5 Powerful Ways Blogging Can Make You A Genius
Genius is connected to natural genes, but that doesn’t mean it cannot be built.
From education to politics to business and lifestyle, the snowballing importance of blogging in today’s digital world emphasizes how really important bloggers are. Anyway you slice it, bloggers are ‘thinkers’ who play a key role in changing our world through creativity and innovation.
However, can blogging make you a genius?
My answer is yes — and this article is here to demystify that position.
First, who’s a genius?
Different people have defined the term “genius” in different ways. Summed up, the central meaning points at someone with exceptional intelligence and the capacity to produce unconventional and unique results.
However, it’s not true –especially in today’s word– that geniuses only come from the science world. According to Kacey Deamer of Live Science, a genius could come from any field. In the Athletics, an Olympic medallist could be regarded as a genius. In entertainment, a genius could be an EGOT winner (i.e. someone who has won an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony award). These fields aside, a child prodigy who plays at Carnegie Hall at the age of 10 could be considered one as well.
The bottom line is, geniuses are people who have produced astounding accomplishments in a given field.
In this regard, does blogging make you a genius?
Let’s look at these posers in the following points, focusing primarily on how blogging can make you a genius.
- Curiosity
Have you ever asked yourself how geniuses find the talent? Elbert Einstein has an answer. The icon whose name has become synonymous with “genius” once said, “I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious.”
You could see, clearly from that declaration, that if one thing is the default source of genius, it’s insatiable curiosity. As a deep internal impulse, geniuses ride on it to inquire at a higher level, come up with unbelievable ideas to solve problems and then communicate the processes and results to the world.
Meanwhile, you don’t have to be a genius to be curious. You rather need to be curious to be a genius. On this, Pontish Yeramyan says “we all have seeds of genius in us,” noting that curiosity is a natural gift everyone can sharpen. Fortunately, blogging piques curiosity like oxygen helps a fire burn.
How a blogger gets curios, foremost by asking the questions of what, why, how, and such like, then turns the readers similarly curious, and satisfy the entire curiosity in a blog post (or series of it) is a great way to becoming a genius — at least in a chosen niche.
2. Nonconformity
Genius entails not only curiosity but also nonconformity. When you’re curios, you question conventional wisdom. You ask questions and then question the answers — to achieve what seems impossible.
Like genius, blogging makes you think out of the box. It makes you challenge current rules or even ask why certain rules exist. In this vein, a veteran blogger is a master of new and unique perspectives that offer new solutions to an array of problems.
For instance, the “starving artists” myth has been around for centuries. You may not know: the myth makes us believe that artists, no matter how talented, are less likely to succeed. And rarely do you see people dispute this fallacy until recent times. Isn’t that amazing?
Jeff Goins, a renowned blogger and writer, dismantles this myth in his new book “Real Artists Don’t Starve.” Jeff argues, in part, “While the Starving Artist despises the need for money, the Thriving Artist makes money to make more arts.”
In this case, the likes of Jeff are a genius.
3. Creativity
No one is a genius without being creative. The National Geographic tells us that “scientific breakthroughs like Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection would be impossible without creativity.” Similarly, Live Science concludes that there cannot be genius without extreme creativity.
When inventive ideas hit you out of nowhere, you need curiosity to fully discover it, but creativity to develop and express it. As this is the case in the world of genius, so it is in the blogosphere.
If you agree that creativity is a genius that can be learned and nurtured, then it becomes true that blogging is a way to go! “Many of our greatest artists and scientists demonstrated brilliance only after honing their craft through thousands of hours of practice and study,” argues Melanie Pinola while explaining the quote, “Geniuses are made, not born.”
4. Productivity
Actually, productivity is about efficiency. The ability to work proficiently and produce more output. While this is mostly related to physical power; however, productivity in the case of genius is rooted in brainpower — productive thinking.
If you wonder why geniuses are matchless, here’s another reason.
Michael Michalko explains how geniuses think. According to the creativity expert, geniuses think productively, not reproductively. What does this mean?
Put simply, a genius would ask himself, at a moment of problem, “How can I rethink the way I see this?” and ask again, “How many different ways can I solve it?” These are distinctively adroit approaches that enable geniuses to produce efficient plus outstanding results.
On the other hand, “What have I been taught on how to solve this?” is what comes to a lay mind. And what? This is why most solutions out there are the same and less productive.
These two categories exist in blogging. But those who combine productive thinking with productive efforts are the only celebrated geeks.
5. Simplicity
I mean, by simplicity, the ability to break an array of complex issues into the simplest possible form while conveying its explanation in simple, enjoyable terms yet again.
This is the hallmark of genius. “The definition of genius is taking the complex and making it simple,” says, again, Albert Einstein.
If you’re familiar with blogging, then you already know that lucidity rules the web game. But if you’re not, what every successful blogger would tell you about the art is, “Be genuine and simple.” That’s how to figure out and own yourself — an act of genius.
Blogging Can Make You a Genius
Genius is connected to natural genes, but that doesn’t mean it cannot be built. In fact, Scott Barry Kaufman, in his popular article, entitled, “Geniuses Are Made, Not Born,” concludes that all traits are developed — no exceptions.
Blogging is a viable cerebral exercise, which does not only nurture the gift. It can also make a genius of a consistent blogger who puts the aforementioned exercises into daily practice.
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Shakir Akorede is a writer, digital entrepreneur, agenda contributor to the World Economic Forum, and founder of 501 Words. You can connect with him on Twitter.
