Thursday Thought - Look up & avoid boring

In the last slot of last year's Perth user group conference, my boss Penny Cookson & I presented a talk that was originally written by Tim Daniell in Queensland. It was called "Being Productive in IT", and it was an interesting, light-hearted comparison of how the human brain works using analogies with computers systems.

One of the lessons learnt was allowing yourself to be bored. Even to the point of doing some menial task while letting your creative side go nuts. It's kind of how rubber ducking works.

And it's also why the advert I'm seeing on Australian television for a mobile company really irritates me.

In the age we live we're all doing our best to close the laptop lids, put the smartphone in the pocket (even leave it at home occasionally) and turn the music players off - and we get an advert telling us to "avoid boring.". Click on that link to check out the ad.

No doubt many will tell me I'm just David vs the goliath marketing engine, but don't you think we should allow ourselves some time to sit at the bus stop and look around - or as Dr Karl or Neil Tyson would say... look up, even during the day. You'll never know what you'll see... or what you'll think of.

APOD