blogs, zeitgeist, mind maps and the value of intuition

February 13, 2007 by  

Last week, most of what stuck with me seemed random and chaotic on one level, but connected and orderly on another level. When that happens, I like to map things out. Its part of my intuition process, or how I “capture the zeitgeist“.

These are the things that most stuck with me over the course of the week.

  • Seth Godin’s blog about worker compliance (which he calls ‘sheepwalking) wonderfully on target.

  • The Dixie Chicks won big at the Grammy Awards (“completed a defiant comeback”) when many predicted their fans would turn on the them for their defiant words against the war and the administration.
  • Bob Dylan, a symbol of defiance, has #1 albums in his sixties.
  • Stephen King’s audiobook, “On Writing”, a masterpiece from the master IMO, gave me inspiration, motivation, lessons and huge laughs.
  • Eckhart Tolle’s teachings helped me stay real and awake.
  • The wolf keeps coming up for me as a metaphor for independence, solo business and possibly a book title.
  • There are signs of sea change in women’s views.
  • I’m a little obsessed with everything red, especially clothes and racing shells.

    • So I look at my map, see defiance popping up everywhere, and start wondering: what does this mean to me, my business, my clients, their businesses. Margaret Heffernan describes the intuitive process:

    “Women’s brains are like street sweepers,” she says.

    That makes women “deeply and often chaotically informed,” Heffernan says. It also enables them to understand the market on a visceral level, as they notice new products, trends, tastes, and failures. And, it enables the savvy ones to see market opportunities.

    Her examples of how women are good at connecting the dots, take place more in the physical world. Marketers are trying to get at how its done in the online world by keying in to key influencers, as reported in a recent WSJ article The Wizards of Buzz, although to me, that model it seems to be driven more by quantity than intuition.

    Do you have examples of the value of your intuition (online or offline) that you’d like to share? Please comment, I’d love to hear them!

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