Here’s a famous quote from Steve Jobs about creativity:
“People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on. But that’s not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other ideas that they are. You have to pick carefully. I’m actually as proud of the things we haven’t done as the things I have done.”
Again and again, in my coaching practice, when people develop plan to evolve and change their life, I encounter that one very fundamental question is:
“What are you ready to stop doing?”
It’s a tough question. It is hard – but necessary. You can’t just add up stuff to your life. Letting go of something you are doing shows commitment, prioritization, focus.
Are you as proud of the things you have stopped doing than of the stuff you’ve been recently starting?
It is a commonly held belief that to create innovation, and hence economic growth and competitiveness, governments and companies should invest in R&D. R&D expenditure is an important indicator used at political level to evaluate the competitiveness of economies.
The first powered flight by the Wright brothers
However, there is plenty of substantial evidence, at least anecdotal, that the most impacting and most fundamental inventions were rarely created by government or centralized spending. For example, computers created in a garage; or powered flight invented by self-taught bicycle shop owners. Sometimes R&D spending creates something unexpected, not part of the original program.
The competition between the Wright Brothers and Samuel Langley, a well established academic with generous funding from government, is possibly the best example.
Samuel Langley (a true academic!)
It went to the point where the US government denied the Wright brothers recognition for forty years, so upset were they that they had succeeded and not the program the government had funded!
(Centrally planned) government or corporate funding might not be the most effective way to foster innovation. Letting an ecosystem of innovators create, destroy, fail and finally evolve into suitable innovations is certainly a much better solution. But central planning and bureaucratic management is unable to support or control such an arrangement.
The issue is more about creating a social context where failure needs to be accepted as part of the search for innovation, and where innovation needs to remain nested in action. It is not certain that the huge push of China in R&D and academic research will be effective if there is no possibility to experiment and to fail in Chinese society.
How can we release the inventive potential in a society better than spreading centrally controlled funds?
“Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive” ~Howard Thurman
In the Industrial Age, not so long ago, society wanted us to become a standard conforming commodity. A class of weird artists was (barely, sometimes) tolerated. It is now quite obvious that boring conformity is not the best solution, neither for society as a whole (its needs increasing innovation), nor for us as individuals (we need purpose for happiness).
Yet most people are still asleep and need to become alive in the Fourth Revolution. They are not connected with their purpose or whatever would make them enthusiastic.
While it is difficult to envisage an organized world where everybody would be following its passions (some compromise might be needed at some point!), there is certainly a huge leap that can be made to reveal our common potential.
As a coach, what I am achieving most of the time is to make people become alive around a burning passion that they discover within themselves and that they realize can do more of it in their lives.
How alive are you in your daily life? How about NOW for a good time to wake up and start living?
If you want to read more about coming alive, visit Manal’s excellent blog post “What Makes Us Come Alive“, from which I noted the quote that inspired this note.
“Shun the non-believers. First you must pick yourself, then you must pick your audience”
Connect with your tribe!
Seth goes on to explain that the key is to grow your own tribe of believers so that you expose yourself often to people who know you and believe in your ideas. That’s also an other way to deal with critics. Make their voice disappear in the background of your tribe.
The thing is, it takes time, patience and consistent production and interaction to slowly create a tribe that is well connected with you to a point of supporting your initiatives. It is something that needs to be started early. Still it can be done. It must be done if you want to benefit from a louder voice in the world and from support for your projects.
It also requires to take a stand on a number of issues that are unconventional or outright contrarian. Because growing a tribe is like marketing: you need to define a narrow niche market where people that are particulary interested will join immediately.
How can you grow your supporting tribe to deal more easily with ever more difficult projects and endeavors? How can you define better your voice niche?
It’s good to have critics. It shows you are contributing to a worthwhile shift. It means people pay attention to you. It can contribute to improve your product, your art. Here are 6 reasons why criticism is a good thing.
It’s also bad to have critics when it influences you not to give out your best. There are times where you shouldn’t listen to them. There are times you should only listen to you, what brings you alive and what you know the world needs.
Typical critics at work
So, when should you shun critics and when should you listen to them?
Let me take an example which is close to my heart.
As I am considering a new book it is clear that the topic of the book is non negotiable. It is a message that is growing within me for some time now and that I need to deliver to the world.
The format of the book, whether it will be a story or a non-fiction style, that’s more open to discussion and suggestions. I will still have a strong opinion and I will own the final format.
Finally, the detailed word-for-word editing is something that I consider to be quite open to criticism and improvement (in particular, as English is not my first language).
So it should be for your creations: the main message should not be negotiable; you should own most of the outline of the delivery; and leave critics deal with the detailed editing.
Alas, many people let critics influence their main message and make their detailed editing not negotiable. Don’t fight the wrong battle. It is your main message, coming from your heart, that is the most valuable.
“Simplicity has been difficult to implement in modern life because it is against the spirit of a certain brand of people who seek sophistication so that they can justify their profession” – Nicholas Taleb in his highly recommended new book, Antifragile.
Simplicity quote by Leonard de Vinci
During my time as a civil servant I could not stop wondering (and admiring) how bureaucrats were constantly complicating rules and processes “to better take into account individual situations and avoid threshold effects”. Bureaucrats cannot imagine anything different than complicated systems and procedures. But what they did not realize is that real life is complex. And complication is not the same as complex! Their quest to manage the complex using even more complicated rules is doomed to fail. Yet they continue. Legal systems become increasingly bloated as they try to deal with all sorts of situation. This quest will be lost – nature will always be far more imaginative than the most imaginative bureaucrat.
Let’s stop this stupid quest for complication. The solution lies in simplicity. Because complex systems – real life – will react and adapt to simple messages and solutions. Because the cost of complication is far greater than its advantage. Let’s seek simplicity in all we do – and suddenly we’ll tame complexity.
In this blog we have often mentioned ‘Resistance’ or how our primitive brain tries to impede us to create or do anything remotely outside our comfort zone (the concept originates in the excellent “War of Art” book). It routinely tricks us into a number of behaviors designed to impede us from trying new things, like for example procrastination. We also know that Resistance is the Symptom That You Are on the Right Track.
Beyond simple Resistance that impedes us from giving our best self, some people, those that are often labelled compulsive artists, probably become so used to defy Resistance that some become addicted. And because they are addicted to meeting and overcoming Resistance, they can’t stop defying it, day-in and day-out.
This symptom can be observed in other areas that require to overcome a significant natural fear for performing the core of the activity: for example, sky-divers and all sorts of extreme sportspeople; actors; public speakers… Some of them (and probably all of those who become professional at it) definitely become so hooked to that sensation of Resistance, of stage fright, that they can’t live without it for long. They need their periodic dose of Resistance. They need to feel that thrill running in their nerves.
Once you become accustomed at identifying Resistance and adept at overcoming it; once you become familiar with Resistance to the point of being able to tame it sometimes, watch yourself. It is possible that you might even become addicted to it without being able to stop stretching yourself.
In all cases, make sure you have the right safety net around you so that you keep it safe, and enjoy every minute of playing with your ‘Resistance’ – and change yourself and the world!
The point is made by Seth Godin in his new book, the Icarus Deception:
“The resistance is the symptom that you are on the right track“.
When your inner emergency exit sign lights up, it’s possibly the message that you should stay!
This is so true. When I try something outside my comfort zone, or which entails a part of uncertainty and risk (in particular when it involves others), resistance has a way of wrenching my stomach, and create all sort of procrastinating activities to avoid getting me to focus on what’s really important. Now, with some experience, I know that when that happens I am probably onto something that will make a difference.
In other words, when my inner emergency sign lights up, in most cases, it means that I should stay because I have touched something important!
Thus, “ The resistance is not something to be avoided: it is something to be sought out. The artist seeks out the feeling of resistance and then tries to maximize it.”
You too should seek out the feeling of resistance. Remember, Life begins at the end of your comfort zone. Resistance will let you know when you’ll exit your usual comfort zone. Take advantage of it!
In the last decades of the Industrial Age, in most developed countries, comprehensive safety nets have been implemented on top of the traditional family secure base. Social security, unemployment benefits… All sorts of safety devices against unfortunate life events.
Does a Safety Net really entice people to take more risks?
Then, something strange happened: instead of enticing people to take more risks, releasing creativity and entrepreneurship, these safety nets have entrapped them in a conservative mindset where anything that might put in question their privileges is fought back violently.
In an era where the people that will be successful through the Fourth Revolution will be agile and adaptable, able to take measured risks, this behavior increasingly looks suicidal. And most developed countries today struggle to find the energy and the will to reform their institutions and adapt them to the new global situation.
The most amazing contradiction is that a safety net should, on the contrary, increase the possibilities to take risks: it provides a secure base, hence a higher possibility to go and investigate what is happening in the world. It should provide a last resort protection if one falls during a particularly challenging balancing act, and hence enable these balancing acts to be attempted.
How can we redesign the social safety net institutions we inherited from the Industrial Age to make them a source of risk-taking and entrepreneurship? One suggestion is to make them really a last-resort safety net that intervenes only to prevent a deadly fall; but not a system on which people rely even for minor events; thus, it would avoid having too many people dependent on the protection provided at any moment.
In any case, a deep reform of this Industrial Age institution is required to make it the risk-releasing tool it should always have been.
According to Tony Robbins, “The quality of your life is in direct proportion to the amount of uncertainty you can comfortably live with“.
How comfortable are you with uncertainty and illusions?
This quote can be taken in two ways. A first, protective way is to suppose that the more you can bear uncertainty, the least disturbed you will be by what is happening around you and the happier you will be. This is quite a limited view which will not lead to transforming your life.
I certainly prefer to think of uncertainty rather as a source of opportunity – a second way to understand this quote. Uncertainty is the key for unexpected success in today’s increasingly complex world. The unexpected encounters, unforeseeable events or the unexpected viral effect of an artistic production actually shape much of today’s world. Just before these uncertain things happen, uncertainty was at its maximum. Just after, our world and existence took a turn. The world branched out. If you can’t bear the high level of uncertainty linked with releasing something to the world, then you can’t shape it. You can’t shape your life.
Living with uncertainty is at the same time uncomfortable and exciting. It is not a character trait, it is a choice. So, are you ready to choose to live with a high level of uncertainty in your life? Are you ready to grab those opportunities that will come close to you?
“After you plant a seed in the ground you don’t dig it up every week to see how it is doing” – William Coyne, former 3M executive, quoted in “Weird Ideas that Work” by Robert Sutton.
This sentence was used in the context of creativity: when you’re planting a seed for a new product or a new idea, leave it undisturbed for a while to grow! It is the seedling that is the most fragile phase and needs to be protected.
For example, make sure creative teams operate outside the rush of the corporate world; or on a personal note, make sure that you give time for an idea to grow a bit before exposing it to the harshness of the world.
Because any new idea is just a fragile air draft that can disappear instantly. Because new ideas are precious and need time to grow and develop.
How well are you protecting your new ideas to let them grow enough to face the world?
“Fundamentally, the world is uncertain. Decisions are about the future and your place in the future when that future is uncertain. So what is the key thing you can do to prepare for that uncertainty? You can have the right people with you“.
The next time, instead of spending too much time developing spreadsheet projections over the next decades (which mean absolutely nothing), focus your energy on getting the right people in. Not just people like you, but a diverse and complementary team. Then through conflict and discussions, you’ll make your way through this complex world.
Where is your team right now? When do you start building it to thrive in this complex world?
“People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on. But that’s not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other ideas that they are. You have to pick carefully. I’m actually as proud of the things we haven’t done as the things I have done.”
