There are no lightbulb moments. There are however earned secrets.
/By Duncan Anderson. To see all blogs click here.
Reading time: 7 mins
Summary: Lightbulb moments are earned secrets masquerading as an instant.
Lightbulb moment = a point of searing insight where you a sudden large break through
Time needed = None / very little. You have a sudden large breakthrough.
Knowledge about problem space required = Low.
Improvement of solution over existing outcome = Large.
Earned secret = where you put in the work to learn about an area and slowly over time small incremental advances present themselves to you through extended analysis that over time accumulate to be a ‘large breakthrough’ over the existing solution.
Time needed = Large. Eg years.
Knowledge about problem space required = High. All else the more knowledge you have (aka the more ingredients you have) the more new recipes you can create.
Improvement of solution over existing outcome = Small for each individual gain. However what happens is that you have many small wins that added together come to a large improvement over existing solutions. So when you launch a product it looks like a ‘large improvement’ and people might think that you had this one sering insight that made the product, but the product is really the outcome of years of small cumulative wins.
Innovation is not magic. Innovation is a process, innovation is inevitable, innovation is predictable - blog link.
Innovation = Earned Secrets
What I used to think: you only have a few good ideas in your life. Ideas are limited.
What I think now: you have as many ideas as you spend the time to generate. Ideas are limitless.
Jingle: Anyone can be innovative, because innovation is doing the work to earn secrets. It just takes a lot of time… but done well it’s oh so much fun!
Jingle 2: In anticipation, progress is gradual; in reflection, it is monumental.
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Details
Einstein: “I’m not smarter than others, I just spend longer with a problem than they do.”
The more you know about a space * The better you are at strategic thinking = The more insights you have.
This doesn't mean you can't spend your time well generating earned secrets at high or low quality.
Little insights accumulate into ways to take big steps forward.
For example: you might have 10 little insights (earned secrets) in one year but if someone comes back a year later and sees the next product you are building it looks like a big step forward.
Visualisation:
What happens in reality:
… but from the outside it looks the same:
Secondary School for students is normally learning the earned secrets others created. Students spend almost no time on ‘innovation / earning secrets’. IMO this leads many people to think that ‘only special people can come up with ideas’. IMO this is not true!
“If it’s humanly possible you can do it too.” Marcus Aurelius.
An earned secret is obvious after the fact. If it's not obvious you haven't figured anything out.
Over time you nut out obvious solutions.
IMO only build obvious solutions.
The time needed to find something obvious can be small or large. The decision about whether to build something should be instant: is this obviously something we should build or not?
Ok this is a big of an oversimplification. But much time is spent figuring out what you think you can build. Little time picking which of those things to actually build. Don’t built all your ideas / earned secrets. Build only the obvious earned secrets!
Sometimes you have an idea that you like but isn’t quite right. Then 6 months later you have another ‘earned secret’ and then the idea is ‘obvious’.
Some quick thoughts on how to try and do high ROI earned secret generation:
Earned secrets = 1. Learn about problem space: academic research / existing solutions / qual / quant / intuition / first-hand experience * 2. Come up with solution sets: thinking / writing / talking / visualising / building * 3. Over an extended period of time
1. Learn about problem space: academic research / existing solutions / qual / quant / intuition / first-hand experience
Areas:
Academic research: look at what the PhDs have been saying about the world. Ph-ully ph-antastic in-ph-ite.
Existing solutions: look at what users do to solve the problem (Job To Be Done) now and reverse engineer out the insights.
Qualitative: learn about a problem space through speaking to people.
Quantitative: look at user data and / or do quantitative surveys.
Intuition: learn about a problem space through your intuition (what you think and see) and by munging all of the above pieces together and putting in any missing pieces and / or new ideas you have. Best sentence ever.
First-hand experience: Recognise the knowledge gaps through first-hand experience
An example - secondary textbooks
Academic research: what does the academic research say about the misconceptions students have about algebra and how do we think about incorporating this in our Chapter and Lesson breakdowns?
Existing solutions:
How do existing textbooks teach algebra?
How do other curriculums outside of Australia teach algebra?
Qualitative: speak to teachers about and students about what works well and what doesn’t for algebra.
Quantitative: build a few samples of content and have teachers and students use it then track feedback on things like ‘tests’ and ‘NPS’.
Intuition: take all of the above learnings and synthesize them into a hopefully cohesive step forward. Do I learn about a problem space in the order above? Sometimes ;).
First-hand experience: a past teacher or students knows where students regularly get stuck in a certain maths problem
2. Come up with solution sets: thinking / writing / talking / visualising / building
Areas:
Thinking: eg listen to a podcast on a topic then just stop and think for 5 mins after the podcast and try to join as many dots in your head as you can.
Writing: once a week on the things I’m trying to improve at (‘innovate in’ / earn secrets in) I write a blog of ~1000 words. It’s an extended freeform extended thought. Done well writing is high quality thinking. I find this massively joins pieces together for me… and it’s fun. That is what these blogs are.
Talking: I’ll set up weekly / fortnightly recurring meetings for things I want to talk about where the goal is ‘though exploration’ vs ‘decision making’. Love these, so much fun!
Visualition: this is often an orthogonal explanation to complement words, eg see visualisation for ‘earned secrets’ above.
Building: you need to be building as well; balancing the ‘thought exploration’ vs ‘building’ in an interactive iterative mutually positive sum fashion :).
3. Over an extended period of time
An example - secondary textbooks
Not only do we build small individual pieces of content and test with teachers and students (eg Batch Size One content)
We also build textbooks every year and will hopefully do so indefinitely. So I’m very proud of the 2020 versions, but hope that the 2021 versions will be a big step forward.
Possible Options:
Option 1: take 2 years to build 1 textbook
Option 2: build a textbook in each year, so in 2 years have built two versions.
Comment
IMO both options require the same work. However, option 2 provides more expansive learnings: 1) learnings from building alone + 2) learnings from user feedback.
All else equal the more time you have spent on a problem the more chances you’ve had to generate ideas / earn secrets.
I never plan to stop trying to improve education. This sounds like never ending fun to me. Something you can not improve indefinitely sounds boring!
IMO the best things in life get better with time. IMO the best things get better because you made them better.
If you only take away one thing:
Anyone can be innovative (come up with ideas). But you need to do the work (earned secrets) to come up with ideas.
Done well doing the work to earn secrets is fun… and new ideas done well make the world better.
So earning secrets = delicious and nutritious.
There aren’t ‘ideas people’ and ‘not ideas people’. This is another form of ‘fixed mindset’ / ‘learned help yourselfness’.