Awaken Your Genius

Text in black are quotes; text in green are my notes. I sometimes write in Spanish.

• We say that some people march to the beat of a different drummer. But implicit in this cliché is that the rest of us march to the same beat. This is true to a disturbing extent. We’re told from an early age not to cause a ruckus, to do what it takes to fit in without looking like we’re trying. #

  • Muchas cosas que pensar aquí. Todas las personas son diferentes, y todas están motivadas por diferentes razones. Es fácil llegar a clasificar a personas en cierto espectro o estereotipo, pero solo porque no conocemos sus motivaciones o sus pasiones.

• A genius, in the words of Thelonious Monk, “is the one most like himself.” Genius, in its Latin origin, refers to the attendant spirit present at birth in every person. #

• schools end up unteaching creativity. Kids unlearn how to make art, they unlearn how to speak up, and they unlearn how to take initiative and ask critical questions. They are rewarded for thinking like the teacher, thinking like the school board, or thinking like the textbook author—not for thinking for themselves or questioning what they learn. #

  • Desde hace tiempo pienso que el sistema educativo tradicional está roto, pero me parece que sería muy difícil cambiarlo radicalmente, por lo que mis hijos probablemente tengan que pasar por él, así como yo lo hice. La diferencia que puedo hacer está en desarrollar las habilidades que el sistema actual no desarrolla, o que incluso evita fomentar.

• A typical question in this game of “Let’s pretend” might be “Who discovered America?” A question like this closes off all inquiry by demanding a one-dimensional, Eurocentric answer like “Christopher Columbus.” Yet a far more interesting question is, “How do you discover who discovered America?”11 That question leads to even more questions: “What does ‘discover’ mean?” “Weren’t there millions of people already living in America when the Europeans arrived?” “Were the native people always here?” “If not, how did they arrive? By foot? By boat? From where?” “Where would you look to find out?” These questions—which defy simple answers—are the types of questions that students will encounter in real life. Students leave school perfectly equipped to thrive in a world that doesn’t exist outside the classroom. They feel lost because, in life, there are no clearly defined problems with a single, clearly defined solution. #

  • Conforme más avanzo en el trabajo, más raro es encontrar preguntas fáciles que tienen una sola respuesta. Usualmente las preguntas son abiertas, y cada pregunta abre la puerta para muchas preguntas más. Y las respuestas a esas preguntas suelen ser un "depende", porque todo en esta vida es un tradeoff (intercambio).

• So let’s stop asking, “What did you learn in school today?” That question perpetuates the outdated conception of education as an endeavor whose only purpose is to teach students the right answers. Instead, let’s ask, “What made you curious today?” or “What questions are you interested in exploring?” or “How would you figure out the answers?” or any other question designed to get students to think for themselves and to put a question mark at the end of conventional wisdom. #

  • Estas son buenas preguntas para hacer a mis mentees. ¿Qué despertó tu curiosidad esta semana? ¿Qué preguntas estás interesado en explorar?

• “Every child is an artist,” Pablo Picasso purportedly said. “The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.”13 As student loans and mortgages begin to mount, we get stuck in old patterns and lose sight of the artist within. Our vocabulary reflects this shift. We don’t even call it “art” anymore. We call it “content.” A part of me dies inside when someone calls themselves a “content creator.” Content is something you stuff inside a bag. It’s something you produce on an assembly line. No one wants to get up in the morning and read content over coffee. And no truly self-respecting creator wants to generate content either. Because content is normal. Content is fungible. Content creators can be replaced. Artists can’t. #

  • Nunca me ha convencido el término de creador de contenido tampoco, pero nunca había encontrado una mejor forma de llamarlo. Empezaré a llamar arte todo lo que escribo, programo, y comparto, al menos a todo lo que considero interesante.

• Art isn’t just related to objects. As long as you’re reimagining the status quo—as long as you’re disturbing the peace, in James Baldwin’s memorable phrase—anything you do in your life can be art. #

• When you’re not changing who you are, you’re choosing who you are. The decision to remain the same is a choice—and it’s not the natural one. #

• The fewer labels that follow “I am…,” the more freedom you have to step into who you are. This is what Buddhists call unbeing—dropping the veil of identity so that your true self can emerge. “To become no one and anyone, to shake off shackles that remind you who you are, who others think you are,” as Rebecca Solnit writes.5 If you can confuse the algorithm or the market researcher—if there’s no checkbox that captures your multitudes—you’ll know you’re on the right path. #

• scientists ignore competing hypotheses. #

• Perception shapes reality. We don’t see things as they are. We see things as we are. Although our experience might be accurate, it’s limited and subjective. It’s not the whole truth. We’re not seeing the elephant in the room. We’re feeling only one piece of it. #

• Here’s an unusual way to implement this curiosity-over-victory mindset. When you’re about to disagree with someone, don’t say anything until after you’ve restated what the other person has said to that person’s satisfaction.8 And that person, in turn, can’t respond to you until they restate what you said to your satisfaction. This rule disrupts the typical social dynamic where you’re so focused on crafting your own clever retort that you stop paying attention to the other person. Try it out in your next work meeting or contentious conversation. And remember Haruki Murakami’s advice: “To argue, and win, is to break down the reality of the person you are arguing against. It is painful to lose your reality, so be kind, even if you are right.” #

• 1. Don’t blend ideas into your identity. Write your opinions in temporary ink so they can be revised. Instead of saying, “This is what I believe,” say, “This is how I currently understand this issue.” This wording makes it clear that our ideas and opinions—just like ourselves—are works in progress, continually changing and improving. “‘What I believe’ is a process rather than a finality,” as Emma Goldman put it.10 #

• 3. Ask yourself a simple question. Take one of your firmly held beliefs. Ask yourself, What fact would change my opinion on this subject? If the answer is, No fact would change my opinion, you don’t have an opinion. You are the opinion. #

• There’s no such thing as a universal remedy. Even a “good” thing isn’t good for all people under all circumstances. #

• I like to keep my opinions loosely held. I entertain thoughts without accepting them. From time to time I even flirt with hypocrisy: I believe one thing, but I do the other. If I find myself being hypocritical, I take that as a sign that my mind might be changing—and that’s a good thing for a mind to do from time to time. The more loosely attached I am to my beliefs—which is precisely what meditation teaches—the more likely I am to change my mind. #

• We follow narratives, not evidence. We judge the message by the tribal affiliation of the speaker. We accept information endorsed by our tribe without investigating it or thinking it through for ourselves. Conversely, we reject information from competing sources regardless of its quality. #

• Be careful if you find yourself in a place where only acceptable truths are allowed. Taboos are a sign of insecurity. Only fragile castles need to be protected by the highest of walls. The best answers are discovered not by eliminating competing answers, but by engaging with them. And engagement happens in groups built, not on taboos and dogma, but on a foundation that celebrates diverse thinking. #

• Sawubona doesn’t involve any grand gestures. It means becoming curious about someone else’s view without trying to convert them to our own. It means engaging with others even when we don’t endorse all their actions. It means resisting attempts to slice and dice us into groups and subgroups. It means reminding ourselves that beauty thrives in diversity—including diversity of thought. It means seeing difference as a curious delight to learn from instead of a problem to be fixed. #

• And then the message hit me: When we operate at a fraction—at a 0.8 or a 0.2 instead of a full 1.0—we compromise the output. Most of us go through life functioning at a fraction in everything we do. We check email during Zoom meetings. We shove a sandwich into our mouth with one hand while scrolling through our phone with the other. We check our email before we get out of bed and continue to check it more times than we realize (for the average American, the daily number is 74).6 On average, Slack users check their messages every five minutes—fragmenting their attention at an absurdly high rate. The irony of Slack is that it prevents people from having any. #

• Your most scarce resource isn’t your time or money. It’s your attention. There’s a reason why we call it paying attention. Treat it like you would your money (because it’s more important than money). Save it, invest it, and spend it where it matters most. And remember: Today’s “free” services—like social media—aren’t free at all. You’re paying a fortune in terms of fragmented attention and lost focus. #

• Not just deep work, in Cal Newport’s memorable phrase. But deep play. Deep rest. Deep listening. Deep reading. Deep love. Deep everything. #

• There must be intention to your attention and purpose to your focus. Often we operate impulsively, moving from one notification to the next, one email to the next, living our lives in a frantic blur. But if you slow down for just a moment and intentionally give your full attention to what you’ll do next, you’ll trigger an internal defibrillator that can jolt you back to life and bring you closer to your full capacity. It’s like the way a great leader might shake your hand and greet you. Hello, activity. It’s great to meet you. I’m choosing to engage with you. I’m going to treat you like you’re the most important person in the room and ignore everyone else. #

• 0.8 * 0.2 = 0.16. There’s now a Post-it note on my desk with that equation. It serves as a constant reminder to live deep instead of operating at a fraction of my capacity. #

• Consider these eye-opening statistics. The average person spent 145 minutes per day on social media in 2021.11 The average adult reads 200 to 260 words per minute.12 The average book is roughly 90,000 words. If the average adult read books instead of using social media, they would read anywhere from 118 to 153 books a year. #

• How would you like to spend your limited time here on Earth? Do you want to look back on your life and realize that you spent huge chunks of it keeping up with the Kardashians? Or do you want to focus on what matters and create art that you’re proud of? #

• “How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.” #

• Here’s the thing: Something, somewhere is wrong all the time. So let some emails go unanswered. Let some people complain. Let some opportunities slip by. It’s only by letting the little bad things happen that you can accomplish the great things. #

• One of the biggest lies we’ve been told is that productivity is all about doing. But your best work will come from undoing—from slowing down and giving yourself time and space. #

• Humans also have seasons. In some seasons, it’s time to act. In others, we’re better off easing up, stepping back, and allowing space for the water to be absorbed. The artist Corita Kent, during one of her dormant periods, would sit idle and watch a maple tree grow outside her window. “I feel that great new things are happening very quietly inside of me,” she said. “And I know these things have a way, like the maple tree, of finally bursting out in some form.” #

• I spent much of middle school assuming that I was missing some belonging chip that came preinstalled in everyone else. I could talk for hours about sci-fi books or HTML programming, but I had never played tennis or heard of Prada. Fashion sense—or even basic color coordination—didn’t come naturally to me. I had an admittedly lowbrow taste in music and preferred the catchy tunes of Ace of Base over the infinitely more popular Nirvana. #

• Trying to fit in makes it harder to belong. As Brené Brown describes it, “Belonging is being accepted for you. Fitting in is being accepted for being like everyone else. If I get to be me, I belong. If I have to be like you, I fit in.”1 #

• Becoming extraordinary requires becoming more like yourself. When you do that, you become a magnet that attracts some people with the same force that repels others. You can’t be liked by all and disliked by none. If you aim for that unachievable objective, you’ll only reduce the force of your magnet—the very source of your strength. The only way to attract people who like purple is to show your purple. #

• Regaining control requires being intentional about what you do, instead of blindly copying what others are doing or mindlessly repeating what you’ve done in the past. And being intentional requires knowing why you’re doing what you’re doing. #

• Instead of copying tools, tactics, and recipes, master the principle behind them. Once you know what the principle is—once you know the why behind the tactic—you can create your own extraordinary how. #

• Here are some questions to consider. What makes you you? What are some of the consistent themes across your life? What feels like play to you—but work to others? What is something that you don’t even consider a skill—but other people do? If you asked your best friend or partner, what would they say is your superpower—the thing that you can do better than the average person? #

• Your first principles as a person are often the qualities you suppress the most—because they make you different from others. #

• We’re taught to show only one part of ourselves—one dimension, one personality, and one profession. Hence the cliché questions, “What will you be when you grow up?” or “What do you do for a living?” The underlying implication is clear: You are defined by what you do—you’re a doctor, a lawyer, or an engineer—and what you do is a single, static thing. If your identity is bound up with your profession, what happens if you lose your job—or decide you don’t want to do it anymore? What happens when that specialty you’ve spent a lifetime perfecting becomes obsolete? #

• The only escape, the only path to genuine resilience, is through diversity. Treat yourself like your financial investments and hedge your bets. Once you’ve figured out your first principles, mix and remix them. Pursue multiple interests. Diversify yourself. If you have a diversity of traits and skills that you can recombine and repurpose, you’ll enjoy an extraordinary advantage to evolve with the future. #

• “To create,” as François Jacob said, “is to recombine.”24 #

• When diversifying, the more unusual the combination, the greater the potential value. It’s certainly helpful for a singer to learn to dance, but there’s nothing distinct or unusual in that mix. Rarer combinations, however, lead to unexpected benefits. A doctor who can code. A contractor with a flair for public speaking. An engineer who knows the law. A football player who performs ballet, as Heisman Trophy winner Herschel Walker did.27 When people call you a contradiction in terms—too complex to categorize—you’ll know you’re on the right track. #

• “Don’t ask what the world needs,” as Howard Thurman says. “Ask yourself what makes you come alive, and go do that because what the world needs is people who have come alive.” #

• To figure out what brings you alive and what leaves you depleted, keep an energy journal. Track when you feel engaged and enthusiastic—and when you feel bored and restless. Follow the subtle signals from your body—when it relaxes and expands, when it tightens and contracts. The more specific your observations, the better (“When I was answering emails this afternoon, I noticed I was clenching my gut”). Sometimes you can’t explain why you love something, but you know that it warms you and delights you. #

• If you pursue only happiness, you won’t ever leave your comfort zone. Because stepping outside your comfort zone is, by definition, uncomfortable. #

• As long as you enjoy the journey—and as long as you create art you’re proud of—who cares if you don’t reach your destination? You’ve already won. #

• If there’s any formula I’ve followed in my life, it’s this: Stop overthinking and start experimenting, learning, and improving. Experimenting beats debating. Action is the best teacher. #

• There’s a famous saying attributed to Peter Drucker: “What gets measured gets managed.” The principle makes sense on the surface: It’s only when you quantify outcomes that you can see whether your actions move the needle toward those outcomes. But what gets measured doesn’t just get managed. What gets measured also gets our attention and alters our behavior.12 And if you’re not careful, numbers can replace thinking. They can become the thing. #

• Once you’ve decided what you want from life, go off-menu. Ask for it. Create it. Because the best things in life aren’t on the menu. #

• It’s easy to lose ourselves in the tide of shoulds. When I find myself using the word should, what I’m about to do is usually unaligned with me. I’m being steered by someone else’s expectations instead of looking to my internal compass for guidance. #

• Instead of saying, “I should…,” say, “I get to…” or “I want to…” or“I’m privileged to.…” But if it doesn’t belong to you—if it’s constraining your thinking, limiting your potential, or holding you back from the life you want to live—let it go. #

• And a closed door isn’t necessarily a locked door. Sometimes you just have to push. #

• “She’s going through a midlife crisis,” they’ll say. “It’s not a midlife crisis,” you’ll respond. “It’s a midlife blossoming.” #

• We regurgitate what we hear from sources that pop up on our algorithm-manipulated feeds. We retweet what the Gordon Woods of the world say without pausing and reflecting. We infuse so much external junk into our internal world that it becomes hard to know where other people’s thoughts end and ours begin. #

• Thinking for yourself isn’t just about reducing external inputs, in the ways that I described in the Detox chapter. It’s about making thought a deliberate practice—and thinking about an issue before researching it. It’s about unlearning the habit—programmed into us in school—of immediately looking to others for answers and instead becoming curious about our own thoughts. #

• I find it helpful to move outside of the room where I normally write—which is associated with the same old thought patterns—to different parts of my house. The shift in location brings a shift in perspective and creates a blank space onto which I can project new ideas. #

• Confirmation bias often looks like scientific data collection. But instead of looking for data that refute our hypothesis, we fish for support. We collect data that support only our side. We cook the books and rig the trial so we can win—often without realizing it. #

• “To disagree silently is disloyal,” as the now-reformed Hastings puts it. #

• Above all, stop fishing for support. And start farming for dissent. #

• Just a little play infused into the workday can make all the difference. A short funny movie to start a meeting. A quick game to kick off a brainstorming session and put people in a playful mindset. The positive use of humor to relieve workplace tension. #

• you keep doing what’s “productive,” you’ll stick to the familiar. To find unfamiliar insights, follow the trail of curiosity to unfamiliar places. #

• The lesson is simple: Sometimes the best way to find a solution to your problem is to solve someone else’s—to drop The Office and pick up Entourage or to drop your guitar and pick up the mandolin. #

• So instead of calling my room an office, I started calling it an idea lab. An idea lab is where innovative ideas are born. An idea lab involves experimentation. An idea lab is for daydreaming. I love my idea lab (and I hated my office). You might be wondering: What’s in a name? Who cares what a room is called? Names matter, much more than you might assume. This is called priming.19 Mere exposure to a word or an image can have a powerful influence on your thinking. And the importance of naming extends far beyond your office. #

• Don’t call it a status meeting. Call it something that inspires the attendees to show up in a way that will move the needle—a visioning lab, a collaboration cave, or an idea incubator. #

• Instead, follow the lead of Brasilata, a can-manufacturing firm that’s at the forefront of innovation in Brazil.20 There are no employees at Brasilata. There are only inventors, the title given to all staff. When they join the firm, the inventors sign an “innovation contract.” Brasilata then reinforces these names by actively encouraging its employees—sorry, inventors—to take ownership of their work and submit original ideas. If you want unconventional results, pick an unconventional name. Find your own words that ignite your imagination and prime you for what you’re trying to achieve. #

• Let me repeat that: What you don’t know can set you apart from others. Beginners don’t have a muscle memory. Too much knowledge can hamper your imagination by focusing your attention on how things are rather than how they could be. As Kevin Kelly, founding executive editor of Wired, says, imagination is “the one skill in life that benefits from ignoring what everyone else knows.” #

• Philip Glass, one of the most influential composers of the 20th century, would agree. “If you don’t know what to do,” he says, “there’s actually a chance of doing something new. As long as you know what you’re doing, nothing much of interest is going to happen.” #

• The moral of the story? You are a terrible judge of your own ideas. You’re too close to them to evaluate them objectively. This happens to me often. I publish an article that I think is brilliant, and it gets crickets. I publish an article that I think only states the obvious, and it goes viral. #

• Today the Semmelweis reflex refers to the instinctive rejection of ideas that buck the status quo. The names differ, but the narrative is the same. The step was a first, the road was new, the vision their own, and the response received: rejection and backlash. #

• So, yes, you will be misunderstood. They will attack you, insult you, and drag your good name through the mud. When that happens, do what Elizabeth Gilbert advises: “Just smile sweetly and suggest—as politely as you possibly can—that they go make their own fucking art. Then stubbornly continue making yours.” #

• Ross knew what most of us neglect: Mistakes are intrinsic to creation. If you’re not making mistakes, you’re playing it too safe. You’re not aiming high enough or moving fast enough. #

• And we don’t all start from the same place. Privilege, opportunity, and luck combine to give some people a head start or a Mario Kart–type rocket boost. This isn’t an excuse for failing to try or for giving up. It’s simply an acknowledgment of reality—that you might run the same distance at the same speed as someone else but still remain behind them. In life, there’s no one-size-fits-all timeline. “It’s never too late to be who you might have been,” as George Eliot purportedly said. So honor where you are right now and how far you’ve already come. #

• And the 10 percent figure about the brain “is so wrong it is almost laughable,” notes neurologist Barry Gordon. Over the course of a day we use virtually 100 percent of our brains. #

• Correlation doesn’t sell newspapers. Confidence does. Sensational headlines draw more clicks and retweets. In a world that demands instant gratification, we just want the conclusion, the life hack, the silver bullet—without the nuances that complicate, well, everything. Instead of explaining the nuances and limitations of the study, the media doled out prescriptive advice: Eat breakfast or risk heart disease. #

• “Science,” Feynman said in a 1966 address, “is the belief in the ignorance of experts.”32 He warned of the “danger of belief in the infallibility of the greatest teachers of the preceding generation.” #

• Instead of asking, “Does anyone have any questions?,” I began to say, “I’ll now take your questions,” or even better, “The material we just covered was confusing, and I’m confident there are plenty of you with questions. This is a great time to ask them.” The number of hands that went up increased dramatically. #

• If you ask a team member, “Are you facing any challenges?,” most will say no. They might fear that their admission will be seen as a weakness. You’re more likely to get an honest response if you ask: “What challenges are you facing right now?” That question presumes that challenges are the norm, not the exception. #

• Werner Heisenberg, the brains behind the uncertainty principle in quantum mechanics, had it right: “What we observe is not nature itself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning.”34 When we reframe a question—when we change our method of questioning—we also change the outcome. #

• Talent hits a target no one else can hit, but genius hits a target no one else can see, to paraphrase the philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer. #

• Think for yourself, or others will think for you without thinking of you. —UNKNOWN #

• We often don’t even have to decide what to consume next. Our streaming services take that burden off our shoulders by automatically queuing up a new show that the algorithms think we’ll love. Hello, Indian Matchmaking. These algorithms don’t care about quality. They only care about your attention—getting it and retaining it. #

• But popular doesn’t mean better. Popular simply means the majority prefers that thing over something else. In many cases, it’s not even the majority that determines what’s popular. Publishers predetermine which books have a good chance of success before they hit the stands, spend marketing dollars on those books, and make sure they’re displayed front and center in your local bookstore. #

• The result is a vicious cycle. “Best sellers sell the best because they are best sellers,” as journalist Alexandra Alter puts it.6 #

• To paraphrase Haruki Murakami, if you consume what everyone else is consuming, you’ll think what everyone else is thinking. #

• If you speak your truth—if you share what you really see, feel, and think—it will be uniquely yours. #

• Looking backward also means rereading books you’ve read in the past. Rereading is not a waste of time. Every time I return to a book, it’s a new person reading it. The book hasn’t changed. But I have changed. I pick up on subtleties that I missed the first time around, and ideas become relevant because of where I am now in life. #

• The best-selling low-carb diet book author shoves his face with foods that make your cheat meals look healthy. (I’ve seen this firsthand numerous times.) The famous productivity guru wastes an hour every day scrolling through social media. #

• In fact, the more unique your life is, the more comparison loses its meaning. If you crave what others also crave, you’re more likely to get caught up in a rat race. #