Gen-erate!

Surrounding ourselves with inspiration

This weekly post started with questions about the value of what I’m doing

Does anyone need more content these days!? Constantly streamed in multiple channels. One or two new ideas already go a long way to motivate and inspire. Do I want – in principle – to be part of creating content overload?

Yet, I do see it as important to keep reading and exploring.

You never know where one simple sentence – read or heard in the right moment – will spark a whole adventure.

So I reframed

What’s the difference between “inspiration” and “water dripping” ideas in algorithm-applied packages – hoping they will eventually get noticed?

Quite shortly after this reframe, an AI app experience triggered a new perspective. Apologies for using AI in the words here, which leans towards “algorithm-applied package” that every article currently seems to include. Yet this is a true story:

• A few days ago, I configured and coded a new tech MVP using Claude. Five hours “in the flow” so that I entirely forgot to get lunch. Then, I had it! Felt so deeply satisfying.
• Claude had taken all of my last years of experience, some encouragement from our former senior software developer who was also excited about how AI would make his job better, plus quite some back-and-forth input – and voilà, it transformed me into a tech-generating person. Really. How cool is that?

Eureka! The experience also answered my question above about what drives inspiration

AI had helped make me generative; content can, at its best, also help make us generative.

• More and more, I am surrounded by AI apps that extend my ability to generate something: a sparring partner for more clear wording, conversational podcasts, quick synthesis of research, and new product development.
• Like a circle of helpful friends. Okay. They are technologies with friendly demeanors, not friends in real life.

So then I asked myself: am I surrounded by People IRL who also help each other generate?

And, in general I find that my answer is gratefully yes. How do I know? Because they…

• Encourage new ideas or at least ask about them curiously
• Constructively say why they don’t agree without criticism. (Even if skeptical!)
• Maybe most important, exchange perspectives with openness – based on different ages, professional choices, talents, international backgrounds, etc.

Plus, I’ve noticed that my Friends, Family and Colleagues IRL now more often talk about which AI app we select for which purpose, rather than which AI apps we have tried. A new topic on which to exchange perspectives. Like “which mobile phone app do you use the most” of earlier decades.

A circle that helps us generate

We can cultivate the inputs around us. Surround ourselves with a wide range of perspectives explored with curiosity. Online and IRL.

They help us produce and create things ourselves. Also together.

It’s often a simple, unexpected comment or interaction that turns an idea into an adventure.

And, if you ask me, that’s a very cool way to be each other’s heroes: encourage our adventures, celebrate our journeys, help keep each other inspired.