Inspiring inspiration

I was milling over the core values of the company in preparation for my interview the other day and I started thinking about one of them: innovation.

Innovation is defined as a new idea, method or device. For a company like FedEx, it is paramount to our success. Fred Smith founded a company that had never been dreamt of previously because he had an idea. He was inspired by something in his own life to devise a solution. So innovation is often the child of inspiration.

If that is true, what is inspiration? Each person has their own definition they use in their daily lives, but my choice for inspiration is that it is a sudden intuition as part of solving a problem. But what inspires that inspiration? Is it simply the silencing of the mental clatter of our daily problems and perplexities that resound in our own mind? I think so.

My best thinking occurs when I am focused enough during states of tedium which require a high enough level of concentration to engage my mind without utilizing all of my thinking resources on one particular item. My own examples include driving my car to and from work, taking a shower, or watching a B-grade television show. All are examples of times when I have enough clarity of thought that a new idea can meander its way into the peripheral vision of my mind's eye.

So many people formalize the process of deducing new ideas, when they are not truly deduced in the first place. It starts with silencing our own mental clatter and taking our inspirations from that silence. Those inspirations should then be written down and formulated upon. Then you can find new innovations.