Actually, The Opposite Is Nearer The Truth
“There is a general assumption,” Eric Hoffer writes, “that brilliant people cannot stand routine; that they need a varied, exciting life in order to do their best…Actually, there is no evidence that people who achieve much crave for, let alone live, eventful lives. The opposite is nearer the truth.” Socrates was a stonemason. Einstein worked out the theory of relativity while working a desk job at a patent office. Immanuel Kant’s neighbors set their clocks by his unalterably routine walks. Instead of variety or excitement, to do their best, people need things like concentration, imagination, and the capacity to sit with their thoughts, resist distraction, and “thrive on dull routine,” Hoffer writes. “[Those] without those inner resources go in search of stimulating events, excitement, and novelty to stave off boredom.” Some general assumptions in which the opposite is nearer the truth—that’s the theme of this SIX at 6…
The More You Aim, The More You Miss
Viktor Frankl wrote dozens of books, but only one, Man’s Search For Meaning, was not aimed at commercial success. Frankl wrote Man’s Search For Meaning and published it anonymously. “And so it is both strange and remarkable to me,” Frankl wrote, that it became his most well-known and influential work. For the rest of his life, Frankl would share what the book’s unintended outcome taught him: “Don’t aim at success—the more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue…In the long run—in the long run, I say!—success will follow you precisely because you had forgotten to think about it.”
The More You Add, The Smaller It Gets
On the very first album Rubin produced, the credit he took was, “reduced by Rick Rubin,” instead of, “produced by Rick Rubin.” “I like to get to the essential,” Rubin explained. “There’s a sonic benefit: the less elements you have, the more space there is to hear the elements that are there, so they sound better.” So he likes to strip things down to their core elements. In a video of Jay-Z and Rick Rubin in the studio working on “99 Problems,” for instance, you can see the moment Rubin suggests the a cappella opening. “Often,” Rubin says, “when you add layers to try to make something seem bigger, it does the opposite: the more things you add, the smaller it gets.”
When You Rest, The Brain RESTs
In scientific studies, researchers often divide participants into an experimental group that receives the treatment or performs the task being studied, compared against a control group that does not receive the treatment or perform the task. For decades, brain imaging studies were designed with a general assumption that the brain was inactive during periods of rest. This led to the common practice of having the control group simply lie down and rest, which was assumed to put participants in a state of minimal brain activity. Then in 1995, as she was designing her first brain-imaging study, the neuroscientist Dr. Nancy Andreasen considered that the opposite might be nearer the truth. She conducted the first study of brain activity during these “free-floating periods of thought,” when the body is in a “resting state” and the mind is free of inputs, and therefore, free to wander. “We found activations in multiple regions of the association cortex,” Dr. Andreasen wrote. “We were not [seeing] a passive silent brain during the ‘resting state,’ but rather a brain that was actively connecting thoughts and experiences.” Essentially, Dr. Andreasen found that the brain defaults to creativity. When the body is still, the brain is the opposite: it engages in what Dr. Andreasen termed REST (“random episodic silent thinking”). And during REST, the brain “uses its most human and complex parts…areas known to gather information and link it all together—in potentially novel ways.”
Deciding What Not To Do
After Steve Jobs was fired from Apple in 1985, the new leadership’s general assumption was that more products across more industries would generate more profits. Actually, it sent Apple into a financial free fall. Close to bankruptcy, after a $708 million loss in the first quarter of 1997 alone, Steve Jobs was rehired as the CEO. During one of his first staff meetings, he walked up to a whiteboard. Apple had 40 products on the market. More important than deciding what to do is deciding what not to do, Jobs said. “That’s true for companies, and it’s true for products.” He then drew a 2 x 2 grid. On top, he wrote “Consumer” and “Professional.” Down the side, “Portable” and “Desktop.” Four products—meet Apple’s new radically focused product line, Jobs said. After Jobs returned, he and his team—focused on making fewer products in fewer markets—transformed a dying, near-bankrupt company into one of the most valuable companies in the world, worth over $2.9 trillion.
The Equations Most People Don’t Know
“He knew the equations that most people didn’t know: Things lead to their opposites,” Steve Jobs’ daughter later said. “He believed that great harvests came from arid sources, pleasure from restraint.” An active mind from a dull routine. Success from not aiming at it. Deciding what to do from deciding what not to do. The search for stimulating events from the lack of inner resources. The opposite is often nearer the truth.