This week, Jarrod Shapiro, DPM has reached the milestone of completing his 600th issue of Practice Perfect. Over the past 12 years, Dr Shapiro has delivered 600 consecutive weeks of professional insight and mentorship to a generation of podiatrists and those working in the podiatric industry. From the importance of checklists in clinical practice to communication issues to what it means to think like a surgeon to truly enjoying your professional life, Dr Shapiro has taken us on an introspective examination of our podiatric lives and challenged us to live and practice in a more examined, deliberate, and fulfilling way. Along the way, we have all grown with him. Thanks Jarrod for sharing your prodigious and active mind with us!

Alan Sherman, DPM
CEO, PRESENT

1. Ideas have their own intrinsic beauty - The great socio-biologist EO Wilson once described Darwin’s Origin of Species as “mind candy.” I love this description because it is the very reason I read much of the nonfiction that I do. It’s also the reason I love science. The originator of an idea creates that concept out of his/her mind. Prior to that moment of conception, that idea had not existed, much the same way that a child didn’t exist. And like a child growing up into a fully functioning adult, the idea also matures and changes until it reaches full maturity for any of us to absorb into our own lives. How beautiful is that? 
2. Ideas are provoked by the environment - Many ideas appear to pop up out of the blue, completely unprovoked, yet most arise from an interaction with our environment. The classic example of this – likely apocryphal – is when Sir Isaac Newton was hit on the head by a falling apple while sitting under a tree, leading him to his idea of gravity and, eventually, his three Laws. Not to put myself anywhere in the same intellectual vicinity as Newton, but the most common way in which I find ideas to write these editorials is by considering my experiences over the past week. My personal life experiences lead to ideas that then, with a bit of consideration, lead to blog posts. This is likely true for most ideas. Interactions with our environment stir the neurons to make connections that lead to thoughts that lead to ideas which we then build upon, given the desire and opportunity. 
3. Ideas are generated through thoughtfully building up a basic concept - If Newton had just thought a falling apple occurred due to some force and stopped there, he wouldn’t have created his Laws. Instead, his interaction with the world was combined with an analysis of the situation, taking the single episode and building it to the historic level we have today. Similarly, Einstein, as a young man, thought about what it would be like to ride on a beam of light. That concept was built up over time into what we know today as the Special Theory of Relativity. 

4. Ideas are useless if we don’t do anything with them - When my wife and I were in college in the 1990s, she had an idea. “Wouldn’t it be great if there was some way to do online banking?” she asked. Although we both thought it was a good idea at the time, neither of us pursued the idea further. Along comes Paypal in 1998, which today is a more than $10 billion company. The difference, of course, between my wife’s idea and that of the folks that started Paypal is they actually did something with it. This is also true for each of us at the personal level. We can all have wonderful ideas to improve ourselves or the world around us, but if we don’t take the initiative – and the risk – to develop the idea, then we might as well not have had it in the first place.  
5. Most ideas are made better by collaboration - I’m certain you can think of many examples of this in your own life. You’ve had an idea, pitched it to a friend or colleague who then adds his or her perspective, which modifies the idea to some extent. The idea gets a little bigger. You mention this to a couple of other people, and the idea grows. It hits a tipping point where it then grows markedly faster and may even take on a life of its own. Consider the concept of a “tipping point,” since I just mentioned this idea. A “tipping point” was first used in sociology by political scientist Morton Grodzins who himself took it from the term in physics referring to a previously balanced object falling – or tipping – when an additional weight was added. This term was again later used by the popular writer Malcolm Gladwell in his book The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference. Today, this idea has become a very highly used meme that one may hear in reference to anything from global climate change (a tipping point in the global temperature) to politics and society (for example, the Arab Spring was referred to as a tipping point).