Hitting the Refresh Button

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Creativity is what drives my life. It is the reason why I took computer science as my major. IT is the reason why I can spend sleepless nights doing my codes and also the reason why I haven't blogged in a long while. I like creating things and IT developers are artists and creators in their own ways.

About 2 months ago I met with several people offering investments. They want to establish an IT business venture. I was excited, but then somehow, in the middle of the road, things get bumpy and we cancelled the cooperations. I was disappointed because I knew the ideas we were about to build would require massive capitals in order for it to succeed. Then I spent nights after nights thinking on what to do next.

I entered the period I call frozen mind. A state of mind where you feel that you're no longer creative. A state of mind that causes someone like me feeling powerless. I feel that I cannot develop anymore when actually I could. In the middle of it all, I tried to warm things up. I browsed through all my previous coding work, seeing old system designs, trying to play around with it, basically trying to get something out of it.

Then in the process I found my bachelor and master degree thesis. Having not read it for a long long time, I tried reading it all over again. And then, it hits me. I got this product idea which is a combination of three things:

  • a traditional approach to the e-commerce business model
  • something with good customer relationship management capability, and finally
  • a social touch to make it more human

All three combined, I got the idea of what I'm currently developing. It will be a new product for the web community. Something I'll start in Indonesia first for a couple of months before going globally. Stay tuned for release dates. This is something I'll call ProjectZero.

As IT developers, we all face our frozen mind phase. When you're at it, don't force yourselves. Go back to your basic, start over and retry things up.

A good quote might come from the late Steve Jobs on the Stanford Graduation

I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.   - Steve Jobs 

The same thing happened in my case. I have to start over and things are clearer because you're freed from the you-must-do thingy.

So next time you face your frozen mind. Hit the refresh button.


regards

- E -


Follow @femmerling on twitter

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