Dabbling

I miss dabbling.

I miss unboxing new software for the first time. I miss the excitement at the possibility of what you can create with a new tool. I miss the adventure of applying it to an actual project. Most importantly, I miss the learning. The unstructured, purposeless form of learning. It’s like wandering and exploring interesting back alleys in a new country, except for your mind.

That’s the downside of being too focused on goals. It sets up blinkers for tunnel vision, and you start to lose peripheral vision.

Everyday I scroll through Twitter seeing yet another interesting project being launched. I check out the website, open yet another new tab in my infinite array of browser tabs opened, and send the link to Telegram Saved Messages just in case, telling myself I will check it out when I have time.

Then I forget about it.

All the theatrics at self-deception. It’s funny, not funny.

Perhaps a good way to tackle this is to put in place a new habit like Google’s 20% project. Googlers were encouraged to spend 20% of their time working on projects they think will most benefit the company. Gmail was a successful spin-off from that. What if I set aside 20% of my week just dabbling? Block out time every Friday on my calendar to just dabble with all the cool products I see on Twitter and Product Hunt. Queue them up on a “dabble list” that I can pick and choose every Friday, like a dessert buffet.

How fun!

I’m going to do it, yes. And to make it publicly accountable, I’m going to put my dabble list on Twitter, as a thread.

See it here.