After conducting a quick cost-benefit analysis in the aisle of my local Target store, I decided to purchase the book Freakonomics, by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner. I was immediately taken with the range of topics they cover - the inner workings of a crack gang, the truth about real estate agents, the secrets of the Ku Klux Klan - certainly an unorthodox approach for a book about economics. And Levitt and Dubner readily acknowledge as much:“In some regards, this is a strange concept for a book. Most books put forth a single theme, crisply expressed in a sentence or two, and then tell the entire story of that theme: the history of salt; the fragility of democracy; the use and misuse of punctuation. This book has no such unifying theme…. [We] opted instead for a sort of treasure-hunting approach.”Well, I suppose that’s a fair description of what I’ve been (somewhat unconsciously) doing with the Daily Improviser blog: Hunting for the gems of improvisational wisdom lurking within such disparate topics as strategic planning, leadership, basketball, driving, movie-going, rock and roll, late-night monster movies, and talking to my cat. Rather than following a map and a set itinerary that track the final destination and the milestones along the way, I’ve been letting each new discovery provide clues to the next leg of the journey. Periodically I’ll stop, look back to see where I’ve been, and do some reckoning of where I am now and where I’d like to go.
As to where this journey might lead next, I’ll seek guidance from Levitt and Dubner’s thoughts about the scope of their book:
“Since the science of economics is primarily a set of tools, as opposed to a subject matter, then no subject, however offbeat, need be beyond its reach.”If you replace “the science of economics” with “the art of improvisation,” then you (and I) can expect future Daily Improviser entries to cover … just about anything!
No comments:
Post a Comment