"By the Book" Rarely Writes a New Chapter

It's no secret that data is big. Decisions are made and projects are quashed because the numbers don't add up.

But can we rely too much on metrics? Bruce Feiler, "United States of Metrics:"

Nassim Nicholas Taleb, the statistician and former options trader who wrote the best-selling book “The Black Swan,” about unexpected events, said he believes the current obsession with metrics is a seductive trap.

'The evil here is not having metrics,' he said. 'The problem is that you start trying to maximize every metric you have and reduce everything else.'

Mr. Taleb said he likes knowing how many kilograms of meat he’s buying, but if his meal is measured only by kilograms of meat and calories consumed, then dozens of other uncountable qualities, like the pleasure of the food or the quality of the conversation, go ignored.

Metrics should inform decisions, but for the decision maker they will never, alone, point to the best possible outcome, and certainly not to anything fundamentally new or innovative. That's because what's new and innovative is not fully knowable now. And if an ability to innovate or fundamentally change direction is important to you or your company, don't let anyone else tell you otherwise.

As a snapshot of the world, metrics by themselves cannot hope to match compression algorithm already in your mind, a mere 3.5 billion years in the making. Throw in an openness to experience, a widely read and well stocked attic and a tolerance for ambiguity, and that first-person thing called conscious thought already encodes for incredible possibility. That's because, unlike the numbers in a spreadsheet or model, the human mind knows the things that it knows. Its "uncountable qualities" add crucial information to the mix.

Rather than a class in statistical regression, perhaps a course in improvisation, theater or stand-up would be beneficial. Why? Like life, creative outcomes are always a work in progress. And that next step will always be a step into the unknown.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb, by the way, spoke at the IdeaFestival not long after the publication of The Black Swan.

Stay curious. 

Wayne

Image: Some rights reserved by out of ideas

Creative work is messy work. Embrace the suck.

In a post at Fast Company, Leo Babauta lists a number of ways to stop delaying and get the hard work done. Two of them apply directly to the hard work of creativity and innovation.

First, "Let go of your ideal."

If this fear were gone, you could just do the task easily. So what is causing the fear? Some ideal you have, some fantasy about life being free of discomfort, confusion, embarrassment, imperfection. That’s not reality, just fantasy, and it’s getting in your way by causing fear. So let go of the fantasy, the ideal, the expectation. And just embrace reality: this task before you, nothing else.

There's a reason why we don't call the IdeaFestival the "IdealFestival." Because creative work is new work, there will be times when fear threatens to shut done the whole creative process. Don't let it. If you're not making any mistakes, you're not trying hard enough. And if your idea is truly an original, no one can tell you NOW whether it will work or not. The key is work toward your idea by making little bets, which brings me to the second point.

"Embrace the suck."

Doing something hard sucks. It’s not easy, and often you’re confused about how to do it because you haven’t done it much before. So what? Hard things suck, but life isn’t always peaches with roses on top (and a sprinkle of cinnamon). It sucks sometimes, and that’s perfectly fine. Embrace all of life, thorns and pits and all. Life would be boring without the suck. So smile, embrace the suck, and get moving.

This is key. As Oliver Burkeman said so well last year, the idea that our default state ought to be a happy state gets in the way of actually being happy because it makes us suspicious of all the other emotions we will eventually feel. There are few things as harmful to creative work as an unwillingness to live in the moment. One can find meaning in the hard work by simply reminding oneself that if it were easy, anyone could do it.

Stay curious.

Wayne

Image: Some rights reserved by Alexandre Dulaunoy

IdeaFestival Recruited to Plan for Zombie Apocalypse

In case you were wondering, the United States has an action plan for the zombie apocalypse, according to the Foreign Policy magazine.

Buried on the military's secret computer network is an unclassified document, obtained by Foreign Policy, called 'CONOP 8888.' It's a zombie survival plan, a how-to guide for military planners trying to isolate the threat from a menu of the undead -- from chicken zombies to vegetarian zombies and even "evil magic zombies" -- and destroy them....

Navy Capt. Pamela Kunze, a spokeswoman for Strategic Command, acknowledged the document exists on a 'secure Internet site' but took pains to explain that the zombie survival guide is only a creative endeavor for training purposes. 'The document is identified as a training tool used in an in-house training exercise where students learn about the basic concepts of military plans and order development through a fictional training scenario,' she wrote in an email. 'This document is not a U.S. Strategic Command plan.'

The IdeaFestival was caught off guard recently when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reached out to gauge the festival's interest in becoming a designated civilian training and planning center, tasked, among other duties, with understanding the adaptability and spread of harmful viral and beneficial organisms, and calculating the probabilities for human survival the future undead world. The federal agency, curiously, also asked for our thoughts on Sheldon Cooper's roommate agreement as a model for relationship between antagonistic parties with limited emotional range, a definitive statement on whether John Travolta's role in Battlefield Earth could be called acting and what the prospects for a reunion of the Fantastic Four might be. It was a serious conversation.

The expertise of the IdeaFestival in developing "fictional training scenarios" has also been recognized at the highest levels of the United States government. A joint statement from the White House and Congress said, "because of their unmatched commitment to imagining an alternate future, we find that the IdeaFestival and its attendees are uniquely suited to rebuild and expand economies following the outbreak of this virus. The old rules simply no longer apply. We commend them for having the foresight to draw from business, from the arts and from the sciences to think about what the future may hold," adding, "help us Obi Wan Kanobi, you're our only hope."

All of this is, of course, absolutely true with the exception of the part about cooperation between the White House and Congress, which deny ever working together.

An announcement on the IdeaFestival's training day and time is forthcoming.

Stay Curious.

Wayne

Image: Some rights reserved by eliduke

Philippe Petit on Creativity: "The Perfect Crime"

Dubbed "the artistic crime of the century," Philippe Petit's smuggling of the equipment needed to string a wire between the two World Trade Towers in 1974, and the long walk in a high place that followed, electrified the world.

Many years later, in one of the more memorable IdeaFestival presentations, Petit eletrified the festival audience, talking about his life, problem solving, fear, how to make mistakes, the art of misdirection and, in the question and answer that followed, posted here, revealing details of a life singularly led.

Here are a few of the quotes from the talk that found their way to Twitter in 2010.

• 'We should have courses in intuition in university because it is a great force.'
• 'When I wire walk, I link two things with my wire that could possibly have been enemies and for a time are at peace.' - Brad Bigelow
• 'It's a joy to solve a problem. When you have a problem, don't look for solution, look at the problem. The answer is behind its face.' - Ellen McGirt
• 'Fear is a lack of knowledge.' - Ellen McGirt
• 'A ladder is two posts that has a festival of holes - think space, not rungs.' - Ellen McGirt
• 'We should not let fear fade the song of our soul.'
• 'We are born with the impossible in us.'

Reflecting a little more on Petit's forthcoming book, Creativity: The Perfect Crime, the "criminal" part of originality, I believe, may be its departure from strict human reason and logic, which can only take the would-be creative so far. Having been to many, many festival presentations, that departure is critically important to the kind of change any of us get, that in some sense creative outcomes, whether they be in the sciences, in the arts or in economic development, depend the willingness to entertain "the impossible in us." Yes, of course there are impossibilities. But sadly, too many of us settle for the certainties; the rules, as is often the case, are self-imposed.

Live a little bit longer with that idea of yours. If it's truly original, no one knows that now.

Stay curious.

You can read a little more about Petit in this NPR piece. His book, Creativity: The Perfect Crime, will be available May 15.

Wayne

"Positively Inhibited" Means "Yes," In Time

Looking for the right idea is a little like that promising first date. There's potential, but you also know from past experience that it pays to be choosy.

On the Edge of Chaos: Where Creativity Flourishes:

'While many people cite disinhibition as a crucial element of creativity — and it is — positive inhibition is even more important, [Dr. Robert Bilder, a psychiatry and psychology professor at UCLA’s Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior] said. 'The ability to inhibit the first thing that comes to mind in order to get to the higher hanging fruit in the cognitive tree is one of the cornerstones of creative achievement....' The first idea is not usually the most novel one; pushing past the easy answer and reaching for a better one is a mark of creativity.

Have a great weekend.

Wayne

h/t @cc_chapman