#serendipity

#serendipity

Most of us think great ideas are conjured from within-some mysterious well of genius possessed by a special few. But if you listen closely to history's most celebrated creators, you'll hear something completely different. They describe their greatest work not as something they conjured or invented, but as something they found. Not creation, but discovery. Listen to the audio version of this Book Bite-read by George himself-below, or in the Next Big Idea App.

The photos, in Ollie's words, lean towards "quiet symmetry". The photo Man on Bike, a particuarly pleasing shot which shows a figure stationary, seemingly pausing to take a call, is often mistaken as staged. According to Ollie, it's "entirely serendipitous". He continues: "I was wandering through Ikoyi when I saw him stop, completely unaware of me, and everything just aligned - the colours, the posture, the stillness."

Go for a run, watch a film, try to entertain someone else's baby: anything that involves pottering about in an undemanding yet still vaguely engaged way, which absolutely couldn't be classed as work but isn't totally vegetative either. It may not be the productivity hack any go-getter wants to hear, but it's surprising how often a spell of aimless noodling around frees an otherwise overworked human brain to make the kind of lateral mental leap that helps everything fall into place.

We searched for a year and couldn't find any land or any place to build, until one day, we were kayaking down the river and saw the back of a 'For Sale' sign.