Curating Non-obvious Experiences
As humanity has progressed over time, I can’t help but think we’ve moved further away from creating truly new ideas and technologies to the curation of what has existed in the past. It seems to be part of our evolutionary cycle. One that should be examined and embraced to achieve individual Success.
My thought begins in publishing.
Most blogs don’t say anything new, they are mere curations of past ideas. Look at most non-fiction books. Unless it’s an autobiography most are people compiling stories of what other people did. Many authors like to cite Apple to make some case about why it is special in strategy, technology, design, you name the subject. Yet, 99% have never worked there. I don’t know how many could even say they know someone close to the company or have even read the company’s public filings like annual reports. The same could be said for Steve Jobs. You’d think the authors actually were friends with Steve for the number of assertions people make with how Steve lived life.
I admit, I too have made similar ventures in my writing by citing what someone great has done in the past to prove a point. Therein lies my observation that much of what we make now is a curation of things of the past. Curation that some would call the individual’s ‘taste’ in something. This is similar to commenting on how someone has good taste when picking out an outfit. The wearer didn’t make the clothes but picked out the ones to form this selection that seems to “work”. It’s quite the compliment to say someone has good taste.
Most philosophy books are in some way a regurgitation of Nietzsche and Goethe…..or Socrates, Plato, Epictetus, Aurelius, or Confucius. The ideas aren’t new or original, it’s just how the author curates it. To say it’s his own would be a lie or willful ignorance.
This thought on the value of curation migrated to the world of retail.
Just the other day, I was trying to understand why online retail stores seemed to command high valuations in the stock market. Some call them marketplaces but many seemed to be mere resellers devoid of any competitive advantage. This argument could be made to a department store as well. They all appeared like commodities to me. However, frequent shoppers cited that certain fashion apparel sites curated specific types of clothing and that’s why they would shop there instead of the store/site belonging to the brand itself.
This reminded me of how I religiously read certain blogs because I trust the writer’s ability to curate the kind of wisdom I want to learn about. The value is in their judgment. Their taste. The same could be said of why great investors get such a premium in fees and reputation. The value is in their judgment in situations.
This led me to some stories by an entrepreneur and an investor.
Such judgment seems to transpire from the curation of experiences. Specifically, non-obvious experiences. I was listening to an interview with Danny Meyer, the founder of famed restaurants like Union Square Cafe and Gramercy Tavern as well as the well-known burger joint Shake Shack.
Meyer was talking about the inspiration for Shake Shack and how it wasn’t some ‘Eureka' moment or something that he had an idea for a long time that he meticulously worked to achieve. Rather, it was the child of a series of experiences in life. Meyer specifically stressed the importance of curating experiences through traveling and observing people. Meyer built his foundation for hospitality as a tour guide in Italy as he corralled cost-conscious travelers from tour buses to various locations throughout the country.
In a weird train of thought, I sought out to read about George Soros’s theory of reflexivity. He started the article with how his father fought for the Austro-Hungarian Empire in WW1, became a prisoner in Russia, escaped, and how such an experience prepared him to acquire false identification for him and his Jewish family during the Nazi occupation of Hungary in WW2. This made a mark on the 14-year-old Soros who was living a life as a teenager under a false ID with the risk of death ever so near him and his family as they also helped other Jewish families procure false IDs.
Soros continued living in Hungary after WWII and the ensuing Soviet occupation of the country. It’s amazing to realize how one of the great investors lived under both Fascist and Communist rule and went on to thrive in a Capitalistic society. However, such an upbringing pushed Soros to seek out capitalism as he ended up gravitating towards Karl Popper’s philosophy for an open society from having lived in, arguably, closed societies.
These stories draw me to emphasize the importance on the curation of non-obvious experiences.
Non-obvious could be synonymous with different, unique, or differing from the norm. Curating non-obvious experiences doesn’t mean that you’ll become successful in whatever you aspire to do but I don’t think anyone Successful achieves it without non-obvious experiences. This is Successful with a capital S and one that doesn’t have a universal definition, so I’ll leave it up for interpretation.
Non-obvious experiences are like porn. Hard to define what constitutes what but you know it when you see it. I think a test is that if one had to ask if something was obvious it probably is. To me, the opposite of curating non-obvious experiences is living in one city, studying one thing, going to work in one company in one field with the same group of friends, and doing just that. This is probably because my definition of Successful requires one to live an interesting life.
Experiences shape a person and that is probably why life should be approached as an adventure and not something you just exist through. Hence, it seems that one should always seek to curate the non-obvious experiences in life. Most times, that requires listening to what they truly want since our true tastes are non-obvious to most.
Tl;dr, choose to be interesting.