In this age of technology, have hacks become the only way of measuring a person’s tendency to take initiatives? I have often seen people boast about what they have hacked and why they feel that it should in turn reflect that they are extremely creative people who take initiatives.
I personally feel that it is a purely one track mind that assumes that a person can be judged based on his hack record :-) I totally understand that you want to create a prototype when you hit upon a brilliant idea. But I do not understand the need to spend all your time and brainpower trying to come up with the ultimate ‘brilliant idea’ just so that you can add another prototype to your collection of hacks. I often find this convoluted form of cause-effect driving many folks nowadays. I also often find that many of these hacks are so defined by their creator’s motivation that they do not actually inherently do anything useful for the community.
I personally am not in the business of searching for problems to solve(I do not imply here that there is anything wrong with those that work towards identifying problems) but rather in the business of searching for solutions to the millions of problems we already have. Many people think that this is an inferior way of thinking and have implied so to me too. But unfortunately I still find that I am never as excited about searching for problems as I am about searching for solutions to them.
My mother and father have been partly blessed to not have been born in the technology age and thus have escaped this one track mind conditioning. However I see on an everyday basis that my parents take initiatives very actively be it in their personal lives, improving their family, improving the society around them, improving their workplace or in areas directly related to their work. They have been hailed by their peers as creative people that take initiatives and rightly so.
But if I, being a ‘technology person’ were to take initiatives in my personal life, improving my family, improving the society around me, improving my workplace and in areas that I am working on, that wouldnt be enough to qualify me as a creative person. I would still need a repository of hacks.
There was a time when there was so much stress put on excelling in the ‘traditional grading system’, that people never found the bandwidth to get creative.It was truly unfortunate. However,ironically I find now that there is so much stress on excelling in the ‘traditional creativity grading system aka hacks’ that people are inturn once again losing sight of the big picture; the definition of being creative.
I am saddened by this unfortunate mindbend. I am sure that not everyone feels this way, but I do know that some people do.
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