Ideas versus ways
|MC_PREVIEW_TEXT|
View this email in your browser (|ARCHIVE|)
“It takes a special energy, over and above one’s creative potential, a special audacity or subversiveness, to strike out in a new direction once one is settled.” –Oliver Sacks
I often like to talk about the value of old ideas. Because there’s seldom a problem out there today we struggle with that someone else hasn’t dealt with before, too.
How can I stop worrying about whether my ideas are original enough? Mark Twain (https://amzn.to/2uUn0cy) has your back.
How do I move past loss such that I’m not clinging to the past but can be shaped by it? Poet Mary Oliver (https://amzn.to/2GHQboD) counsels and consoles. Seneca, too.
How can I keep my imagination alive by understanding where it came from? Maurice Sendak has a lot to say in 338 words (https://amzn.to/2uUvCzP ) .
How can I tackle adversity with sharpened wisdom? Emily Wilson’s fantastic translation of The Odyssey (https://amzn.to/2JtzvPv) has you covered. Marcus Aurelius, too.
How can I best go to the root of problems? Irish poet John O’Donnohue (https://amzn.to/2uVDote) has advice in the form of blessings, he too drawing on the ancient wisdom of Meister Eckhart.
Heck, Tolstoy (https://amzn.to/2ICnYw0 ) can even help you make better raspberry jam.
All of these examples are of people who had the good sense to take what they knew and to write it down in a book.
Good ideas survive time. Bad ones don’t. So it’s worth paying attention to the ones that did despite the odds.
Since I’m being perfectly honest, it’s important you know that I didn’t always believe this. Twenty-five years ago, I’d likely have labelled anything older than me as some kind of relic of the past.
Old ways, on the other hand, are things you have to always be watching out for.
It’s easy far too easy really to let your work be guided strictly by a way that’s worked in the past. Your greatest hits of the past only work if you’re AC/DC or the Rolling Stones and are content to keep making the same record over and over again.
But you and I aren’t in a rock band and we don’t have a classic-rock business model to keep us paid into our golden years.
We’re in the business of being creative. And that means we have to make a fresh record every time.
I struggled a little with my own advice recently on a project. I couldn’t get to the bottom of my draft. Something was holding me back.
I’ve learned over the years to examine my resistance. To not just label the work as bad but as unsatisfying. That meant I had to look carefully at my assumptions. And what I found in this case was that I’d built a sizeable chunk of my advice on a key set of beliefs. They made sense before. But before is a different time. Things change.
So I rewrote everything. From the start. Threw out everything and worked from a blank slate.
There’s nothing scarier than doing that. Because when you’ve been doing any job for long enough, you have ways of working and ways of thinking. And for the most part, we’re rewarded if we make those repeatable hits.
As I’ve pointed out before, your best work does not come from your ego: it survives in spite of it (https://us4.campaign-archive.com/?u=89226eb68936fc712577977b8&id=9b9025e7ca) .
So be more open to old ideas of others, but be wary of old ways that belong to you.
Very best, Patrick
P.S. Thank you to all of you who kindly forward this email to friends. It helps me a lot. You can do so clicking either of the green buttons below. Do that now.
============================================================ (http://www.facebook.com/sharer/sharer.php?u=|URL:ARCHIVE_LINK_SHORT|) Share (http://www.facebook.com/sharer/sharer.php?u=|URL:ARCHIVE_LINK_SHORT|) (http://www.linkedin.com/shareArticle?url=|URL:ARCHIVE_LINK_SHORT|&mini=true&title=|URL:MC_SUBJECT|) Share (http://www.linkedin.com/shareArticle?url=|URL:ARCHIVE_LINK_SHORT|&mini=true&title=|URL:MC_SUBJECT|) Copyright © |CURRENT_YEAR| |LIST:COMPANY|, |IFNOT:ARCHIVE_PAGE| |LIST:DESCRIPTION|
Our mailing address is: |LIST_ADDRESS| |END:IF|
Update your preferences (|UPDATE_PROFILE|) or unsubscribe from this list (|UNSUB|) .
|IF:REWARDS| |REWARDS_TEXT| |END:IF|