Where I live in East Tennessee black bears are a real fact of life. Actually, that’s one of the reasons I’ve remained here. In 45 minutes, I can be hiking in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park where bears (and fresh air) are plentiful.
I heard this story about a bear cub that was rescued after her mother had been hit by a car. The cub was put in a temporary 12 x 12 cage by a wildlife rescue habitat until they could decide what to do with her. Day after day the cub just paced back and forth — from one end of the cage to the other — pining for her mother.
As the bear grew, they finally had a chance to transfer her to a more spacious structure. But the strangest thing happened. No matter where the little bear was placed in the cage, she would still go exactly 12 feet and turn around, 12 feet and turn around.
Sometimes I feel like that cub. I’m conditioned to the size of my “cage.” Although my business environment is expanding day by day, I still pace those 12 steps, back and forth.
I’ll give you an example. Have you ever really tried to follow the technology news on Mashable? I give these folks a lot of credit. They’ve built an excellent, comprehensive and entertaining news stream. Only problem is — it’s just too much. You could sit and read Mashable all day long. So I stick my toe in, get discouraged, and return to my little cage.
Another example is the excellent Base One B2B purchasing study I wrote about last week. It mentioned that purchasing professionals now spend about 30 minutes a week on industry-related social networks. It would probably be a good idea for me to branch out and explore some of those networks but after I read such a report, I generally turn to the next news item or blog post to discover what else I’m missing out on!
One of those news items might be the great changes being made to Tweetdeck. I’m a Seesmic kind of guy and can’t even bring myself to check out another platform because of the time it would take.
I know part of this is a matter of human bandwidth. We can only psychologically commit to so many technological platforms. But I’m afraid I’m limiting myself and perhaps falling behind on that all-important business and life skill of adaptability. How do you cope with this?
How do you sift and sort and figure out where to spend your time exploring innovations?
How do you maintain technological relevance, even in your narrow professional space?
How do you unleash your “bear?”