Tag Archives: creativity

Crackpot or Genius?

It’s the essential question of life: Crackpot or genius?

So this Ph.D. in economics, Mark White, has this idea that museums could sell shares in their artwork to raise money. It’s this bizarre, crazy idea to somehow monetize the holdings of museums and give them new access to capital without selling everything off. The idea was being discussed because the Detroit Institute of Arts might be desperate enough to try it.

At the end of the article, White has the best quote ever:

Innovators, he points out, are frequently wrong. “I could be a crackpot,” he said, in a telephone call. “But I think I’m a genius.”

Don’t we all? How often do we have these ideas that are either brilliant or horrible? Maybe they’re both, depending on who you ask (one person’s crackpot is another person’s genius). And maybe when you ask. It’s such a great sentiment, acknowledging the reality of ourselves: Yeah, I could be a little nuts. But I prefer to think of myself as brilliant.

And perhaps that’s what separates the crackpots from the geniuses. If you never push your idea, if you never pursue it, if you never put in the hardwork to make it a reality, then you’re just a crackpot. But if you put in the time, the sweat, the energy—then maybe you are a genius.

I could be a crackpot. But I think I’m a genius.

5 Minutes a Day

I recently read Evil Plans: Having Fun on the Road to World Domination by Hugh MacLeod. I mean, why wouldn’t you read a book called Evil Plans?

It’s another book about creativity and striking out on your own, written by a guy who made a name for himself by drawing cartoons on the backs of business cards. That’s all well and good, but sometimes I think these kind of screeds are a little too niche. Some people like having a 9-to-5 job and working for an employer and that doesn’t make them brainless schlubs. Maybe more people can and do have their Evil Plan side projects today than ever before, but that doesn’t mean it’s for everybody.

But that’s my own rant on rants like this. What I really wanted to talk about was one of the brilliant thoughts that stuck with me from the book:

“Like a very talented pianist once told me when I was a boy, it’s better to practice a musical instrument for five minutes a day than to practice for two hours once a week. It’s something I never forgot.” (page 39)

Five minutes a day is better than two hours once a week. If you’re serious about anything, if you want to get good at anything, if you want to tackle a tough project, you need this advice (read: I need this advice).

It’s the consistency that wins over time, not the herculean effort.

And really, if you love it, you’ll find those five minutes are never enough and you’ll start to make more time. But at least take those five minutes.

(My problem is I can never stick to just five minutes and it turns into two hours and the next day I can’t afford to dive in so deeply, so I don’t. I need to learn some self-control. Or I need an egg timer. Or maybe a real egg timer.)

And yes, this is just a gimmick. It’s like all the other ideas, techniques and tricks out there to get you to do something: National Novel Writing Month, inbox zero, pick your favorite Lifehacker gem. But let’s call them what they are: gimmicks. Designed to get us to accomplish a task we can’t otherwise seem to do. Another comment MacLeod makes is that we’re just primates, and like primates we need to be tricked into accomplishing something.

The Innovation that Made the iPod

The death of Apple founder Steve Jobs today has everyone talking about his many accomplishments, especially in the last decade: the iPod (2001), the iTunes store (2003), the iPhone (2007) the iPad (2010). Each one was an incredible leap forward (iTunes alone ushered in an era of legal digital music).

But what I find so interesting is the innovation Jobs brought to Apple when he returned in 1996 that made all those other accomplishments possible. It started, perhaps, with 1997’s Think Different campaign. It was just an ad campaign (and not developed by Jobs), but the idea soon became a reality as Apple introduced the iMac in 1998. The iMac literally re-thought computers with an emphasis on out-of-the-box ease-of-use (“There is no step three!”) and, of all things, style. Later the same philosophy came to laptops with the iBook in 1999 and delicious color choices like tangerine.

And Apple Computers became cool again.

All of that innovation to their core product brought the company back from the brink and laid the groundwork for what was to come. Without the success of the iMac, there would be no iPod.

Unicorns and wheels, as Jason Kottke describes it. The lesson here is that if you want to create unicorns, you have to learn how to create wheels first.

(If you’re unfamiliar with Jobs’ 2005 Stanford commencement address, “How to Live Before You Die,” you should read or watch it. Good stuff.)