Wow, it sure is a small world.
Yup, you’ve said it, I’ve said it. We all have.
But you know what, it’s really not. We just make it small.
We are creatures of habit, and have limited time, which means that typically, we end up in patterns of action, and without realizing it find ourselves stuck in our own twilight zone.
Let me explain. Suppose you need a suggestion for a plumber. You call a friend, they give you a name. The next day, you need a new dishwasher, so you ask the plumber for a suggestion, and he says, buy model X, it’s great. A few days later, you hear from a friend that model X is great, so with two data points, you buy that dishwasher. What you don’t know if that the plumber referred model X to him as well.
It happens all the time, and it is due to the fact that our networks aren’t as deep as we think they are. We typically hang out with people like ourselves. Be it in race, socioeconomic status, religion, or some other dividing grouping. This in turn, means that our environment is homogenous, and not really all that broad.
You might think that if you go online, you can fix that, but in my experience, you end up with the same problem. Typically, we end up haunting the same old websites and they link to the same old referring sites. When was the last time you went to a new website? Yeah, exactly. Not that common an occurrence unfortunately.
So how do you get out of the rut? Simple do something random.
Put your finger on a map a drive there and have lunch. During lunch, close your eyes, put your finger on an entrée. Try Stumple Upon or some other random website generator. Open a AAA guidebook to a random page for the city near you and go there. You get the idea. The point is that if you want to create new experiences, you have to take a chance with random events and see where the lead you.
It’s worked for me, I hope it works for you.