Frustration
It is a state of mind. It jumps from mind to mind. The more potential you have the bigger it’s impact is. It is contagious. It infects others around us, teams, organizations, companies. It has a name since mid 16th century and describes the state of mind when one feels she is not able to achieve something she wants to. This feeling, makes us accept we couldn’t achieve, even worse we can’t achieve. We start the sentence, “No matter what I did…”
We all know about viruses and how they spread. I have been thinking on ideas and how they spread. Some do same math on social applications to see how they spread. There is this term “basic reproduction number”. It can be thought of as the number of cases one case generates on average over the course of its infectious period. The bigger this number is the faster virus / infection will spread. You want this number to be big for your social application and pretty small for a deadly virus. In any case, it works the same way. Find a weakness, something common in your audience or prey. Then attack.
Find a weakness in humankind, something common. Something everyone has coded in their DNAs. Then add everyday circumstances. Make them realize the situation, give it a name. Make it very OK to feel that way. Pull people in. Welcome people. Spread the thought. Make people comfortable with that idea. Make it the light end of the tunnel that you can never reach but always see.
Frustration. One word, I dislike more than any word I know. It is the thought bug. Infected billions of people. It is what shouldn’t be named.
If one doesn’t like to feel challenged, doesn’t like to look at the same problem for hours, days, weeks. If one never faces hard problems, that no one has ever solved. If one never takes everyone else that came before a step further and opens a path for the ones after. If none of these, one will find more words to describe the situation she is in, instead of actually dedicating everything she has to the problem.
It is a privilege to be there in between a meaningful problem and the solution.
You are there in between a meaningful problem and the solution..