Last night I dreamed a strange dream, there were like 6-8 people in a room and we were coached by a friend.

She split us in group of two people and asked us to mix.

While doing so she also mixed some liquids (she was mixing liquid CO2 with something else, but never mind that).

She said “Some things work best together, some not, we should be able to take the right things and leave the wrong ones”.

In the dream I was looking at the impossible drop of CO2 put on a spoon and moved into another liquid, not reacting at all, reaction was good, but was not happening.

When I woke up today I realized that “selecting the right things to keep” is not something we do often. Our characters and behaviors are defined by a global mix that works and when we act we use a complex mix of knowledge, charisma, wording choices and so on. 

We don’t look at our actions by selecting the single element to keep but mostly as a “this worked, this didn’t work”, without diving into the reasoning.

Also, we (or at least I) forget that we can learn a lot from others, even if we dislike a big chunk of them,  because we can select the good things they’re doing and learn from them.

This is an iterative process similar to the the “1% better every day” you can use for improve the conversion on a website, but works on a different scale and level.

It’s obvious we can’t improve 1% every day, but if we ever commit to trying new things and letting go of the wrong one we might be finally up to something.