Estimated reading time: 3 minutes, 40 seconds.

TODAY’S IDEA: The Rosenzweig Technique

— From Footprints on the Moon by Seth Godin

The Rosenzweig Technique is named after Franz Rosenzweig, “an author who served in the First World War. He wrote his ideas on postcards and sent them to his mom for safekeeping. He turned them into a book years later.”

Last Summer, a bunch of friends and I exchanged postcards through the mail according to a slightly modified version of The Rosenzweig Technique. It was inspiring, fun and, most of all, we all found ourselves giddy when going to our mailboxes to pick up the correspondence for that day. I’m inviting you to do the same today! While you may or may not write a book out of this, the postcards are a great exercise to share ideas with yourself as you are writing them, and then to reflect over those ideas when you receive them.

Let me share technique as Seth Godin describes it:

“Get a stack of blank postcards… address each of them to yourself, probably at home.

The challenge is simple: Four times a day, fill a postcard with an idea, a message to yourself from today to tomorrow. And then mail it.

A few days later, handwritten ideas from your past yourself will begin to arrive.

Each day, when you get home from work, you’ll get three or four (or even five) ideas worth reading.

As each arrives, your job is to take that germ and write it up, expand it, put it into the word processor on your computer. It’s the end of the day, so there’s no need to worry about checking your email.

Do this for five weeks, for 35 days, for 140 cards. Do it without cease, without hesitation, without regard for whether it’s perfect or not.”

The modified version that I did with my friends was as follows:

• Send a postcard on Day 1 to four people in the group.
• Send a postcard on Day 2 to another four people in the group.
• Keep sending postcards as the days progress to groups of four until everyone has sent a postcard to every member of the whole group.
• Then start again and send more postcards to the first group of four, and so on, until the cycle is complete for 35 days.

While the thoughts that each one of us shared in the postcards were completely spontaneous and random, and we had no control as to when they would be delivered (we live in different countries), the postcards that I got in the mail always seemed to arrive at the right time with the right message on them. I remember, for instance, that I was stuck with a project one day and received a postcard that said, “move forward imperfectly.” Boom!

ACTION

TODAY: Decide if you want to embark in doing The Rosenzweig Technique over the next 35 days. I highly recommend it because of the insights, inspiration and ideas that you can share and receive with yourself/ your friends. Plus, the reflection that this brings as you are writing about the postcards that you receive is invaluable: you’re guaranteed to get more insights, solve a few challenges here and there, and expand your mind. However, if four ideas/thoughts a day for 35 days is too much, feel free to modify the technique however you see fit (for example, one idea per day). Don’t work for the specifics of the technique, instead, make the technique work for you! If you are ready, go get your postcards and your stamps and get started today.

FUTURE: Do you want to do The Rosenzweig Technique with me? I’m starting on March 21 to commemorate Spring, and I’d love to do the modified version again, this time with my fellow gurupies*! 🙂  If you are interested, send me an email (no later than March 19) letting me know that you are in, and I will send you all the details. It doesn’t matter where you live, postcards are used to traveling all over the world. This should be a lot of fun and we will all learn a ton from each other and from our own reflections. Hope you will join me — really looking forward to this! Sorry, this has already been done. We had a blast! If we decide to do it again I’ll post about it so that you can join. 🙂

* Gurupie = blend of guru and groupie = how I fondly refer to the EntreGurus’ community, because we all follow the ideas of the gurus.

Know someone who would like to join the upcoming exchange-of-postcards group? Let that person know via email, Facebook or Twitter, thank you!