I was standing on stage in London last month, midway through a keynote on future-readiness, when about twenty smartphones went up in unison.
Click, click, click. Audience members were snapping a photo of one of my framework slides.
I like to imagine those photos were destined for a special folder labelled “Urgent Stuff to Implement.”
But I know I’m wrong. Many camera rolls are just graveyards for good intentions. We snap a picture of a slide, a cluttered whiteboard after a team meeting, or a page in a book, and our brain gives us a satisfying hit of dopamine.
We tell ourselves we’ve captured the insight. But we haven’t. Taking the photo is just a convenient alibi. It lets us off the hook from the work of actually processing the information.
Do you use your phone as a dumping ground for ideas you plan to deal with “later”?
Collecting ideas is NOT the same as exploring them. In my FROST Framework, the REACT step can help. It reminds us to gather raw information and learn something useful from it to shape our future plans.
So, grab a packed lunch, and let’s go on a digital archaeology dig!
How to get future-ready this Friday:
AUDIT YOUR DIGITAL GRAVEYARD
Open your photo gallery right now and scroll back through the last few months. Find one photo of a slide, whiteboard, or page of notes you snapped because you thought, “Oooh, I need to remember that.” Now, do just one useful thing with it before 5pm today: send it to a colleague with a quick question, drop a related task into next week’s ‘To Do’ list, or share the insights on a social network.
Clear out the clutter. Activate the insight. Job done!
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