I’m a restaurant manager I run a small
Japanese traditional sushi bar in
Columbia South Carolina and if you ever
came to apply for a job with me great I
would sit you down look you in the eye
and I would ask for you to describe to
me in detail how you brush your teeth
what if it’s our job interview question
why would I ask about your tooth
brushing well it’s actually a very
practical question and there’s not a
trick to it at all I will often explain
my reasoning as I’m talking to you when
people come to apply for a job as a cook
I need to hear from them how they would
work in my workplace even if they have
never worked in my workplace before I
need them to tell me that in the natural
way so if you’re working at a restaurant
you need to have take some ownership of
your station or your tools clean and
easy to reach do you work mindfully if
you come across some problem can you
adjust what you do so that you can do it
even better the next time do you work
well as a team are you able to share
your space and accomplish our goals
together with the team and a lot of that
gets mirrored in brushing your teeth you
have to have your sink well arranged
your toothbrush and toothpaste have to
be within easy reach you have to this is
part of a larger morning routine so you
have how do you transition into it how
do you transition out of it
and how do you consider the family and
the roommates that you have who also
have to use the space in the same hectic
morning hour so I have no doubt that the
way you tell me how you brush your teeth
is how you approach some of your work
plus it’s a funny job question to ask in
an interview and it’s hard not to
acknowledge the silly situation I put us
both in when I ask it so here we are on
the TEDx stage where
us to talk about big interesting ideas
right and we’re supposed to talk about
solving the world right okay let’s do it
let’s solve the problems in the world so
when we think about how to solve the
problems in the world we think about
certain types of people we think of
millionaires and we think of
billionaires we think of powerful
leaders we think of large corporations
and we think of massively creative
people who are total 100 percent
Einsteins those people are useful yes
but that’s not really who I like to put
together when I’m putting together a
team so if I can just take a poll in the
audience real quick who here is not a
billionaire okay we’ve got okay who here
is not a 100% Einstein okay so that’s
perfect
that’s great because I think that I have
this suspicion when I came here the
people like you and people like me that
we outnumber the billionaire Einsteins
in the world and so when we solve a
problem I like to craft projects that
are not for billionaires but maybe four
thousand heirs or hundred heirs and I
know we do have a smart audience here
it’s a university related event so I
would put us all that it may be like a
23% Einstein it’s pretty good and as far
as creativity goes I actually don’t know
the difference between people who are
like intrinsically creative creative in
their soul I don’t know the difference
between that and what I do which is I
have a few creativity inducing
techniques that I apply and layer on as
the situation sees fit and if it’s okay
with you I’d like to share with you two
of my creativity inducing techniques as
we solve the problems of the world today
okay so technique number one look at the
problem from literally any other
perspective and try on a few of those so
one thing that creative people can do
because they’re able to jump out of
these deep grooves in our lives of have
habits and thoughts and you know these
groups are really well they are
there there the way you brush your teeth
every morning they are the one path you
take every day to work they are the way
Google has learned to sort your search
results they are the one or two friends
you go to when you’re facing problems in
life or work they’re really useful and
we’ve learned we can trust them over
time these are our perspectives these
are what builds our perspective you may
know that there are other options out
there and it takes a little bit of
difficulty to jump out of those grooves
and to jump into another perspective and
take a look at the world but it’s worth
doing that sometimes so what you want to
do is you want to take your issue and
pull it up out of your life turn it a
little and see it from a different angle
is there another character in this story
how would they solve my problem if they
were in my place is there anything that
I would agree with with that character
or you could go sillier with this
concept and you could say okay I have a
problem how would my cat solve this
problem and the answer is you come up
with it’s gonna be a whole list of
probably mostly nonsense but there’s
usually one or two places where you can
start and to start a new kind of form of
thinking I had a problem once and you
have also probably had this problem I
think of the best ideas when I am in the
shower
I always remember the most important
things and I can never
if I were anywhere else I could jot it
down in my TEDx playbill notebook but I
can I mean I’m in the shower and I
always forget by the time it’s over it’s
4:00 so I was at a friend’s house and I
was with their kids and I thought okay
how would this four-year-old solve this
problem she would probably I don’t know
use her toys and it turns out that
there’s a great toy that it’s like a
drawing pad and you use magnets instead
of pen and ink pen and paper you might
know it it’s great there’s a great
inspiration so that Christmas I asked
for my I asked my brother for a Magna
doodle for Christmas and we got some
suction cup hooks and mounted it in the
bathroom I’ve been using it everyday to
help
success who here likes pedestrian
crosswalks okay I think I like the idea
of pedestrian crosswalks but they end up
being quite stressful because well I I
was once hit by a car I was walking
through an intersection I was in the
crosswalk I was honoring my green light
and I still got hit it’s a lousy
experience I don’t recommend it don’t
ever do it so thinking about that and in
this town we have a weekly newspaper and
they have an anonymous complaint page
and it basically functions as a print
Twitter the the in a lot of times
pedestrians complain about drivers
drivers complain about pedestrians
drivers complain about other drivers and
the issue seems to be that we all need
to learn the rules in better but even if
we ourselves know the rules
there’s no guarantee that the other
pedestrians are bikers or drivers know
enough to protect us from harm and I
wanted to take to take that on I started
to so when I cross the street now I want
to be a little bit more visible to cars
I want to remind the driver that they
are a person and I am a person and we’re
trying to do something good here in a
pedestrian crosswalk we should be
celebrating this moment rather than all
be annoyed by it so what I do is I keep
folded in my back pocket I keep a piece
of paper that’s a sign that just says
thank you and I show it to the cars as I
walk across the street
the and I have a few versions of the
sign some of them say thanks neighbor or
praise hands emoji or this so we’ve
solved we solved job applications we’ve
solved shower thoughts we’ve solved
pedestrian crosswalks let’s let’s do our
second tactic which is to purposefully
mess around with the definitions of
words and now that we’ve solved a few
problems we can take a small break and
talk about donuts which I think you’re
gonna love this I’m gonna take donuts
which are a very beautiful thing and I’m
going to turn them into a math problem
which is also a very beautiful type of
thing aren’t you very excited okay so
there’s this phrase baker’s dozen donuts
and we know that that means 13 Donuts
and we know that so let’s take a closer
look at this phrase we know that Donuts
are beautiful we know that a dozen is 12
but how exactly does the word baker’s
modify dozen and donuts and the way I
see it there’s three possibilities one
definition one definition is it can mean
one extra so you have a dozen donuts you
get one extra 13 donuts second
definition and here’s the math is 13
12th of so you take a dozen donuts you
had one twelfth of one dozen a donut and
you get 13 donuts third definition is
plus one donut so you get a dozen donuts
plus one don’ 13 donuts that’s great so
the way you figure out the nuance
between these three definitions is you
put the word Baker’s in different
contexts so let’s ask ourselves what
would we get if we ordered a Baker’s one
donut so one donut first definition one
extra one donut plus one extra two
Donuts second definition a donut plus
1/12 of a donut it’s a little bit of a
donut or a donut hole maybe the third
definition 1 plus donut so one donut
plus donut
two Donuts it’s similar to this first
one here and let’s take one more crack
at it
and put it in a little bit weird weirder
context and say what would you get if
you ordered a baker’s cup of coffee
right so a baker’s cup of coffee first
definition one cup of coffee plus one
extra you get two cups of coffee second
definition a cup of coffee plus 1/12 of
a cup of coffee so a little splash of
coffee third definition a cup of coffee
plus a donut delicious
yeah I like it so what you know this is
just a little bit of word math but it
turns out that we have a lot of
expectations and sort of intrinsic ideas
about what a word means and we don’t
even know how other people are hearing
that same word that we use and they may
be hearing it in a little bit of a
different way and this example is also
fun because we learn a little bit about
what we think the personality of a baker
is so with the first definition if we
think of a baker as somebody who adds an
extra to everything we think of the
baker as being a very generous person if
we think of a baker as somebody who can
use the little bits of the material and
create something new out of it we think
of the Baker as being a very resourceful
person and if we think about a baker as
somebody who adds a doughnut to
everything they do in their lives that
person is a very passionate person about
doughnuts so that’s our donut break um
we we can move on to solving another
world problem how about it let’s do
let’s solve influenza the flu so how do
we solve the flu well you know simple
you could get a flu shot
of course the flu shot is great it
protects you from a portion of the flu
for a whole year
they cost from zero to twenty dollars if
you’re a good shopper if you you know if
you get a flu shot every year for ten
years and you end up getting sick every
year except one if you get 9 years in a
row and on the tenth year it works it
prevents you from getting the flu you
don’t miss some work it ends up being
worth it the cost ends up being worth it
and this is especially true if you are a
wage employed hundred air or thousand
air and you get to protect like any
babies and grandmas you come across as
you go about your day so if we do that
that’s a level one solution I want to
take a look at words I like
so I think about flu shots and I also
think about this phrase by your friends
a round of shots okay there’s something
interesting here there’s something we
can think about so what would we do if
we brought a friend around the shots
let’s think about our if we think about
how we spend our November through
February which is a very popular time
for the flu we can think about three
people in our lives
co-workers or friends or family and
imagine if they were vaccinated so they
would be protected from a portion of the
flu and you would now have a percent
chance of their percent chance of
getting sick so they’re protecting you
instead of you worrying about them
getting you sick and they also get to
protect their babies and their grandmas
so that’s great Wow so this is the kind
of solution that I like to do I like to
add small repeatable habits that I can
that I can do over and over again that
involves a little bit of creativity none
of these ideas came fully formed a lot
of times they took they went through a
process of refinement and I’ll take you
through my process of refinement what we
do is we have our idea and then we get
some community input in and try to take
out some of the friction so that it’s
more doable and then we add a little bit
of humanity so that it gets to the we
can do it like a single effective prick
to the human heart of the challenge and
the way I’ve expressed my refinement
process is through a print product that
I created I created with my friend my
designer friend Josh rainwater and it’s
called subpar magazine which isn’t that
a great title don’t you love that title
subpar do you know what the word subpar
means we’re doing words still subpar
that’s right you’re right it means lower
than par and we know the par is a great
score in golf so if you get a score in
golf it’s lower than par
you’ve got a subpar score and that score
is awesome so if you come across a
product called subpar magazine you know
obviously
so this magazine is about things that
are awesome so it says subpar magazine
is just a short product it’s only six
pages long and each page represents a
step in my refinement process for ideas
and you’re welcome to use these as you
are working on your own projects as you
think of like an amazing world-changing
project for thousandaire 23% Einstein’s
the page one of the magazine is we
isolate a problem in the community page
two we lay out our intentions and come
up with a project page three we form a
team of effective local people who will
take on the project page four we docu we
document the progress and page five we
report the results and page six we
solicit feedback from the community and
that helps us refine us refine the
process that we can go through it again
in the future so I think that well while
we come together and we solve our
problems we can all do this we all have
the ability to do a thousandaire 23%
nine Stein project and when we look at
this we need to make sure that we have a
few principles in our in our discipline
we need to make sure we take some
ownership of our space we make sure we
love our tools we make sure to think in
terms of improvement we want to care for
the other people in the situation and
make sure that we’re all working
together for the same goals we have to
unlock the secret meaning of brushing our teeth thank you
Japanese traditional sushi bar in
Columbia South Carolina and if you ever
came to apply for a job with me great I
would sit you down look you in the eye
and I would ask for you to describe to
me in detail how you brush your teeth
what if it’s our job interview question
why would I ask about your tooth
brushing well it’s actually a very
practical question and there’s not a
trick to it at all I will often explain
my reasoning as I’m talking to you when
people come to apply for a job as a cook
I need to hear from them how they would
work in my workplace even if they have
never worked in my workplace before I
need them to tell me that in the natural
way so if you’re working at a restaurant
you need to have take some ownership of
your station or your tools clean and
easy to reach do you work mindfully if
you come across some problem can you
adjust what you do so that you can do it
even better the next time do you work
well as a team are you able to share
your space and accomplish our goals
together with the team and a lot of that
gets mirrored in brushing your teeth you
have to have your sink well arranged
your toothbrush and toothpaste have to
be within easy reach you have to this is
part of a larger morning routine so you
have how do you transition into it how
do you transition out of it
and how do you consider the family and
the roommates that you have who also
have to use the space in the same hectic
morning hour so I have no doubt that the
way you tell me how you brush your teeth
is how you approach some of your work
plus it’s a funny job question to ask in
an interview and it’s hard not to
acknowledge the silly situation I put us
both in when I ask it so here we are on
the TEDx stage where
us to talk about big interesting ideas
right and we’re supposed to talk about
solving the world right okay let’s do it
let’s solve the problems in the world so
when we think about how to solve the
problems in the world we think about
certain types of people we think of
millionaires and we think of
billionaires we think of powerful
leaders we think of large corporations
and we think of massively creative
people who are total 100 percent
Einsteins those people are useful yes
but that’s not really who I like to put
together when I’m putting together a
team so if I can just take a poll in the
audience real quick who here is not a
billionaire okay we’ve got okay who here
is not a 100% Einstein okay so that’s
perfect
that’s great because I think that I have
this suspicion when I came here the
people like you and people like me that
we outnumber the billionaire Einsteins
in the world and so when we solve a
problem I like to craft projects that
are not for billionaires but maybe four
thousand heirs or hundred heirs and I
know we do have a smart audience here
it’s a university related event so I
would put us all that it may be like a
23% Einstein it’s pretty good and as far
as creativity goes I actually don’t know
the difference between people who are
like intrinsically creative creative in
their soul I don’t know the difference
between that and what I do which is I
have a few creativity inducing
techniques that I apply and layer on as
the situation sees fit and if it’s okay
with you I’d like to share with you two
of my creativity inducing techniques as
we solve the problems of the world today
okay so technique number one look at the
problem from literally any other
perspective and try on a few of those so
one thing that creative people can do
because they’re able to jump out of
these deep grooves in our lives of have
habits and thoughts and you know these
groups are really well they are
there there the way you brush your teeth
every morning they are the one path you
take every day to work they are the way
Google has learned to sort your search
results they are the one or two friends
you go to when you’re facing problems in
life or work they’re really useful and
we’ve learned we can trust them over
time these are our perspectives these
are what builds our perspective you may
know that there are other options out
there and it takes a little bit of
difficulty to jump out of those grooves
and to jump into another perspective and
take a look at the world but it’s worth
doing that sometimes so what you want to
do is you want to take your issue and
pull it up out of your life turn it a
little and see it from a different angle
is there another character in this story
how would they solve my problem if they
were in my place is there anything that
I would agree with with that character
or you could go sillier with this
concept and you could say okay I have a
problem how would my cat solve this
problem and the answer is you come up
with it’s gonna be a whole list of
probably mostly nonsense but there’s
usually one or two places where you can
start and to start a new kind of form of
thinking I had a problem once and you
have also probably had this problem I
think of the best ideas when I am in the
shower
I always remember the most important
things and I can never
if I were anywhere else I could jot it
down in my TEDx playbill notebook but I
can I mean I’m in the shower and I
always forget by the time it’s over it’s
4:00 so I was at a friend’s house and I
was with their kids and I thought okay
how would this four-year-old solve this
problem she would probably I don’t know
use her toys and it turns out that
there’s a great toy that it’s like a
drawing pad and you use magnets instead
of pen and ink pen and paper you might
know it it’s great there’s a great
inspiration so that Christmas I asked
for my I asked my brother for a Magna
doodle for Christmas and we got some
suction cup hooks and mounted it in the
bathroom I’ve been using it everyday to
help
success who here likes pedestrian
crosswalks okay I think I like the idea
of pedestrian crosswalks but they end up
being quite stressful because well I I
was once hit by a car I was walking
through an intersection I was in the
crosswalk I was honoring my green light
and I still got hit it’s a lousy
experience I don’t recommend it don’t
ever do it so thinking about that and in
this town we have a weekly newspaper and
they have an anonymous complaint page
and it basically functions as a print
Twitter the the in a lot of times
pedestrians complain about drivers
drivers complain about pedestrians
drivers complain about other drivers and
the issue seems to be that we all need
to learn the rules in better but even if
we ourselves know the rules
there’s no guarantee that the other
pedestrians are bikers or drivers know
enough to protect us from harm and I
wanted to take to take that on I started
to so when I cross the street now I want
to be a little bit more visible to cars
I want to remind the driver that they
are a person and I am a person and we’re
trying to do something good here in a
pedestrian crosswalk we should be
celebrating this moment rather than all
be annoyed by it so what I do is I keep
folded in my back pocket I keep a piece
of paper that’s a sign that just says
thank you and I show it to the cars as I
walk across the street
the and I have a few versions of the
sign some of them say thanks neighbor or
praise hands emoji or this so we’ve
solved we solved job applications we’ve
solved shower thoughts we’ve solved
pedestrian crosswalks let’s let’s do our
second tactic which is to purposefully
mess around with the definitions of
words and now that we’ve solved a few
problems we can take a small break and
talk about donuts which I think you’re
gonna love this I’m gonna take donuts
which are a very beautiful thing and I’m
going to turn them into a math problem
which is also a very beautiful type of
thing aren’t you very excited okay so
there’s this phrase baker’s dozen donuts
and we know that that means 13 Donuts
and we know that so let’s take a closer
look at this phrase we know that Donuts
are beautiful we know that a dozen is 12
but how exactly does the word baker’s
modify dozen and donuts and the way I
see it there’s three possibilities one
definition one definition is it can mean
one extra so you have a dozen donuts you
get one extra 13 donuts second
definition and here’s the math is 13
12th of so you take a dozen donuts you
had one twelfth of one dozen a donut and
you get 13 donuts third definition is
plus one donut so you get a dozen donuts
plus one don’ 13 donuts that’s great so
the way you figure out the nuance
between these three definitions is you
put the word Baker’s in different
contexts so let’s ask ourselves what
would we get if we ordered a Baker’s one
donut so one donut first definition one
extra one donut plus one extra two
Donuts second definition a donut plus
1/12 of a donut it’s a little bit of a
donut or a donut hole maybe the third
definition 1 plus donut so one donut
plus donut
two Donuts it’s similar to this first
one here and let’s take one more crack
at it
and put it in a little bit weird weirder
context and say what would you get if
you ordered a baker’s cup of coffee
right so a baker’s cup of coffee first
definition one cup of coffee plus one
extra you get two cups of coffee second
definition a cup of coffee plus 1/12 of
a cup of coffee so a little splash of
coffee third definition a cup of coffee
plus a donut delicious
yeah I like it so what you know this is
just a little bit of word math but it
turns out that we have a lot of
expectations and sort of intrinsic ideas
about what a word means and we don’t
even know how other people are hearing
that same word that we use and they may
be hearing it in a little bit of a
different way and this example is also
fun because we learn a little bit about
what we think the personality of a baker
is so with the first definition if we
think of a baker as somebody who adds an
extra to everything we think of the
baker as being a very generous person if
we think of a baker as somebody who can
use the little bits of the material and
create something new out of it we think
of the Baker as being a very resourceful
person and if we think about a baker as
somebody who adds a doughnut to
everything they do in their lives that
person is a very passionate person about
doughnuts so that’s our donut break um
we we can move on to solving another
world problem how about it let’s do
let’s solve influenza the flu so how do
we solve the flu well you know simple
you could get a flu shot
of course the flu shot is great it
protects you from a portion of the flu
for a whole year
they cost from zero to twenty dollars if
you’re a good shopper if you you know if
you get a flu shot every year for ten
years and you end up getting sick every
year except one if you get 9 years in a
row and on the tenth year it works it
prevents you from getting the flu you
don’t miss some work it ends up being
worth it the cost ends up being worth it
and this is especially true if you are a
wage employed hundred air or thousand
air and you get to protect like any
babies and grandmas you come across as
you go about your day so if we do that
that’s a level one solution I want to
take a look at words I like
so I think about flu shots and I also
think about this phrase by your friends
a round of shots okay there’s something
interesting here there’s something we
can think about so what would we do if
we brought a friend around the shots
let’s think about our if we think about
how we spend our November through
February which is a very popular time
for the flu we can think about three
people in our lives
co-workers or friends or family and
imagine if they were vaccinated so they
would be protected from a portion of the
flu and you would now have a percent
chance of their percent chance of
getting sick so they’re protecting you
instead of you worrying about them
getting you sick and they also get to
protect their babies and their grandmas
so that’s great Wow so this is the kind
of solution that I like to do I like to
add small repeatable habits that I can
that I can do over and over again that
involves a little bit of creativity none
of these ideas came fully formed a lot
of times they took they went through a
process of refinement and I’ll take you
through my process of refinement what we
do is we have our idea and then we get
some community input in and try to take
out some of the friction so that it’s
more doable and then we add a little bit
of humanity so that it gets to the we
can do it like a single effective prick
to the human heart of the challenge and
the way I’ve expressed my refinement
process is through a print product that
I created I created with my friend my
designer friend Josh rainwater and it’s
called subpar magazine which isn’t that
a great title don’t you love that title
subpar do you know what the word subpar
means we’re doing words still subpar
that’s right you’re right it means lower
than par and we know the par is a great
score in golf so if you get a score in
golf it’s lower than par
you’ve got a subpar score and that score
is awesome so if you come across a
product called subpar magazine you know
obviously
so this magazine is about things that
are awesome so it says subpar magazine
is just a short product it’s only six
pages long and each page represents a
step in my refinement process for ideas
and you’re welcome to use these as you
are working on your own projects as you
think of like an amazing world-changing
project for thousandaire 23% Einstein’s
the page one of the magazine is we
isolate a problem in the community page
two we lay out our intentions and come
up with a project page three we form a
team of effective local people who will
take on the project page four we docu we
document the progress and page five we
report the results and page six we
solicit feedback from the community and
that helps us refine us refine the
process that we can go through it again
in the future so I think that well while
we come together and we solve our
problems we can all do this we all have
the ability to do a thousandaire 23%
nine Stein project and when we look at
this we need to make sure that we have a
few principles in our in our discipline
we need to make sure we take some
ownership of our space we make sure we
love our tools we make sure to think in
terms of improvement we want to care for
the other people in the situation and
make sure that we’re all working
together for the same goals we have to
unlock the secret meaning of brushing our teeth thank you
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