The sad state of imitation

One of the things that I’m really into is education, or should I say alternative education. I don’t even know what a good word for it is these days. I call myself and our family unschoolers as the kids don’t go to school nor follow a specific curriculum. Sometimes we call it self-directed learning too, which is accurate, but it sounds a bit boring.

In case you’re interested, I’ve started writing about those things here. I’m writing a lot at the moment and it feels good. The ideas between each of my interests cross-pollinate with each other. It’s all good fun for me. 😊

Anyhows. The point of me mentioning unschooling is we are explorers.

One thing that has stuck with me from the book Changing our Minds is that instructions lead us to stop looking for other ways to do things.

This means when we are told how something works, we imitate it. However, if we don’t know how to do it and we aren’t instructed, we end up exploring, and as a result, we learn more.

The book is about children, but honestly, it applies to adults too.

It probably means we innovate too. By exploring we find new and interesting ways to do things. And often, this leads to business innovation and success. Sometimes failures too, but learning is a constant.

Imitation is ripe in the indie, founder, creator community

And it shows up in so many ways.

Sometimes it’s plagiarism.

Sometimes it is “inspired by”.

Sometimes, all too often tbh, it is through content/course/whatever creation and “take my money; I want the success you are having”.

And the successes that people have are usually not down to the specifics of how something was done. Often it is sheer luck. Or because they are white. Or male. Or have a few good supporters. Of because they were first or early in something.

The successes are based on personalities, styles and ethics that they’ve explored themselves to find what they are comfortable with.

They often share how they’ve done it, thinking that is what got them there. But actually, what got them there was the exploration to find that thing that worked for them.

We all imitate to some extent and that is ok. Problems happen when there is a lack of balance with exploration.

Become an explorer to find your own success!

👋 Thanks for reading.

In case you didn’t know, I run a community for indie founders.

I’ve run many over the years, but I have a very special feeling for this one. I created a rule where people have to participate within a 60 day period (or kindly get booted) and I’ve now limited it to 100 people.

This isn’t for everyone, but honestly, it’s the first community I’ve run where people just show up to talk and help one another. We’re not interested in getting big. We want to get helpful and help create friends and connections for life.

I’d love it if you would consider joining us.