Datata #1: Falling in love

Info refinery is now Datata. New format, more graphs, less curation, more creation.

Long time no see! In case you have forget, this is Jose.

You subscribed to my newsletter Info refinery where I curated multiple content I consumed. Objective of the newsletter was to write more, read more and to hopefully provide value to others.

I think I partly achieved this, but as end of 2020 approached, I started to think about what I want to do next. And I came up with Datata.

Datata, is a verb in slang Finnish: To data. I liked the concept, so that is what I will be doing. Monthly publishing a story told with the help of data.

If you are not interested on this new format, unsubscribe (at the end of the email). If you were just interested about the curation format of Info refinery, I suggest you subscribe to Out of Curiosity by Reza, honestly is great.

Without further ado, here is the first data story which I am stocked to share with all of you!

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Life is inherently chaotic, and thus we spend lot of time structuring it, organizing it and planning. But what are we missing out on if we don't embrace the randomness of our lives? In my case that randomness led to me discovering a new music band that I fell in love with, and I will document each of the triggers that led to it.

Human brain is extraordinary, it works in the background making connections all the time, even at last stages of life. Lots of these connections are quite straightforward and based on our repeated experiences.

However, sometimes it feels different and we make an unplanned fortunate discovery. This is called serendipity. Serendipity can explain many of the breakthroughs of inventions and scientific discovery through history.

A known information can lead to something new at a different time (we might have learnt something new that complements it) or different scenario. If we are too focused on structuring our life, we might miss out on it.

We can create an environment that favors such random connections, and my favorite example is resurfacing old notes randomly as Tiago Forte suggests. Visiting old notes can bring you to unexpected new territories.

In my case the serendipity story began on 26 August 2019. Spotify recommended me 20 new songs as every week in the discover weekly playlist. I especially enjoyed a song called Fitzcarraldo and saved it into my liked songs playlist, which I revisit every now and then.

But that was the end for a while. Over a year later (17 October 2020), while watching a YouTube video, talking about Iquitos, a city in Peru, a movie named Fitzcarraldo was mentioned. That sparked something inside me, my brain connections then raced to try to relate this name that sounded familiar with my database.

Yes, is a song I heard before I thought. A YouTube video triggered something in me that made me want to listen to the song. And after listening it, I wanted to suddenly discover more about the band. So, I listened to the full album, and then another. By the time I realized, I was hooked on The Frames.

Although I listened to the song once in between discovering the song and watching the YouTube video (June 2020), it didn’t spark anything special inside me. I was just going through my saved songs playlist.

And that is part of the magic of the serendipity, even when having cues in front of you, you might not react sometimes, so what better than to give space to randomness for unexpected discoveries.

Now the Frames is part of those groups where I say: "I feel like listening to the Frames". In fact, it is what I am doing now while writing to this. Put your headphones, travel mentally to Dublin and enjoy!

Embrace the randomness!