How I learned to stop worrying and love the Linkybrain
Someone recently told me that I had joined a cult, This was a concerning accusation as I’m relatively anti cult (Mormons seem pretty harmless) so I took a second to consider this declaration. What had most likely prompted this was the recent addition to the business lexicon of the term “linky” or “linkybrain” and my adoption of this moniker as part of my LinkedIn title.
I think what they meant was I’ve been swept up in a wave of personality and excitement and now I was a thoughtless drone waiting for the next tomes of wisdom to be handed down from our bandanna wearing overlord (you know who you are) but this all needs a little more context before you get the accusatory finger out and start waving it around.
I’m not normal, I fully admit and understand that. Now we could have a long protracted debate around what “normal” is but that’s a conversation for another day. Likely if you find yourself reading this its either because you have feelings of being abnormal in the brain department or you are a journalist trying to get an angle on this emerging phenomenon. I suggest as a primer by starting with Chris Tottman’s excellent questionnaire on the topic
https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-indicators-of-a-linky-brain
Now onto the meat of the matter (not sure that sounds right)
I spent years being ashamed of my brain, I left school completely unqualified and through a string of short lived jobs I started to genuinely fear my own inability to concentrate as my peers somehow did. I knew I wasn’t stupid and I was capable of complex and abstract thought but I watched titans of industry and corporate CEO’s with envy as they seemed to have the focus and dedication I could never muster. I was capable of hyper focus on tasks and could lose myself for hours in an idea or concept that most would find mundane or bizarre but none of this seemed to apply to my professional life.
My parents and friends were constantly exasperated by my inability to settle down and find a career track and my employers were faced with the unenviable task of trying to create a functional employee from someone constantly questioning convention and seeking new ways to do old jobs.
To give you some idea here is a selection of the roles I tried out:
- T-Shirt company owner – making my own designs was great but selling sucks
- Sales Representative – enjoyable for a short time but bored of it quickly
- Coffee Roaster – fascinating but lacked new challenges
- Motion Graphic artist – fun but I wanted to engage in the client process
- Concept Artist – short lived (this one was actually outside of my control)
- Mountaineering guide – high risk (good) dealing with tourists (not good)
- Helicopter operations – Hurry up and wait (waiting for weather)
- Gold miner – This one would have been a long term gig if there had been gold
- TV news camera operator – journalists are so very stupid
- TV news editor – high paced (good) journalists again (not good)
- Gunsmith – initially fun but repetitive as the boss kept all the good jobs
- Astronomy Guide – great until I got comfortable and the questions got easy
- Research & Development Manager – research is great but funding is a pain
- VR company owner – Autonomy! followed by the pain of funding it….
Its around the time of working in the Astronomical space that I started to realise something was fundamentally wrong, I had spent years angry at myself but this time I didn’t blame my brain. I was angry at the worlds inability to find value in what I was desperate to offer.
I started to realise the pattern was wrong. I had great ideas, I had motivation and I had passion and every job advert claimed to be looking for these factors but once I was actually in the job it quickly became apparent that those were just buzz words and my innate desire to explore and debate to find new high ground was not just unwanted but was actively discouraged. I was even turned down by the New Zealand Army officer selection board after acing all of the tests for being “too independent” (although the NZ SAS recruiters hounded me for a year afterwards…think of that what you may)
I could go on and on but its really only in the last year that I’ve started to consciously see my brain as an asset and not a curse. 2017 was a huge year for revelations and in part I have to thank Chris Tottman for sitting down with me and talking through the mental aspects of entrepreneurship. It was fascinating timing as I was just starting to put together the terminology for my brain type (“generalist specialist” was the best I could muster) and along comes a man by the name of Doug who suddenly is describing all of the phenomena I’ve been trying to get into a cogent form.
If any of this sounds like you then jump on the website linkybrains.com and find a meetup in your part of the world. If stability is death, consistency is pain and singular “focus” is like trying to see a magic eye picture whilst someone is trying to poke one of your eyes out then come join the conversation.
Long story short I haven’t joined a cult and I’ll take on anyone who declares Linkybrain to be a cult. Cults tell you how to think and what to conclude, Linkybrain is the realisation that the outliers and brilliant but scattered people are everywhere and its time to think about how we value their power.
