Mostly, a few hours strolling around a lake (what a great experience at Lake Starnberg today — just look at the featured image) are enough to get things straight in my mind, be it business-related or private stuff. While some of my friends and peers come up with personal ‘themes’ that provide the framework and guidance for their activities in the new year — here is a nice example by Maria Sipka — some time ago, I chose a different strategy for myself: I try to connect the dots.

Perhaps ‘strategy’ is not the appropriate term; it has rather become a way of life for me. Inspired by some great philosophical and spiritual minds, I started to look out for situations, events, people, and feelings that somehow fit together. With fitting together, I mean a certain connection between these otherwise completely independent elements of my environment. Sometimes, this connection is laid out quite clearly; sometimes, I need some more time to see it. When looking out for these connections, I’m aware of the very human confirmation bias; i.e., connected elements do not necessarily represent desired outcomes. It’s more about perceiving correlations if you want the data perspective.

Mathematical Platonism — Connecting The Dots

When I started to look for dots to be connected, my goal was to use that for my personal life. How amazed I was when I realized that this also works in business. Instead of pondering on business strategies and models, the answers to questions such as: How to define this business vertical or build this product? With whom to partner?  Or how to frame this proposal? comes quite naturally by being aware of the environment and doing what seems to make the most sense in a given situation. Sometimes, these answers don’t appear on the spot, e.g. in a meeting. Then, it’s a good idea not to decide on that topic but let it go and switch to a different topic, and to move this question to the next day or week. Often, the needed information or answers come up shortly afterward, in situations totally unrelated to the original topic, such as lying in bed, showering, or running in the forest.

Connecting The Dots — The Intuition Of An Explorative Mind

As easy or almost magical as all this might sound, there’s a catch. You, or at least I myself, won’t see dots to be connected without being intensely connected to my environment and being mindful, respectively. I know that for sure since I have tried it out. In times, I tried to do the trick by being lazy and waiting for things to happen, but nothing happened. Or, in other words, I wasn’t able to see any dots I could connect. On the other hand, as soon as I focus on each moment, getting the most out of each situation, and add whatever I can to the situation, the dots appear again. Being mindful sometimes doesn’t come easy — there are situations when body and soul just want to go the easy way. But little is more rewarding than realizing the rewards of being attentive and sensitive.

Intuition in Action — Connecting The Dots

The funny aspect of connecting the dots is this: nobody will believe you that you might base all of your business (or private) decisions on that kind of seemingly esoteric stuff, such as waiting for things to happen. Most people would assume that you use other strategies or techniques since they themselves would never trust in an intuitive or gut behavior like that. But that doesn’t matter at all. If you connect the dots, you will feel the ease of that way of life, and you won’t lose it again. That’s at least what happened to me. For me, there’s no other theme for this year than to connect the dots — the intuition of an explorative mind.

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