"Someday, someone will write a book explaining why so many pioneering enterprises, including the Walt Disney Company, Hewlett-Packard, and Apple, were born in garages... we can speculate on why great things are often accomplished in dull or tacky surroundings. Perhaps a bland or unattractive environment spurs creativity, functioning as an aesthetic blank slate that frees the mind to dream about what might be. Maybe a great view and chic decor are distractions and thus counterproductive when important work is being done. But the truth is that most people in great groups spend very little time thinking about their surroundings. They have wonderful tunnel vision."
--Warren Bennis and Patricia Ward Biederman
This quote is pretty old. However, it sounds strangly applicable to a couple revolutionary online platforms that were recently developed out of dumpy college dorm rooms...
But the term at the end of this quote caught my eye. "Tunnel vision." I take a look around my room and realize I still have suitcases sitting on the floor not unpacked yet from January. There are three half-full coffee cups apparently serving as decorations for my dresser. What the hell are these receipts from, why is my cell phone from 2001 still sitting on my desk, and I'm going to gouge my eyes out when I have to sift through all of these unnecessary papers on the floor next week.
My apartment is pretty unaesthetically pleasing, and I've always been jealous of those who can make their living space look like the model bedrooms in Ikea.
But this quote gave me hope for my scatterbrained way of existing. And I can say the same for many other people I know that function this way. Some people express their creativity by making their surroundings a work of art; others are satisfied with indecipherable post-it note scribblings serving as wallpaper.
There's really no point to this entry. Irony.
HQ
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