Why I'll shamelessly try on all ideas I come across (and why you might want to try it too)

?The way we do… well, anything… won't work for everyone.

Whether it's how we run, write, play guitar or pack the dishwasher* - what works for us is unlikely to objectively be the best method for the entire population.

Many of us know this, but what we don't often stop to consider is whether the technique we use is also best for us.

The nature of evolution is to find something that just works well enough and to stop there.

In many cases, how we do things is a product of how someone taught us, not experimentation on our part to find our optimum.

To make matters worse, we often tether our identities to how we do things (I'm a fore-foot runner and pure dishwasher chaos) instead of?to our purpose for doing those things in the first place.

This coupling of identity to technique means we're often zealots about "our way" without seeing what else is on the menu.

As someone with convict heritage, I've got light fingers and love to "borrow" things from other people. In my 20s this manifest as an amazing collection of gel pens from the office stationary cupboard. But now I'm in my mid 40s, I've honed my theft to target frameworks, ideas and techniques.?

If you've got a way of doing something, I'm going to try it to see if it works better than what I'm currently doing. If you have a framework - I'm taking it for a test drive and may not bring it back.

I think I've gone from "fixed mindset", through "growth mindset" to a "steal and experiment" mindset.

You might like how you do things already and this combination of theft and change might not be something that you're comfortable with. But maybe this idea is one that you should steal.

Given my track record, I won't mind if you take it, break it and don't give it back.

*Strength of opinion on how to correctly pack a dishwasher is inversely correlated with a connection to reality.