Embrace Contradictions
“Smart people are a dime a dozen & often don't amount to much. What counts is being creative & imaginative.”
- Walter Isaacson, CEO of The Aspen Institute, author of the “genius series” (Einstein, Franklin, Jobs, and others)
While intelligence may be table stakes for genius, there’s no way to smart your way to genius. Imaginative leaps of genius require something entirely different from “smarts,” something that often appears counterintuitive to my well-trained, ex-financial analyst, recovering management consultant, eye.
The way creative geniuses work often looks “dumb” to the typical “smart” person. For example, Charles Dickens took a 3-hour walk through the countryside or city street every afternoon, “looking for some pictures to build upon.” Igor Stravinsky did hand stands when he was stuck. Claude Shannon juggled. Joyce Carol Oates routinely walks up the same hill, confident an idea is waiting up there for her.
And what’s worse, creative masters often violate their own rules, wondrously indifferent to the apparent contradictions.
For this reason, I love giving seemingly contradictory advice. It’s just the kind of thing that makes smart people like me go crazy.
Look For What’s Right, but Look For What’s Wrong, too…
Carry A Notebook, and Take Notes, and Re-Read Them, but Throw Them Away, too…
Don’t Clean Up — in fact, let your Junk Pile Up, but Dig Through Your Junk, too…
Look At Nothing, but Look For Connections, too…
In fact, the whole premise of “Embracing Contradictions” is strangely at odds with my vendetta against hypocrisy.
How fitting!
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One of the defining contributions the d.school is helping teams ask themselves, “What kind of thinking is appropriate, when?” We call such clarity being “Mindful of Process.” And it can seem like semantics until you realize we need to show up in different ways.