"The dots only connect in hindsight" seems to underemphasizes our agency. Rather, it could be "add dots however you'd like — you'll connect them afterwards." In all my decisions with the largest downstream impacts, I learned to not deny the voice inside me, as it spoke into existence its belief in something more. I worried less so about my certainty and more so that the dots I'd connected thus far weren't what I wanted. A voice in me was asking for a new dot to redefine the entire sketch.

We can ask ourselves, "Is there a sense of upcoming magic in my life?" In times of inspiration, this sense attends to us, and we push ourselves with a fascinated approach. But has the sensation been a little quieter lately? Maybe resulting from scars that reduced its range? Doubt is a sign we should act with everything we have.

If this intrigues you, don't search up the book — many descriptions provide disastrous spoilers that undermine the experience). I prepared this introduction for the curious, ask me for a curated PDF!

A famous quote illustrates this question of inspiration seen through the lens of fear:

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.

Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.

It is our light not our darkness that most frightens us.

• Marianne Williamson

Our belief in our future's magic might silently fade at first, perhaps due to a few rebuffs or overwhelmed moments. Then we question light as false, breeding cynicism, cultivating existential death where our imagination is reduced to zero-sum calculations between expectations. This form differs from physical death by being much worse — however, it is also reversible.

Novel

Our greatest tool for revitalizing that magic in our lives is novelty. Like many tools, novelty is commonly dismissed as a non-solution due to incorrect use. A few guidelines:

• Novelty should be sought for continued generation and not repair
  • The main misuse of novelty breaks this
• Unearned novelty is worse than inaction
  • If unearned, the support structure channeling sustainable progress is removed, leading to confusion
• Each person must perceive their novelty as unique
  • Otherwise it is fertilizer for fear

Novelty's dismissal as immature is that this criticism generally comes from high output performers wrt their specialization in question. As novelty is fueled by the scarcest resource of time, novelty is framed by definition as unhelpful. We've run into a prisoner's dilemma at scale, opting into a competition of time, drilling further into specificity without humanity, constraining the greenfield our minds demand for an artistic life of unique meaning.

So, what does creating that novelty look like?