SwapOff

During the writing of this post I wanted to look up a synonym for the word "efficient", having been a little too liberal in its use. Context switching out to an online thesaurus from GMail is disruptive, so my first thought was some kind of Firefox plugin for looking up synonyms, or perhaps a simple Ubiquity plugin might do the trick?

Making a cup of tea this morning, I became frustrated with the process of walking out to the kitchen to start the kettle, walking back to my desk to continue working while the kettle boils, walking back again to pour the tea, waiting while the tea steeped, then finally removing the tea bag and pouring the milk. How could I make this less time consuming? Perhaps a kettle that pours water into your cup after boiling? Perhaps a cup that boils the water then drops the tea bag in? Perhaps use a microwave? Perhaps I should just treat the time as a respite from work :)

The common ground between these two scenarios is trying to make some task more efficient, whatever the motivation (in this case, laziness). This, I think, is the core of invention, and far from being the sole domain of a select few, I suspect the inventive process is an intrinsic part of being human:

I'll put my most frequently used clothes in the top drawer, least used in the bottom. Less day to day effort!

Perhaps the difference between this, and someone being labelled an inventor, is simply having the will to follow through and create.