[Music]
the difference between people who are
successful or not although those who are
successful seem to know from age of
seven or eight maybe older you know
they’re very in tune with what they love
they I compared to a voice inside their
head not literally a voice but something
saying I you you really are drawn to
this subject and they hear it throughout
their lives that for me it was it was
writing and books since I was a kid
and you know at anytime I deviated from
that love and went into something else I
just was so unhappy I knew that I wasn’t
doing the right thing and so it’s just
like this voice that keeps drawing you
back to what you really really love
some of the most important discoveries
inventions and innovations cut within a
field come from people who are trained
in a much different field and who have
an outsider’s approach
Louis Pasteur was a classic example of
this he was trained as a chemist in
mineralogist so he brought homage to a
much different way of thinking to the
subject of medicine and germs a method
that was infinitely more creative Albert
Einstein was a complete outsider his two
most important discoveries came when he
was working at the Swiss Patent Office
Google itself exemplifies this idea it
is perhaps the most successful business
on the planet founded by two men who are
relatively complete outsiders to
business and who therefore structured
and directed their company in a very
novel and creative fashion I could go on
and on and on with this list including
many great artists there are two
important reasons why Outsiders
generally have a creative advantage
first they are less steeped in and
burdened by the conventions of the field
that they are attacking they ask a
different set of questions they approach
problems from unconventional angles and
second they are often trained in totally
unrelated fields and so can make
interesting and creative connections
between two very different forms of
thinking like science and business or
chemistry and medicine or engineering
and design now we can’t all consciously
follow such a path but even within the
careers that were pursuing we can train
ourselves to think like outsiders and
help loosen up the mind in the process
[Music]
use active imagination is deceptively
simple often what separates creative
from conventional thinkers is that they
simply search white they use their minds
to generate possibilities that others
dudes don’t think of and then they work
to verify what they came up with we saw
a classic example of this with posture
another great example is with Henry Ford
early on in his career in the earliest
years of love what would later become
the Ford Motor Company Ford was anxious
to improve to speed up production of
cars it was he saw the automobile as the
ultimate consumer product but in order
for it to become that he had to greatly
increase production rate in his factory
so he spent a couple days looking at his
employees on the factory floor and
trying to imagine how he could get them
to move faster and car to car suddenly
one day he imagined something completely
different
he imagined the men standing still and
the cars coming to them he didn’t know
what that really meant but he decided to
try it out and lo and behold it
increased productivity by such an
incredible exponential rate that it
could now become consumer product that
he envisioned
things like antibodies or assembly lines
they seem so obvious to us now but they
are never obvious in the present and
they involve an incredible leap of what
I call active imagination the difference
between regular and active imagination
is that the latter is used consciously
to reach very very practical results
it’s not imagination for coming up with
wild things its imagination used for
very practical results think of the
active imagination as a kind of creative
muscle that you’re developing first
within the loose constraints of what
you’re working on you open your mind up
to you give a complete free of rein you
entertain almost every possibility that
you could imagine or visualize you
engage in what Charles Darwin calls
fool’s experiment and fools experiments
this is the fun play part of serious
play
you use notebook sketches diagrams
models prototypes to help externalize
the products of your imagination once
you have gone through this you now enter
the second serious part of the process
first you choose one or few of the more
promising possibilities that were
generated by your imagination and now
you actively work to test verify or
confirm it
this might entail launching a beta
version on the public once you have
feedback you now go back into the first
part of the process in a shortened form
using your imagination to perhaps take
what you have into an even better and
higher form circling constantly through
this process in shorter and shorter
cycles until you’ve got something that’s
both incredibly imaginative and
incredibly realistic and practical by
developing this by going through this
over and over and over again you will
develop your imagination into an
incredibly powerful creative muscle
I want you to get over this notion that
I find so annoying that so many people
have that success and power in life is
dependent on something like genetics
like some people are born with a larger
brain or they have wealthy parents who
are able to send them to the right
or or it’s all a matter of luck
what really makes people successful and
powerful in life and it’s not just me
saying this I read hundreds of books on
the subject what makes people successful
is their degree of motivation I could
repeat it a hundred times but it’s true
every time I say when you are motivated
when you feel yourself emotionally
engaged in the subject you learn faster
you learn what could take somebody ten
years to learn you can learn in two
years when you feel emotionally engaged
with something you’re able to push past
ops all the obstacles the sense that
it’s genetics or the size of our brain
or our parents money you can’t control
any of that obviously and they could
become kind of crutches for some people
but the amount of motivation you feel
the emotional connection you have to
what you’re studying or doing that is
something within your control that is
something you can choose to take and it
is you you’re gonna find people giving
you all kinds of great advice about your
careers about where you should go you
know your MBA etc but if there’s one
piece of advice that I think is more
important than that is that is it is
this idea of following this these
natural inclinations and creating your
own career
and finding a way to engage the deepest
motivating parts of your psyche you
learn to embrace uncertainty and chaos
life is inherently chaotic and it
doesn’t fit into our tidy formulas not
only does this not make you anxious but
you find chaos and uncertainty deeply
exciting and stimulating slowly adopting
this as an overall philosophy will
naturally loosen the mind up and give it
greater creative flow you will naturally
consider more options and possibilities
the brain evolved over the course of
millions of years so I try to make the
point that you know what da Vinci was
going through the process is there’s a
template there and it’s the same because
our brains haven’t really changed in an
evolutionary sense in four or five
hundred years on the other hand the
circumstances are different and people
now live in a world where there’s many
more distractions so it’s harder to do
that kind of focus that I was mentioning
so in some ways it’s a little bit harder
and the people that I’ve interviewed are
really good at shutting out all of the
distractions of the world that’s sort of
what separates them every single one of
them Paul Graham you know Paul Graham
Paul doesn’t have a smartphone
he doesn’t spend time on the Internet
he’s extremely focused that woman yoky
Matsuoka she she does all of her writing
with a pen and paper she’s not sitting
there day in and day out on the computer
checking her Facebook or Twitter page or
whatever I could go through all of them
that way Steve Jobs is sort of the
ultimate icon of mastery of our era and
he said the only thing that’s
differentiated me from everyone else was
my level of focus I could take a problem
and I could focus on it and burrow into
it and everybody else was so distracted
he knew how to close his door get away
from his wife his kids everyone and just
focus so the all of these people have to
overcome these tense distractions in our
world they and they’re able to do it on
the other hand what you can get with a
click on the internet but with a Google
search compared to what da Vinci had to
do or a scientist in the 19th or 20th
century is absolutely astounding so what
you have at your fingertips the
knowledge the things that you can
connect and learn about the potential
for learning skills is out of this world
so if you’re able to overcome the
distracting elements that are I am I go
over and I wrote compare it to if you
ever watch a basketball game and you see
the opposing team shooting free throw
and everyone behind him the stands are
all going like this with those big you
know trying to distract him there’s like
hundreds of people that’s what the world
is like now you’ve got thousands of
people waving those things you’ve got so
many distractions if you’re able to
overcome that and be a person that can
focus you have this like wealth of
information and knowledge and ability to
acquire skills that nobody a hundred
years ago 20 years ago could dream about
you
[Music]
the difference between people who are
successful or not although those who are
successful seem to know from age of
seven or eight maybe older you know
they’re very in tune with what they love
they I compared to a voice inside their
head not literally a voice but something
saying I you you really are drawn to
this subject and they hear it throughout
their lives that for me it was it was
writing and books since I was a kid
and you know at anytime I deviated from
that love and went into something else I
just was so unhappy I knew that I wasn’t
doing the right thing and so it’s just
like this voice that keeps drawing you
back to what you really really love
some of the most important discoveries
inventions and innovations cut within a
field come from people who are trained
in a much different field and who have
an outsider’s approach
Louis Pasteur was a classic example of
this he was trained as a chemist in
mineralogist so he brought homage to a
much different way of thinking to the
subject of medicine and germs a method
that was infinitely more creative Albert
Einstein was a complete outsider his two
most important discoveries came when he
was working at the Swiss Patent Office
Google itself exemplifies this idea it
is perhaps the most successful business
on the planet founded by two men who are
relatively complete outsiders to
business and who therefore structured
and directed their company in a very
novel and creative fashion I could go on
and on and on with this list including
many great artists there are two
important reasons why Outsiders
generally have a creative advantage
first they are less steeped in and
burdened by the conventions of the field
that they are attacking they ask a
different set of questions they approach
problems from unconventional angles and
second they are often trained in totally
unrelated fields and so can make
interesting and creative connections
between two very different forms of
thinking like science and business or
chemistry and medicine or engineering
and design now we can’t all consciously
follow such a path but even within the
careers that were pursuing we can train
ourselves to think like outsiders and
help loosen up the mind in the process
[Music]
use active imagination is deceptively
simple often what separates creative
from conventional thinkers is that they
simply search white they use their minds
to generate possibilities that others
dudes don’t think of and then they work
to verify what they came up with we saw
a classic example of this with posture
another great example is with Henry Ford
early on in his career in the earliest
years of love what would later become
the Ford Motor Company Ford was anxious
to improve to speed up production of
cars it was he saw the automobile as the
ultimate consumer product but in order
for it to become that he had to greatly
increase production rate in his factory
so he spent a couple days looking at his
employees on the factory floor and
trying to imagine how he could get them
to move faster and car to car suddenly
one day he imagined something completely
different
he imagined the men standing still and
the cars coming to them he didn’t know
what that really meant but he decided to
try it out and lo and behold it
increased productivity by such an
incredible exponential rate that it
could now become consumer product that
he envisioned
things like antibodies or assembly lines
they seem so obvious to us now but they
are never obvious in the present and
they involve an incredible leap of what
I call active imagination the difference
between regular and active imagination
is that the latter is used consciously
to reach very very practical results
it’s not imagination for coming up with
wild things its imagination used for
very practical results think of the
active imagination as a kind of creative
muscle that you’re developing first
within the loose constraints of what
you’re working on you open your mind up
to you give a complete free of rein you
entertain almost every possibility that
you could imagine or visualize you
engage in what Charles Darwin calls
fool’s experiment and fools experiments
this is the fun play part of serious
play
you use notebook sketches diagrams
models prototypes to help externalize
the products of your imagination once
you have gone through this you now enter
the second serious part of the process
first you choose one or few of the more
promising possibilities that were
generated by your imagination and now
you actively work to test verify or
confirm it
this might entail launching a beta
version on the public once you have
feedback you now go back into the first
part of the process in a shortened form
using your imagination to perhaps take
what you have into an even better and
higher form circling constantly through
this process in shorter and shorter
cycles until you’ve got something that’s
both incredibly imaginative and
incredibly realistic and practical by
developing this by going through this
over and over and over again you will
develop your imagination into an
incredibly powerful creative muscle
I want you to get over this notion that
I find so annoying that so many people
have that success and power in life is
dependent on something like genetics
like some people are born with a larger
brain or they have wealthy parents who
are able to send them to the right
or or it’s all a matter of luck
what really makes people successful and
powerful in life and it’s not just me
saying this I read hundreds of books on
the subject what makes people successful
is their degree of motivation I could
repeat it a hundred times but it’s true
every time I say when you are motivated
when you feel yourself emotionally
engaged in the subject you learn faster
you learn what could take somebody ten
years to learn you can learn in two
years when you feel emotionally engaged
with something you’re able to push past
ops all the obstacles the sense that
it’s genetics or the size of our brain
or our parents money you can’t control
any of that obviously and they could
become kind of crutches for some people
but the amount of motivation you feel
the emotional connection you have to
what you’re studying or doing that is
something within your control that is
something you can choose to take and it
is you you’re gonna find people giving
you all kinds of great advice about your
careers about where you should go you
know your MBA etc but if there’s one
piece of advice that I think is more
important than that is that is it is
this idea of following this these
natural inclinations and creating your
own career
and finding a way to engage the deepest
motivating parts of your psyche you
learn to embrace uncertainty and chaos
life is inherently chaotic and it
doesn’t fit into our tidy formulas not
only does this not make you anxious but
you find chaos and uncertainty deeply
exciting and stimulating slowly adopting
this as an overall philosophy will
naturally loosen the mind up and give it
greater creative flow you will naturally
consider more options and possibilities
the brain evolved over the course of
millions of years so I try to make the
point that you know what da Vinci was
going through the process is there’s a
template there and it’s the same because
our brains haven’t really changed in an
evolutionary sense in four or five
hundred years on the other hand the
circumstances are different and people
now live in a world where there’s many
more distractions so it’s harder to do
that kind of focus that I was mentioning
so in some ways it’s a little bit harder
and the people that I’ve interviewed are
really good at shutting out all of the
distractions of the world that’s sort of
what separates them every single one of
them Paul Graham you know Paul Graham
Paul doesn’t have a smartphone
he doesn’t spend time on the Internet
he’s extremely focused that woman yoky
Matsuoka she she does all of her writing
with a pen and paper she’s not sitting
there day in and day out on the computer
checking her Facebook or Twitter page or
whatever I could go through all of them
that way Steve Jobs is sort of the
ultimate icon of mastery of our era and
he said the only thing that’s
differentiated me from everyone else was
my level of focus I could take a problem
and I could focus on it and burrow into
it and everybody else was so distracted
he knew how to close his door get away
from his wife his kids everyone and just
focus so the all of these people have to
overcome these tense distractions in our
world they and they’re able to do it on
the other hand what you can get with a
click on the internet but with a Google
search compared to what da Vinci had to
do or a scientist in the 19th or 20th
century is absolutely astounding so what
you have at your fingertips the
knowledge the things that you can
connect and learn about the potential
for learning skills is out of this world
so if you’re able to overcome the
distracting elements that are I am I go
over and I wrote compare it to if you
ever watch a basketball game and you see
the opposing team shooting free throw
and everyone behind him the stands are
all going like this with those big you
know trying to distract him there’s like
hundreds of people that’s what the world
is like now you’ve got thousands of
people waving those things you’ve got so
many distractions if you’re able to
overcome that and be a person that can
focus you have this like wealth of
information and knowledge and ability to
acquire skills that nobody a hundred
years ago 20 years ago could dream about
you
[Music]
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