It’s hard to come up with any truly new ideas today, as most of the best new ideas are merely the combination of existing ideas — but that’s a good thing.
In a recent podcast with Adam Grant, author James Clear (author of Atomic Habits) summarized his work in that way:
I haven’t had someone tell me this before, but you just said that I was good at reframing ideas. But that actually might be the only value that I really provide. I mean, the truth is most things that have been covered many times before. I mean, there’s 8 billion people in the world and there’s 100 billion that have lived before us. All this stuff is very well trod ground. It’s very rare that you come across something genuinely new. But maybe I can give somebody a new angle on it, or maybe I can provide clarity to the thought where if someone says, “oh, you know, like I’d never quite heard it put that way before.”
This reminded of a quote I just head in Steve Jobs’ new book “Make Something Wonderful”.
(side note; his new book is a compilation of quotes are stories about him, assembled by his wife and friends, and is 100% free to download and read in a variety of formats)
Steve said:
Be a creative person. Creativity equals connecting previously unrelated experiences and insights that others don’t see. You have to have them to connect them. Creative people feel guilty that they are simply relaying what they “see.” How do you get a more diverse set of experiences? Not by traveling the same path as everyone else.
Steve points to two things in there.
First, he mentions “not traveling the same path as everyone else“, which was certainly something he lived by. However, it was the earlier part of the quote that stood out to me: “Creativity equals connecting previously unrelated experiences and insights that others don’t see.”
That’s part of what I’m trying to do here. I don’t do a great job of it yet, but this post today is a good example of what I’m trying to do; I combined a 27-year-old quote from Steve Jobs with a snipped I heard on a podcast that was produced last week.
In this case they were mostly complementary quotes, and not a collision of thoughts that lead to a new idea, but the concept is the same. The more thoughts and ideas you open your mind to, the greater the chance you’ll find unique ways to see the world, and perhaps make a difference as a result of it.
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