I’m expanding what I learn before I’ve decided what the next thing will be.
That can look unfocused. I’m learning new things, setting constraints, building a vault and an operating system around my work. I don’t yet know which of those things will lead somewhere. But I think they have a relationship to each other.
Reading signull’s “design collisions” helped me articulate it. The piece connects ideas to encounters with the world. What interested me was how that related to the conditions I was trying to create for myself.
Learning gives me more to notice
If I stay within the same domain, I keep looking at things through the same set of experiences. Learning something unfamiliar gives me another way to approach a problem. It also gives me more chances to encounter something I wouldn’t have known to look for.
That’s part of why I’m expanding my surface area. I want to learn enough to recognize possibilities outside the things I already understand. I also want to sharpen my taste: to get better at deciding which of those possibilities matter to me.
I can’t know in advance which new thing will become useful. If I could, the search would be much easier.
The vault is supposed to help me act
The other part is what happens once I find something.
I’m building the vault and the operating system so I can act faster. I want a way to capture what I’m thinking, bring the relevant material together, and start working on it. If every attempt requires me to reconstruct everything, the system isn’t doing what I need.
The constraints are related to that too. When I set a constraint, I have to get closer to the problem. I can’t always take the familiar route, so I’m forced to learn something.
I think that’s the connection between these projects. Learning exposes me to more possibilities; the system is meant to help me do something with the ones I choose.
I still don’t know what the next idea is. For now, I’m trying to build conditions in which I can find it and work on it.