I wrote yesterday about keeping old ideas in a notebook. Well, it’s also useful to take some time out occasionally and page through those old notebooks. It is often interesting seeing how much you have grown over time as your skills and knowledge has expanded. It’s also often useful to see how you solved problems in the past and to possibly use some of those ideas in the future.

The past version of you was far less knowledgeable, but sometimes that lack of knowledge leads you to solutions that seem less obvious once you understand things. It is sometimes those very solutions that are the most interesting and elegant.

Basically, you need to remind yourself that sometimes looking at the world with your earlier naivety will sometimes offer you the perfect solutions. Let yourself view things as you once did and then use your current knowledge and experience to make it work even better.