Never Rely On The Description
Rick Rubin was asked what he’s learned through making a lot of different kinds of music with a lot of different kinds of artists. “One thing is,” Rubin said, “never try to judge an idea based on the description of the idea. Always musically try the idea.” He explained, “An artist will say, ‘I have an idea, we can write the bridge like this,’ and they’ll give me a description of their idea, and it sounds terrible—the description sounds terrible. And I say, ‘Great, can’t wait to hear it.’ And then they do it, and it’s incredible…so we never rely on the description. It’s always, ‘show it to me. Let me hear it.’” The gap between ideas in theory and in reality—that is what this SIX at 6 is about.
A Hip-Hop Musical About A Founding Father
In 2009, Lin-Manuel Miranda was invited to perform at the White House. His musical In The Heights had just won a Grammy and 4 Tony Awards. So the White House was expecting him to perform something from Heights. Instead, he debuted a song from a rap album he’d been working on. Miranda described his idea as a “concept album about the life of someone I think embodies hip-hop…Treasury Secretary, Alexander Hamilton.” The crowd laughed at the description of his idea. Miranda later said that this became the typical response—when he described his idea to make a hip-hop musical about a founding father, people always laughed. And since he worked on the idea for 8 years, Miranda said, “I had a lot of people look at me like I was crazy for a very long time.” But eventually, Miranda didn’t have to rely on the description of his idea. Eventually, he got to show people Hamilton, a musical that earned 11 Tony awards, the 2016 Grammy Award for Best Musical Theater Album, the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, the 2017 Billboard Music Award for Top Soundtrack, and the number eight spot on Rolling Stone’s 50 Best Albums of 2015.
See Beyond What You’re Used To
In 1981, a Disney hand-drawn animator named John Lasseter saw computer-generated animation for the first time. “I was blown away by it,” Lasseter writes. “Not by what I was seeing, but the potential I saw in it.” Lasseter decided he wanted to make the first-ever computer-animated feature film. He pitched Disney’s studio heads on the idea and shortly after hearing the description of the idea, Disney’s President & CEO Ron Miller called Lasseter into his office. “Your position at Disney is terminated,” Miller told Lasseter, “and your employment with Disney is now ended.” “Computer animation wasn’t being used for much at the time,” Lasseter explains, and his bosses couldn’t see the potential he saw in it. “It’s interesting,” he adds, “how people cannot see beyond what they’re used to.” So after he was fired, Lasseter attended a computer graphics conference where he met Ed Catmull, soon to become the President of Pixar. Like Lasseter, Catmull had dreams of making the first computer-animated feature film. He hired Lasseter, and they set out to make the first computer-animated feature film, Toy Story. Released in 1994, Toy Story was a critical and commercial sensation. When people no longer had to rely on the description of his idea, when they got to see beyond what they were used to, Lasseter writes, “Overnight the opinion [of computer animation] changed.”
In The Excursion, You Learn To Know Yourself
So far, I’ve used examples where the idea was better in reality than in theory. The reverse can also be true. For years, William James loved the idea of being a naturalist. He loved reading about the great naturalists throughout history. He traveled to attend lectures by the great naturalists of his time. And he idolized the internationally celebrated naturalist Louis Agassiz. But then, in 1865, James went on his first excursion. Agassiz was recruiting volunteers to join him on an expedition to Brazil. James was selected to go on an expedition with the greatest living naturalist—it was the opportunity of his lifetime. “W.J.” James wrote in his journal, “in this excursion, you will learn to know yourself and your resources more intimately than you do now, and will come back with your character considerably evolved and established.” Twelve days later, James was with Agassiz somewhere in the Brazilian wild. “My coming was a mistake,” James wrote to his family a few days later. Fleas, mosquitoes, ringworm, violent itching, uncomfortable sleeping quarters, and tasks that seemed meaningless—“I am now certain that my forte is not to go on exploring expeditions,” he wrote. “I am convinced now, for good, that I am cut out for a speculative rather than an active life.” “When I get home I’m going to study philosophy all my days.”
In Practice, Not In Theory
After studying people who have made career switches, the organizational behavior researcher Herminia Ibarra concluded that the only way to figure out what kinds of things you are “cut out for,” as James put it, is by doing them, as James learned. Invert the old maxim, Ibarra says: “First act and then think…We discover the possibilities by doing, by trying.” As David Epstein sums up Ibarra’s research in Range, “We learn who we are in practice, not in theory.” We learn whether an idea is incredible or terrible when we put it into practice, not when we talk about it in theory. We learn to know ourselves and our resources more intimately in the excursion, as James said, than in the reading of excursions.
“That Won’t Work” Is The Worst Thing You Can Ever Say
When he first had the idea for a song about a fictitious guy who builds a submarine, John Mayer thought to himself, “I’ve never been a third-person sort of narrative writer, ever.” But he couldn’t stop thinking about the idea, so eventually, he decided to discover the possibility of being a third-person sort of narrative writer by doing, by trying. And he created what is my favorite John Mayer song, Walt Grace’s Submarine Test, January 1967. Mayer said it taught him this: “Don’t shoot ideas down before you try them. ‘That won’t work’ is the worst thing you can ever say. ‘That didn’t work’ is cool, but ‘That won’t work’ is not a way to go through life.”