Unexpected Lessons from a Fallen Tree

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Hi there,

Welcome to issue #49 of the Network Wrangler.

What I wouldn’t give for a few moments’ silence today.

I was startled almost completely out of my chair this morning as the eucalyptus tree outside my window suddenly fell, and a brighter light suddenly flooded my room where it had once been in the shade.

The tree maintenance crews had been scampering about our apartment complex all morning, making quite the racket, shouting at each other while removing branches and doing what needed to be done to prepare for winter.

Now, no one had told me they planned to take down the one tree that had provided me a screen from the brighter sky above. To be honest, I’m not sure I would’ve chained myself to it to save that tree, had I known its fate ahead of time.

But the tree’s now gone, and to add insult to injury, the destructive roar of the wood chipper processing the pieces was the last I ever heard from it.

And now that I’m hearing another tree fed into the chipper, I wonder when I’ll get some peace and quiet again.

It does make me yearn for a soundproof room like the one I helped create for a friend a few years back.

My friend’s father, a retired oral surgeon, was the mastermind behind the project, and he did the planning and purchasing and preparation.

To be clear, I’m always thorough with my home projects:

• Doing all the measurements and maths before purchasing materials.

• Selecting the best materials and improvising only as necessary.

• Mentally rehearsing the steps before I attempt them.

• Measuring twice and cutting once.

• Cleaning up thoroughly once done.

So, while I could have done the whole thing myself, to say I had anything more to do with this soundproofing project than providing an extra set of hands and double-checking of measurements would be to stretch the truth quite a bit.

What that experience afforded me, however, was a front-row seat to watch someone take a completely different approach to the project than I would have done myself.

His novel (to me) approach was to buy extra wood (1×2s and 1×4s) to build frames that would hold the soundproof panels in place while we attached them to the ceiling.

To him, creating these frames was only natural. As a surgeon, he had a lifetime of relying on things like forceps and clamps and retractors and such to hold stuff out of the way (or in place) so he could perform the skilled work that mattered.

But to me, it was a revelation to create something to complete a task that wouldn’t be there when said task was complete. Left to my own devices, I would’ve simply struggled to hold panels in place at the top of the ladder while trying to affix them without losing alignment among the panels.

Both approaches would have resulted in the same outcome: a soundproof room like the one I was craving to be inside today. Each approach was just the result of different lifetimes of experience getting to the same place.

The next time I need to do a project, I’ll be infusing the “can I build a helper tool to do this better?” thinking into my planning and doing. And I’m all the happier knowing that I learned this approach from an unexpected source in my network.

What a serendipitous gift for me to learn how to better fix things around the house from watching how a surgeon creatively approaches the same work.

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Your Network = Your Creative Capacity

If you’d asked me who in my network I’d seek out to help me with a project around the house, I don’t think “the retired oral surgeon” would’ve made it into my top 100 names. Yet, circumstances threw us together and my approach is forever changed.

It’s a great reminder that this is how creativity works: creating means combining stuff that already exists, but in new ways. Creativity is not simply attempting to invent things from scratch.

Where else do we see this creativity, this remixing, going on?

The potential for remixing happens every time we connect with other people.

Which means it can happen every time we interact with our networks, formally or informally.

And the more people we have in our network (the surface area of our network), the higher the potential for interacting with them. And remember: the surface area of your network includes those fresh new connections that your network brings you into contact with.

But we do have to interact with them, or the opportunity is lost.

You can have the biggest network among your friends group, but if you don’t actually reach out to anyone, you’re no better off than the person who has a close-knit cluster they’re constantly chattering with.

What if your network isn’t in the same physical place as you? Thanks to my career and life tracks, most people in my network don’t live in the Bay Area (or even in California) with me. Yet, I still find ways to leverage the surface area of my network to remix creatively and teach and learn.

The trick is to keep an open mind and stay curious no matter the circumstance (how else are you going to learn carpentry skills from an oral surgeon?).

At the last backyard barbecue I attended, one of my fellow partygoers was the former head chef of a local restaurant. I knew of the restaurant, but I had never been, so I introduced myself, and we began conversing about his leaving the restaurant business. When he was inevitably asked to help with the food prep, I volunteered to be his sous chef, doing anything he required to make his newly assigned task easier.

Of note, I didn’t ask him to teach me as he set about cooking (seeking value from him). I volunteered to make things easier for him and he taught me what to do, organically. In the reciprocity game, I was providing value first (sous chef services), which strengthened our connection.

Oh, and I learned more about Middle Eastern spices and cooking techniques in those 40 minutes than I could have taught myself in hours of watching YouTube videos.

I had no idea my plan to unwind at a backyard barbecue would lead to my getting a crash course on Middle Eastern cuisine prep by a professional chef.

The opportunities for remixing don’t have to be so significant, either.

• When was the last time you were in a meeting where someone else was presenting, and you had a chance to see them use keyboard shortcuts you didn’t know existed?

• Or the time you got into a friend’s car that was the same model car as your own and watched them toggle some feature you didn’t even know was on the car?

• Or you had a chance to share a truism with someone struggling to solve a problem of their own, and you saw their face light up as if you’d provided the key piece of information they so desperately needed? (“Be kind to the person and hard on the problem” is my latest problem-solving nugget)

It should be no surprise that we see Instagram and Tiktok filled with listicle pebbles of remixes like these. Sure, there’s value in sharing them, but doing them in batches cuts out the most important part.

What’s missing in the listicles is the warmth of the one-on-one human interaction that makes the gift of shared creativity glow.

We can all learn and teach from each other.

We can all flex our creative side and remix the pieces we’ve learned as rote.

We just need to interact with our network to ignite the spark.

Here’s to you having a super creative weekend ahead of you.

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