process drives outcome we may not know where we?re going, but we will know we want to be there.

6. Capture accidents. The wrong answer is the right answer in search of a different question. Collect wrong answers as part of the process. Ask different questions.

8. Drift. Allow yourself to wander aimlessly. Explore adjacencies. Lack judgment. Postpone criticism.

9. Begin anywhere. John Cage tells us that not knowing where to begin is a common form of paralysis. His advice: begin anywhere.

14. Don’t be cool. Cool is conservative fear dressed in black. Free yourself from limits of this sort.

15. Ask stupid questions. Growth is fueled by desire and innocence. Assess the answer, not the question. Imagine learning throughout your life at the rate of an infant.

16. Collaborate. The space between people working together is filled with conflict, friction, strife, exhilaration, delight, and vast creative potential.

17. ____________________. Intentionally left blank. Allow space for the ideas you haven’t had yet, and for the ideas of others.

18. Stay up late. Strange things happen when you?ve gone too far, been up too long, worked too hard, and you’re separated from the rest of the world. —An Incomplete Manifesto for Growth  (Bruce Mau Design, Inc.)

Okay, some of these are kind of corny. But I still found the whole package thought-provoking.

There are 43 items on the other end of the link, along with translations to Polish and Spanish.

Found via Weblogg-ed.

3 thoughts on “An Incomplete Manifesto for Growth

  1. I like number 8. Although I admit I abuse that privilege at times! “Process is more important than outcome.” I should post that on my wall. People tend to forget that (even me sometimes) and really need reminded it. Very inspiring stuff.

  2. When I handed her the computer for something, my wife was horrified by uncritical acceptance of #2, “Forget about good.” I didn’t interpret that as a good/evil binary thing, but rather “Forget about settling for ‘good’ when you can reach for ‘great'” or something else equally likely to appear on a motivational poster of a kitten hanging off of a cliff.

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