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I've been studying people that I come to call originals.
Explores how procrastination and self-doubt fuel creativity and originality, highlighting that being first isn’t necessary to innovate.
Key Takeaways
- Procrastination can be a creative virtue, not just a productivity vice.
- Being first is less important than being different and better.
- Self-doubt can energize creativity if managed properly.
- Fear of failing to try is a stronger motivator than fear of failure itself.
- Generating many ideas, including bad ones, is essential for originality.
Summary
- Originals are non-conformists who champion new ideas and drive creativity and change.
- Procrastination can enhance creativity by allowing time for divergent, non-linear thinking.
- Historical figures like Martin Luther King Jr. exemplify the creative benefits of last-minute work.
- First movers often fail more than improvers who build on existing ideas, debunking the first mover advantage myth.
- Originals manage fear and self-doubt by channeling it into experimentation and refinement.
- Choosing non-default options, like switching web browsers, reflects a mindset of questioning norms and seeking better solutions.
- Original thinkers fear failing to try more than failing itself, emphasizing the importance of action despite risk.
- Most people hold back their ideas due to fear of judgment, but originals generate many ideas, including many bad ones.
- High creative output increases the chance of producing original masterpieces, as seen with classical composers.
- Embracing procrastination, doubt, fear, and failure is key to fostering originality and improving the world.
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
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Originals are non-conformists, people who not only have new ideas, but take action to champion them.
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They're people who stand out and speak up. Originals drive creativity and change in the world.
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They're the people you want to bet on, and they look nothing like I expected.
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I had a student named Jihae, who came to me and said, "I have my most creative ideas when I'm procrastinating."
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And I was like, that's cute, where are the four papers you owe me?
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No, she was one of our most creative students, and as an organizational psychologist, this is the kind of idea that I test.
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You actually do see that the people who wait till the last minute are so busy goofing off,
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that they don't have any new ideas.
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And on the flip side, the people who race in are in such a frenzy of anxiety that they don't have original thoughts either.
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There's a sweet spot where originals seem to live.
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Why is this?
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Procrastination gives you time to consider divergent ideas, to think in non-linear ways, to make unexpected leaps.
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As Aaron Sorkin put it, "You call it procrastinating, I call it thinking."
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And along the way, I discovered that a lot of great originals in history were procrastinators.
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What about Martin Luther King Jr.?
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The night before the biggest speech of his life, the March on Washington, he was up past 3:00 a.m. rewriting it.
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He's sitting in the audience waiting for his turn to go on stage, and he is still scribbling notes and crossing out lines.
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When he gets on stage, 11 minutes in, he leaves his prepared remarks to utter four words that changed the course of history: "I have a dream."
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That was not in the script.
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By delaying the task of finalizing the speech until the very last minute, he left himself open to the widest range of possible ideas.
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And because the text wasn't set in stone, he had freedom to improvise.
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Procrastinating is a vice when it comes to productivity, but it can be a virtue for creativity.
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What you see with a lot of great originals is that they are quick to start, but they're slow to finish.
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And it turns out the first mover advantage is mostly a myth.
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Look at a classic study of over 50 product categories, comparing the first movers who created the market with the improvers who introduced something different and better.
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What you see is that the first movers had a failure rate of 47%, compared with only 8% for the improvers.
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Look at Facebook, waiting to build a social network until after MySpace and Friendster.
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Look at Google, waiting for years after AltaVista and Yahoo.
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It's much easier to improve on somebody else's idea than it is to create something new from scratch.
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So the lesson I learned is that to be original, you don't have to be first.
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You just have to be different and better.
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On the surface, a lot of original people look confident, but behind the scenes, they feel the same fear and doubt that the rest of us do.
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They just manage it differently.
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Self-doubt is paralyzing, it leads you to freeze.
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But idea doubt is energizing, it motivates you to test, to experiment, to refine, just like MLK did.
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And so, the key to being original is just a simple thing of avoiding the leap from step three to step four.
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Instead of saying, "I'm crap," you say, "The first few drafts are always crap, and I'm just not there yet."
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So how do you get there?
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Well, there's a clue, it turns out, in the internet browser that you use.
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We can predict your job performance and your commitment just by knowing what web browser you use.
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There is good evidence that Firefox and Chrome users significantly outperform Internet Explorer and Safari users.
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Yes!
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They also stay in their jobs 15% longer, by the way.
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Why?
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Because if you use Internet Explorer or Safari, those came pre-installed on your computer, and you accepted the default option that was handed to you.
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If you want in Firefox or Chrome, you had to doubt the default and ask, "Is there a different option out there?" and then be a little resourceful and download a new browser.
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So people hear about this study and they're like, "Great, if I want to get better at my job, I just need to upgrade my browser?"
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No, it's about being the kind of person who takes the initiative to doubt the default and look for a better option.
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Originals feel fear too, they're afraid of failing, but what sets them apart from the rest of us is that they're even more afraid of failing to try.
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They know you can fail by starting a business that goes bankrupt, or by failing to start a business at all.
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They know that in the long run, our biggest regrets are not our actions, but our inactions, the things we wish we could redo, if you look at the science, are the chances not taken.
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Elon Musk told me recently he didn't expect Tesla to succeed, he was sure the first few SpaceX launches would fail to make it to orbit, let alone get back, but it was too important not to try.
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And for so many of us, when we have an important idea, we don't bother to try.
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But I have some good news for you, you're not going to get judged on your bad ideas.
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A lot of people think they will, if you look across industries and ask people about their biggest idea, their most important suggestion, 85% of them stayed silent instead of speaking up.
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They're afraid of embarrassing themselves, of looking stupid.
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But guess what, originals have lots and lots of bad ideas.
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Tons of them, in fact.
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The greatest originals are the ones who fail the most, because they're the ones who try the most.
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Take classical composers, the best of the best.
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The more output you churn out, the more variety you get, and the better your chances of stumbling on something truly original.
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Even the three icons of classical music, Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, had to generate hundreds and hundreds of compositions to come up with a much smaller number of masterpieces.
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Now, you may be wondering, how did this guy become great without doing a whole lot?
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I don't know how Wagner pulled that off.
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But for most of us, if we want to be more original, we have to generate more ideas.
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They feel fear and doubt, they procrastinate, they have bad ideas, and sometimes it's not in spite of those qualities, but because of them that they succeed.
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So when you see those things, don't make the same mistake I did, don't write them off, and when that's you, don't count yourself out either.
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Know that being quick to start but slow to finish can boost your creativity, that you can motivate yourself by doubting your ideas,
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and embracing the fear of failing to try, and that you need a lot of bad ideas in order to get a few good ones.
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Look, being original is not easy.
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But I have no doubt about this.
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It's the best way to improve the world around us.
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Thank you.
Topics:procrastinationoriginal thinkerscreativityself-doubtfear of failurefirst mover advantageinnovationMartin Luther King Jr.idea generationproductivity
