Documentation Catalyzing Ideas into Execution

A Social Experiment

Can you look at the image on the left and try to memorize as many objects as you can at one glance?

 

Could you do the same for the right picture now?

Can you understand the difference between the two?

As you can see that it’s much easier to grasp the things in the second image than the first one.

If you reflect on this you would understand that an organised mind works more efficiently than a distorted one.

In retrospect, the table represents the mind.

A messy table is a mind which is full of clusters and an organised table, well…it gives way to more thoughts.

The point of this experiment was to depict how easy is the flow of thoughts and ideas when things are in order.

However that’s not the case every time…at least in my case.

This was a constant problem that I had been facing without even realizing where I had many ideas and thought however it was very difficult for me to get a hold of them. Besides being “young and hip” I felt like a lot of things were slipping out of my everyday work.

There was a constant dissatisfaction regarding everything that I did and I found it difficult to get any task completed.I used to be the type of person who would be entertained with just a book, a pencil and an idea, and a constant interest to write something always had me carrying my book to everywhere I went.

The main problem was that I wasn’t going anywhere with this. I did not have a structure to line up my ideas and thoughts, this in turn hid my true potential and gradually diminished my confidence. Like I would be sitting in a meeting thinking about the things we had to do and would forget catching up on some task. Lacking motivation I could see the spark to do something fading away.Just like that spark of a lighter which when stroked with our thumb creates fire.How do I make sure that this spark actually ignites something?

I then went on a quest to find this spark…

On my way, I understood that its good to be visually strong, which I am sure most of us are, however it is also very important to put our thoughts down..

I tried to write down everything I did during the day, just as an experiment, from what work I was doing to anything that I reflected upon.

Through this I understood, that a thought or an idea comes to reality only when there’s a physical evidence of it, this can be in the form of a note, a slide, a document, an image anything, even your hand for that matter, as long as you are making it a reality then there’s a lot of scope for any thought or idea to grown.

The thing is, once these thoughts manifested a physical form I became accountable to it, and once I was accountable to it I felt like doing something about it. The best thing about putting them down was that it was my asset, something that I owned. It was a chaos of my thoughts and ideas thus it was also a choice to either tame those thoughts and ideas or let it run wild.

[blockquote text=”The only difference being that sometimes wild animals also tend to run away but even if you tame it it doesn’t take away the fact that it wasn’t a wild animal before.” text_color=”” width=”” line_height=”undefined” background_color=”” border_color=”” show_quote_icon=”yes” quote_icon_color=”#4285F4″]

 

I took a day just to accumulate my thoughts and drained them in different jars labelled with different color pallets just to organize the flow of relevant thoughts and ideas. It all seems like a tedious task but on the bright side I had a lot of fun playing with post-its and making my room a mess,more than it already was. However this mess was made to get rid of the mess.

 

 

My Learnings

This actually made a huge impact in my life. I could see that I was able to give my 100%. The feeling of dissatisfaction went away.I gained confidence because I could see the faith people had in me. I could spend time with my family without any kind of stress.I was also able to learn a new language.

As an assistant martial arts teacher, I kept a record of the classes that I helped my teacher with, this gave me consistence

I wrote down the moves that needed to be practice and revised, this gave me persistence.

We would also learn to sing in Portuguese, since it was a Brazilian martial arts ( Capoeira ) we would often reside Portuguese or Capoeira songs. It was necessary for me to learn a little bit of portuguese in order to teach or make the students understand what the songs meant so I would remove an hour daily to learn the language.

[blockquote text=”Every little thing that I documented gave room to more possibilities. ” text_color=”” width=”” line_height=”undefined” background_color=”” border_color=”” show_quote_icon=”yes” quote_icon_color=”#4285F4″]

I would even take everyday tasks as a project and would work towards it for maximum efficiency. Like going to the grocery store…

I would make a list of all the items that were required ( on a post it or on the phone ) , have some places listed down as well so that I know where to get all these items from to spare me a second trip and would carry a little more cash than usual to avoid complications.I understand that all this isn’t necessary however what would you do if your mom agrees to make home-made pizza and you’ve run out of cheese? I definitely wouldn’t want to wait!

 

Takeaways

The importance of documentation is that we have a record of whatever we are doing and gives us a jump start in our current work and also any new thing that we might pick up. The underlying fact is that it gives motivation to those who plan on turning their spark in a wildfire, to actually put down your thoughts and brainstorm over it. The beauty of this is that it’s for your understanding. It opens up so many possibilities to connect different ideas without them getting lost the other day. It gives you a pavement to carve your journey in whatever way you want. Also it removes the fear of starting something when you actually do that right. It all starts from an idea, so why not give that idea a room to grow in?

[blockquote text=”Sometimes you don’t realize how far you’ve come unless you look at your footprints ” text_color=”” width=”” line_height=”undefined” background_color=”” border_color=”” show_quote_icon=”yes” quote_icon_color=”#4285F4″]

 

How I do it

I see that documentation has 3 stages..

Stage 1

The Start,

This is usually the most difficult part, to actually start with something however once if you start it easy sailing from there on.I would, initially, try to focus on the more fun things at first to start the ‘process’. This would sometimes include buying supplies and organizing my work-station and then slowly go into idealization. This not just includes my personal work but also group projects or meetings.

Stage 2

Intermediate,

This stage is more focused on just having all the documented materials in the form of either notes, soft copies, post-its etc. so that when required everything is readily available.

Stage 3

The Product,

This is the reflecting and learning stage in when we can go through what we’ve done and achieved so far and start making possible assumptions, learnings , and potential individual growth aspects.

[blockquote text=”If at first, the idea is not absurd, then there is no hope for it. – Albert Einstein” text_color=”” width=”” line_height=”undefined” background_color=”” border_color=”” show_quote_icon=”yes” quote_icon_color=”#4285F4″]