The Lazy Creative

maxresdefault-1

It can happen via a deliberate wrist glance, a nonchalant button press, or the frequent refreshing of a specifically purchased iPhone App. You have all observed it in action. Yes, it’s the now quite common hourly habit of the corporate office FITBIT wearer as they compete with their fellow fanatical walkers for the esteemed victor of the Workweek Hustle.

But in a recent study, at a soon to be prestigious Australian Institute of Sport, a rather unusual finding has been discovered that has found a direct correlation with a person’s aptitude for innovation, and their FITBIT daily step count. Contrary to what you may think, the lower the FITBIT number, the higher the innovation intellect.

The majority of the corporate office population view those in their working ranks with a very Low FITBIT Step Count (LFSC) as being rather lazy. However, the study results found this to be remarkably furthest from the truth.

Those of your colleagues with a LFSC typically commenced their innovation training early in their youth as a teenager. A visual clue to their future LFSC creative talent would be their clothes, towels and food plates being strategically placed on the floor in their bedrooms. As the days of litter and odour progressed unhindered, a frustrated parent would finally succumb to the mess and tidy their room, with no stepping activity required at all from the clever child.

For teenagers that mastered this skill, their LFSC innovative prowess continued into their working life where the role of the parent was replaced by a fellow work colleague. Here they would sit comfortably at their desk, with their ears and eyes seeking out a potential parental worker surrogate to ensure that their need for physical exertion was significantly minimized. If you are not familiar with their innovative FITBIT step reduction techniques, take note of the following behavioural clues:

  1. The Coffee Run: They will hear the murmurings of colleagues thinking of making a dash to the nearest café for a coffee. Using their creative talent, they will feign extreme busyness and will ask you to get them a coffee on their behalf. If they are masterly at their LFSC craft, you will also be paying for them, with no hope or expectation of a reciprocal arrangement.
  1. The Carpark: In the office carpark, the innovative LFSC colleague will park in the closest position next to the elevator thereby ensuring the least number of walking steps. Some may even place a “Reserved” sign to guarantee this requirement.
  1. The Video Conference: Rather than having to walk to a meeting, the LFSC colleague will cunningly schedule a video conference, even if the colleagues invited sit only a few desks away.

So next time you have a FITBIT Workweek Hustle and you power your way on a daily basis to stepping superiority, may I suggest that you have a look at the work colleague that always comes last. Yes, they are the truly innovative people in your corporate office as it takes creative ingenuity to be that lazy!

The Law of Scrabble

scrabble

Letters are tricky objects, particularly so when left alone to their own arrangement. For centuries now, these 26 individual English characters have been portrayed as inanimate symbols, but that was indeed furthest from the reader’s comprehension.

Letters are most devious and have the imaginative ability to mentally reach out to the writer to get them combined into an alignment of grammatical strength where they can dictate their self-gratifying messages of command.

To avoid any potential human mutiny to their authority, Letters have created a complex array of continually updated syntax to ensure ongoing user bamboozlement, and to ensure that their vocabulary importance is never challenged, nor questioned.

Letters frequently align themselves in a position of strength and are usually not left on their lonesome, except for their leader “A”, a Letter that is quite unique and content to operate in isolation.

However, in the year 1938, the ordered life of the Letter changed forever. Yes, the culprit was a man called Alfred Mosher Butts and he challenged the happy status quo of the Letter by introducing the element of randomness into how Letters might be utilized by the thinker. No longer would a full powerful complement of 26 Letters hold the verbal attention of the user; Mr Butts cleverly restricted their influence to an unwordly 7 haphazard Letters for thoughtful “sentencifical” construct. As the years unfolded, the Butt’s invention was eventually known as the “Law of Scrabble” and it is still in operation today, and looks likely to prevail for many years into the future.

Now for those of you that work in the corporate office, you will be interested to know that the “Law of Scrabble” signalled the start of the modern age of innovation as mankind was now no longer subservient to the whimsical and tiresome demands of Letters. Yes, the users of Letters were now masters of their own written destiny of creative prose.

The year 1938 heralded noun and verbal freedom, and the patenting of many new writing inventions were quickly transcribed into inked existence via the application of the “Law of Scrabble”. Some of the more marked 1938 inventions were; the ballpoint pen that was triumphantly verbalised by Ladislo Biro, similarly the invention of the dry photocopier by Chester Carlson that dissipated any remnants of Letter uniqueness with an easily obtainable mirrored copy.

The “Law of Scrabble” also opened the reading person’s eyes to the real definition of the word called innovation. For decades, Letters of the English language had successfully masked its true meaning via the application of many obtuse rhymes, and a plethora of other devious grammatical diversions.

The “Law of Scrabble” allowed mankind to uncouple the individual letters used in the word innovation (10 letters) into two smaller, and more readily understood words, each within the 7 letter Scrabble limitation. These two words were: “In” (2 letters) and “Novate” (6 letters), which when combined formed the word “Innovate.

Now, should you use a dictionary that has its allegiances with those treacherous Letters, you would find that the definition for “Innovate” is: “To do something in a new way”. Reading between the lines, this definition wants mankind to keep using the old traditional Letters, but just mix them around a tad. Yes, our reliance on the Letter would indeed continue and the worker in the corporate office would be none the wiser, nor creative.

But by using the letter revelation yielded via the application of the “Law of Scrabble”, a slightly different meaning is cleverly unravelled counter to the wishes of the Letters:

In: “used to indicate location or position within something”,
Novate: “to replace (an old obligation) by a new obligation

So the word “Innovate” means to replace old Letters with new and different Letters. Or in more colloquial language, think differently, and use new Letters, some of which when assembled may form a word you have not previously encountered or understood. But the key is to be bold, italic and even indulge in some embellished conjugation when required. Yes, extend your vocabulary and seek new words, some of which may even be in a new language! The result will be the attainment of verbal innovation!

%d bloggers like this: