Counterintuitive Lessons Non-Conformity With Adam Grant

“I walked in thinking that to be an original person in the world, to drive conformity and drive change, you had to be four things. I thought you had to be a risk taker, full of confidence, full of great ideas and a first mover. And I discovered that all those things are wrong, not only wrong, but backward. It turns out that most of the original people in the world, whether you’re looking at Nobel Prize winning scientists, successful entrepreneurs, creative musicians and artist have these opposite traits in common. They’re pretty risk averse, they’re not dare devils, they’re cautious, they feel the same doubt and fear that the rest of us do, they just harness it as motivation instead of being paralyzed by it.

• They have bad ideas, in fact they have more bad ideas than the rest of us, in fact that’s how they get to some true originality.
• They generate enough volume to generate originality. And they’re not first movers, they’re procrastinators.
• They start things early but they are deliberately slow to finish because they know good ideas often take time to develop. -Adam Grant.

Listen to the Full Episode on The Unmistakable Creative Podcast