Connecting the dots means finding something meaningful between two or more things that one has experienced. The most famous example of this is the one provided by Steve Jobs. He dropped out of college (So did Bill Gates out of Harvard - huh?!....amazing) and pursued a course in calligraphy much to the chagrin of his parents. But that become the basis of the 'fonts' system he introduced the world to with the first Macintosh.
When Steve Jobs pursued calligraphy, he had no idea that he would use it for fonts. He followed his passion; and that passion materialized at some point in the future in a meaningful, innovative and a revolutionary way. (Full text of Jobs speech in the notes below)
The act of connecting the dots is quite straightforward. You take a current experience and ask, what former experience does it most remind you of. And then ask how are the two connected? The connection is very original to you. Since both experiences are yours, and the connection you make is from your own background, your training and your life perspective. This each 'dot' need not be original - but the connection is original!
Another significance of connecting the dots is to be able to communicate with one another. According to writer David Lang, whenever we communicate, we tend to provide our listener with just enough information to get our message across. Put another way, we offer only as many “dots” as are necessary to convey the picture we want to convey. The better our listener is able to connect the dots, the fewer of those dots we feel compelled to give.
For example, if I were to say to my neighbor, “We went to Gilbert Park for the Fourth,” he would understand immediately that my family and I went to the local park on Independence Day to witness the fireworks display that takes place there every year. Yet there is nothing in my statement that explicitly mentions my family, or fireworks, or even which “Fourth” I mean. Because of our shared context, I can offer a few scattered “dots” of information and rely on him to connect them in a meaningful way.
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| Cartoon from the New Yorker |
Connecting the dots should therefore not be confused with seeing patterns. The danger is very much there that we might do so. Superstitions are formed because we see patterns. Do not continue on your journey if a black cat crosses your path. Someone once saw a pattern between a black cat crossing and a missed mission - and suddenly this is a truism.
The trick becomes, not falling into the trap of seeing patterns - yet at the same time finding meaningful connections between dots.
Originality is a very prized commodity - particularly given the ability to obtain patents, trademarks etc. However, in the days of yore, people freely borrowed from others work - indeed it was a sign of respect. At the time of Shakespeare it was common to appreciate more the similarity with an admired classical work, and Shakespeare himself avoided "unnecessary invention." These days there are any number of scandals about plagiarism. Kaavya Viswanathan, a novelist who is a Harvard sophomore, was accused and admitted to being guilty of plagiarizing from young-adult fiction in her recent novel How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild and Got a Life.
Similarly, a famous historian Doris Kearns Goodwin (author of the best selling Team Or Rivals on Lincoln's cabinet) was accused of plagiarism when she did not appropriately reference other people's works in her own books. In 2002, it was demonstrated that Doris Kearns Goodwin's book, The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys, used without attribution numerous phrases and sentences from three other books. The author apologized and re-issued the book with proper references.
For legal and reputational reasons, there is a genuine concern for being authentic and original. And each one of us in our private moments, worry about being unoriginal, mediocre member of an overall group - a number, if you will. In fact, whether we know the poem or not - we are terrified of becoming Auden's 'Unknown Citizen.' (Have included this in the notes section as well).
A way out of this trap - is to connect the dots. The dots may be shared - but the connection is yours and yours only!
So the next time you take a walk in the park or go on a hike or catch the commuter rail, ask what it reminds you of - and see if you can make a connection - to a place, to an event, to an object or to a person.
Who knows - you might make an authentic and original connection!
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Note 1: Jobs Stanford Address:
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| Jobs at Stanford Commencement 2005 |
It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said: "Of course." My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.
And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.
It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the five cent deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:
Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.
None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, its likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.
Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something - your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.
Note 2: Auden's The Unknown Citizen
 The Unknown Citizen | ||
| by W. H. Auden | ||
| (To JS/07 M 378 This Marble Monument Is Erected by the State) He was found by the Bureau of Statistics to be One against whom there was no official complaint, And all the reports on his conduct agree That, in the modern sense of an old-fashioned word, he was a saint, For in everything he did he served the Greater Community. Except for the War till the day he retired He worked in a factory and never got fired, But satisfied his employers, Fudge Motors Inc. Yet he wasn't a scab or odd in his views, For his Union reports that he paid his dues, (Our report on his Union shows it was sound) And our Social Psychology workers found That he was popular with his mates and liked a drink. The Press are convinced that he bought a paper every day And that his reactions to advertisements were normal in every way. Policies taken out in his name prove that he was fully insured, And his Health-card shows he was once in hospital but left it cured. Both Producers Research and High-Grade Living declare He was fully sensible to the advantages of the Instalment Plan And had everything necessary to the Modern Man, A phonograph, a radio, a car and a frigidaire. Our researchers into Public Opinion are content That he held the proper opinions for the time of year; When there was peace, he was for peace: when there was war, he went. He was married and added five children to the population, Which our Eugenist says was the right number for a parent of his generation. And our teachers report that he never interfered with their education. Was he free? Was he happy? The question is absurd: From Another Time by W. H. Auden, published by Random House. Copyright © 1940 W. H. Auden, renewed by The Estate of W. H. Auden. Used by permission of Curtis Brown, Ltd. Had anything been wrong, we should certainly have heard. | ||
4 comments:
"Connecting the Dots" certainly hit home with me. One of the frustrations of my teaching career was that students so often resisted learning some concept because they couldn't see how it would be useful to them in the future. My reaction was to tell them gently and sympathetically that during their lives they would often be surprised how disparate facts, concepts and experiences would come together in interesting and/or useful ways. If they showed any glimmer of understanding or interest, I would tell them that one that one of the most formative experiences in my career took place in English class during my junior year in high school when I learned to write coherently. It was a tough course with a quietly relentless teacher, but through countless re-writes she really taught us how to write well. As a sixteen year old kid who planned to become either a scientist, an engineer or a dentist I saw no relevance in learning to write so carefully. Fast forward about twenty-five years and it was that writing skill in combination with the disciplined analytical thinking produced by my mechanical engineering education (sound familiar?) that enabled me to start three new college curricula and become CCC's most successful writer of grant proposals. At age sixteen I couldn't see any of that coming.
Your piece brought these TED Talks to mind:
Dot connecting on a massive scale: Allan Jones: A map of the brain
Which led to dot connecting on a global scale: Matt Ridley: When ideas have sex
And what this all means regarding how we might improve the next generation’s dot connecting skills: Ken Robinson: Changing education paradigms
Very interesting piece.
Two more interpretations of connecting the dots:
1) You do not have to know everything immediately. Some things make sense in an unstructured way later. The same fact base leads itself to different interpretations based on the pattern of dots it is part of.
2) Thinking can be lateral, sideways, top down etc. It need not be linear. people who can connect the dots are more creative. On the flip side people who walk a line or follow patterns perhaps are not.
Hopefully it is turning out to be a beautiful spring in Boston.
Yes connecting dots is a very good idea. It was taught in our childhood days through a type of snakes and ladders called 'Paramapada sopana patam'. This was more philosophical but the idea was the same. Here the snakes are connected to deeds and their consequences and same with ladders. The idea when extended as you have done is very nice.
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