The Itch

It might seem a little intimidating for some people, and if there were a metaphor to this, it would be: 

An itch.. 

What’s that?

It’s something not exactly there all the time, not painful but puts you at unease. You just can’t get rid of it. Like the itch that sportsmen have, that avid jogger, the gym dude, the crossfit junkie. They just can’t help it.. Doing their thing gives them the hormonal kick they cannot ignore.

My itch is inventing stuff, creating novel solutions, finding the pattern in the chaos... And as the case may be, when an organization has less-than-useful pain points. I find myself eager to find what’s wrong with something. I may be seen frustrated (getting irritated, getting all crazed, because I care, all the while gaining momentum), and sleep on it, or actually lose sleep… Then the solution arises.

Another itch is body weight training… but that’s a different page.

In an organization, I may be seen as another kind of itch (and I'm certainly not the only one). Explained differently, in an ever-changing world, some dynamism is due in order to avoid getting too comfortable, contented and ultimately, disregard change.

Obnoxious? No. I am fun to be with and empathic, but I might see things differently, beyond dogmas, beyond taboo - “what if we have been thinking wrong all along?”.

A team can never sit around, pondering on and analyzing some minor detail for hours because I will get bored, and being the itch, I tend to make this uncomfortable, for the sake of everybody.

In my own life, I never forget to shake myself out of my intellectual comfort and question my thinking, test my assumptions, rattle my being. It is extremely important, crucial even IMHO, to never put yourself at ease so you become complacent. Getting too comfortable will have its toll on sharpness.

Do what you have to do to stay sharp and lean, like the warrior and the hunter.

Never forget you have a wolf inside you, your shadow, primordial and wild, that needs to live inside you too. Ignoring your shadow side will get you in trouble. Well, almost needless to say by now, I am that spice - of dynamics, of fresh, agile attitude and multi-dimensionality.

I like to be at the edge of possibilities and innovation. I like being able to contribute with my ability to make stuff useful, to find “the simple map to a complex territory”, as they say in Neuro-Linguistic Programming (the term is “the map is not the territory”), i.e. find patterns in a complex, chaotic system and make use of it.