Each of us likes to think we are unique and different from the rest. Yet few of us can take on the label of being ‘original’. Adam Grant a professor at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania tells you how to become original (an oxymoron?) and even recognize the true original from the one faking it.
Grant says, “Originals are nonconformists, people who not only have new ideas but take action to champion them. They are people who stand out and speak up. Originals drive creativity and change in the world. They're the people you want to bet on. And they look nothing like I expected. I want to show you today three things I've learned about recognizing originals and becoming a little bit more like them.”
The first point that Grant makes is to do with procrastination, “…we designed some experiments. We asked people to generate new business ideas, and then we get independent readers to evaluate how creative and useful they are. And some of them are asked to do the task right away. Others we randomly assign to procrastinate by dangling Minesweeper in front of them for either five or 10 minutes. And sure enough, the moderate procrastinators are 16 per cent more creative than the other two groups….Procrastination gives you time to consider divergent ideas, to think in nonlinear ways, to make unexpected leaps. So just as we were finishing these experiments, I was starting to write a book about originals, and I thought, ‘This is the perfect time to teach myself to procrastinate, while writing a chapter on procrastination.’ So I meta-procrastinated, and like any self-respecting procrastinator, I woke up early the next morning and I made a to-do list with steps on how to procrastinate…and one day –– I was halfway through –– I literally put it away in mid-sentence for months. It was agony. But when I came back to it, I had all sorts of new ideas. And along the way I discovered that a lot of great originals in history were procrastinators. Take Leonardo da Vinci. He toiled on and off for 16 years on the Mona Lisa. He felt like a failure. He wrote as much in his journal…what about Martin Luther King, Jr.? The night before the biggest speech of his life, he was up past 3 a.m., rewriting it. He's sitting in the audience waiting for his turn to go onstage, and he is still scribbling notes and crossing out lines. When he gets onstage, 11 minutes in, he leaves his prepared remarks to utter four words that changed the course of history: ‘I have a dream.’ That was not in the script. By delaying the task of finalizing the speech until the very last minute, he left himself open to the widest range of possible ideas. And because the text wasn't set in stone, he had freedom to improvise…”
Grant says the originals also suffer from doubt but, “I discovered there are two different kinds of doubt… There's self-doubt and idea doubt. Self-doubt is paralyzing. But idea doubt is energizing. It motivates you to test, to experiment, to refine... And so the key to being original is just a simple thing of avoiding the leap from step three to step four. Instead of saying, ‘I'm crap,’ you say, ‘The first few drafts are always crap, and I'm just not there yet’.”
Grant concludes, “Originals feel fear, too. They're afraid of failing, but what sets them apart from the rest of us is that they're even more afraid of failing to try. They know you can fail by starting a business that goes bankrupt or by failing to start a business at all. They know that in the long run, our biggest regrets are not our actions but our inactions. The things we wish we could redo, if you look at the science, are the chances not taken.”
Take time initially and do not be in a hurry to finish your task, doubt your idea to refine it and do not be afraid to take chances…then we can clone many originals!
sudhamahi@gmail.com
Web link:
https://www.ted.com/talks/adam_grant_the_surprising_habits_of_original_thinkers
