A recent chance visit to a retail store became the catalyst of a serendipitous journey on how I do research into my job and seek information in general.

After dropping off my mobile device to get a new battery installed, I was told it would be ready in an hour. As I don’t wear a watch and my phone is how I know what time it is, I decided to peruse some of the stores along the strip mall, inside at least one I hoped would have a clock to let me know when I could return to the repair shop. At this later hour on a Saturday the only other store open was Hobby Lobby.

I had never been in a Hobby Lobby store before, but I know people who have. Before walking in I assumed it had – wait for it – hobby supplies, but more for crafting. To my surprise I found you could do everything from plan a wedding to decorate for Christmas (ugh, in August) to design clothes to make pinewood derby care like I did in Cub Scouts so long ago. There was a lot more, including the leather craft kits I had as a kid, but I’ll spare you the reader of details of the plethora of supplies available there.

But these were not just supplies. Rather I saw them as ideas – dare I say catalysts – for creating almost anything. Where it was awe inspiring, another way to look at it was overwhelming. As my head was filling with ways to spend lots of money, it was also filling with thoughts of how I work and do research on technology.

Search and Hopefully Seek

Today we don’t browse anymore, instead we search and specifically I am referring to finding information online. We enter in a search phrase or query and hope what is on the resulting page is exactly what we are looking for. In some cases it is, or perhaps are we simply settling for what the search engine returned to us as the best option? Search engine optimization, or SEO, may have been done on some information you are looking for but not all, impacting what is presented to you. Other information that may be a better solution for you may have been relegated to page 6 of the results. Factor in algorithms and paid search engine marketing, or SEM, and search results could be way off from what you seek.

Going into the store was different than had I gone to their Web site. With the former I had plenty of time, was meandering the aisles of the store and making mental notes of what was available. Had I gone to their Web site, which I never had before or since, I likely would have been looking for something specific and certainly would not have seen the wedding accessories and supplies, for example. Not that I am looking to get married again (once was all I needed!), though the awareness of what is available and possible would not be complete for me. But I digress.

Is Too Much a Good Thing?

I didn’t feel blown away after I left the Hobby Lobby store, namely as my recollection of what was there was fairly general. I of course recall some specifics as I mentioned above and others I will again spare you of (did I mention they have model trains too?). As I had time to kill I casually took it all in, for turning down each aisle was literally a new adventure.

However what if it was not so casual, and I was looking for something specific in the store and didn’t have all the time in the world? Upon entering and seeing the wide variety that was mere feet beyond the door, I would have been driven to the customer service desk for the shortest path to what I needed. Even if my request was general (sorry, can’t think of a good crafting idea here) I would have wanted directions to the area or areas of the store with surgical precision.

We do this today and I will admit to it. We are often too focused on what we are looking for and want the best answer in haste. I take shortcuts too – I typically use Presearch as my primary search, but if I am in a hurry and want the “best” option I will often go right to Google, enhanced tracking of me be damned as well as the spoils to those who invest in SEO and SEM.

Another area we encounter this is with software features – you have heard of the 80/20 rule, right? This is where 80% of the people will use 20% of the features. At this point we don’t even know every feature of, say, Microsoft Word. I know in writing this post I am maybe using a handful of “features” such as spellcheck and headings, and I wouldn’t even know where to find a comprehensive list or what is new in the next version of Word I keep getting prompted to install. On a larger scale I encounter this at work where when we upgrade to a new version of the software for the program I lead we need to scour very technical documentation for the nuggets of information we need to translate to our very non-technical users.

Deconstructing the need to explore

Back at Hobby Lobby, among the myriad of products I discovered one item that was not readily available was a working, accurate wall clock. When I got through the checkout with the few things I had – I resisted the urge to buy the whole store and only selected a few greeting cards – my receipt showed I was there well over an hour, and cutting it close to pick-up my phone before the repair shop closed. After securing my device, I pondered my last hour so on the ride home. I believe things happen for a reason, and I include this experience as well. In this case the reason was that I needed this timeout to explore something new, to remind me to get back to tapping into my curiosity to truly seek what’s out there to come up with what’s truly possible.

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This is from The Hot Iron, a journal on business and technology by Mike Maddaloni.

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