I woke up thirty minutes ago at 5am. Sometimes, I wake up in the middle of thinking something very precise and clear. This time, it was how to go about winning a competition in which I am no expert. I was thinking, well at least my beginning point is the profound knowledge of my ignorance.
The competition was a strange one. I found myself in an executive reality-show scenario where the group of winners, suited and booted, young-ish uber-earnest types - presumably heat winners - were being given their final challenge, and this was to write the software which Nokia should have included in their smart phones.
"That's right," said our dapper host, "all the functions which we all know should be in there..." - and here's where my freshly awoken mind erased all the details which might be really useful to recall, as I cannot now remember any of the detailed specifications which so impressed these candidates, but of course, they were wonderfully precise and very useful.
Cut to a future scene. Deek sits in the wooden-framed window seat of his country house, surveying green manicured lawns stretching into misty woodland and lakes beyond.
"So, is it true?" asks a curious voice off camera, "you literally dreamed up the groundbreaking suite of mobile software which made you your fortune, and coded the entire thing within a month?"
"Just like the man said..."
Except in the dream, I knew that I had none of the skills needed to construct the software, so for all my wit and understanding, I was going to have to rely on my connections, my ability to take shortcuts, and crucially, to persuade others to aid the cause of rejuvenating the Nokia smartphone capabilities. Quite what I was doing in this challenge surprised me not however, since many times in this life I have found myself in the position of having to take on tasks for which I have no adequate preparation, or even prior intention, so this kind of thing is grist to the mill.
In real life, before bed I had spent some time setting up my Nokia N95 email client, so it was easy to spot the origins of this odd dream. What interests me now that I am awake is how in the dream I quickly cast aside any pretense of having powers beyond my actual experience, and instead, concentrated on devising a strategy that would allow me to have a chance of winning without having to actually take on an impossibly steep learning curve.
As the dream dissipated into my sudden and complete awakening, I was thinking that the task was extremely likely to be completely and utterly beyond me, and wondering whether I should just relax and enjoy the month which I was supposedly about to dedicate to the struggle for mobile code supremacy. Enjoy it, surf the effort, and look to change the game into one I could win.
Now that feels like good really advice.
Feeds
1655 items (1655 unread) in 20 feeds
blogs
(496 unread)
-
Blog of Funk (234 unread)
-
Podcast Nation (58 unread)
-
UK Podcasters Association
(28 unread)
-
Dean Whitbread
(57 unread)
-
Dean Whitbread: Poetry
(23 unread)
-
International Bicycle Thief
(27 unread)
-
-
UKPA: UK Podcasters Association
(30 unread)
podcasts
(352 unread)
-
Pompeii Podcast
(22 unread)
-
UKPA Podcast
(11 unread)
-
Five Podcast (10 unread)
-
Palestine Podcast
(2 unread)
-
Cinema du Lyon
(10 unread)
-
Word of Mouth for the World
(20 unread)
-
Pod of Funk
(39 unread)
-
deek deekster: innit
(229 unread)
-
anglo irish podcast
(9 unread)
clients
(42 unread)
-
John Cleese Podcast
(39 unread)
-
Metropolis Studios Podcast (3 unread)
images
(765 unread)
-
Flickr Photos
(765 unread)