- March 19th, 2011
- 21 Comments »
- creative thinking
Why you should be weird
They told Van Gogh he used too much paint, and Englebart that the mouse was pointless. Galileo and Copernicus were called heretics for seeing the world for what it was. Dylan and Guthrie were told they couldn’t sing and that they had nothing to say. DaVinci’s helicopters and Tesla’s radio waves stayed in notebooks for years, as the ideas were too weird for ordinary minds to understand.
Most great ideas seem weird at first. Our minds are used to the old world, the old judgments and the old reasons. Few have the imagination and self-reliance to see a new world when it’s first shown to us. This doesn’t mean being weird, or having a weird idea guarantees you anything. Most ideas, weird, cool or reasonable, fail to take hold. Yet it is certain the first time you hear an idea that will eventually change everything it will seem weird to you. And the first time you pitch a great idea, you’ll be told by even smart and successful people, that you and your idea are weird. This is to be expected. Many great ideas need second chances to show how great they are.
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21 thoughts on “Why you should be weird”
Like my friend Jeanette says: “Normal is a wash type for the washing machine.”
So there’s hope for me yet? Phew…
Agreed. “Here’s to the crazy ones.” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Think_Different)
National Institutes of Health grant application peer reviewers should be forced to read this post before every peer review meeting.
Any particular weird ones on your mind when you wrote this?
Personal development and goal-setting can seem weird too.
I always knew I was a gifted teacher but it is only due to a surprise request from my boss that I am teaching a weekly class at work. I don’t dare -not yet- to dream of teaching elsewhere… but I realize I could.
I suppose it once seemed weird for an unpublished guy to say he was going to one day fill a shelf with his books. (As Scott did)
We need more weird people even though only maybe 1 in 100 strange ideas really can pan out. Frank Salloway wrote a book explaining that these people are usually second sons – they tend to be the revolutionaries both politically and scientifically. First born sons are the ones to at first step on the new ideas and later be the ones to make the money off them.
Eric Krieg
GENTLEMEN:
Copernicus was featured in Scientific American magazine 3 or 4 decades ago. I thought that article pointed out that Copernicus had worked WITH the pope and the pope WITH Copernicus. If my memory is correct and if Copernicus was a heretic then so also the pope was a heretic. I don’t want to say that Scott Berkun is full of it because that would be a rude thing to say.
Keep in mind that for every weird idea that was great, there were thousands of ideas that are weird and won’t work (the number of “perpetual motion machines” that have patents is disturbing). And ideas that are conventional are also useful, and can be great.
In short, these anecdotes show that there might not be a strong correlation between “weirdness” and the plausibility of the idea, either positive or negative.
What suggestions do you have for introducing new ideas? What tools or techniques have you found effective when specifically introducing new or ground-breaking ideas?
You’re right. I appreciate the encouraging word. It can be discouraging when you’re trying to promote something that you know is amazing or you are even just sharing it with the world and people are either apprehensive or aloof and unresponsive. It can make you feel like, “what the eff is wrong with these people?” In some cases you just have to accept they might not get it in your lifetime. It takes quite a bit stolidity to have to live like that.
I completely agree.
Dylan and Guthrie were told they couldn’t sing … – maybe right, but they had great messages and souls …
When you march to the beat of your own drum, you often start the march alone. Many will warn you how hard the climb to success is but damn few tell you how great the view is at the top.
Riley
Its like a food or recipe when first invented. Every first discovery looks weird.
Van Gogh was an artist; art is subjective – not everyone is a fan of Van Gogh
It was determined that Galileo’s teachings “may” have been “heretical”, he was put under house arrest for refusing to modify his teaching to what he could actually prove (scientifically).
Copernicus was not only NOT called a “heretic”, he was, among other things, a Catholic cleric.
Dylan and Guthrie are terrible singers, it’s their songwriting they are renowned for, but again, art is subjective.
Da Vinci’s helicopters didn’t work then, and don’t work now, which is why modern helicopter’s don’t look like Da Vinci’s.
I’ll give you Englebart and Tesla.
Being weird is fine, but having a well formed intellect and a little bit of natural abilities in the right areas helps too!
Completely Agree.
Another example is Twitter, which was thought to be a weird idea initially and look how it has changed the things in 5 years.
Having weird ideas is great. But it’s also helpful to churn out gobs of weird stuff since eventually, one of them will pop through to greatness. So for the love of God, be weird!
what’s frightening is what is considered “normal”
being bipolar, i discovered a wonderful new word yesterday, a clinical definition of normal which is “euthymic” – it kind of sounds like a syntho-pop musical group
I think the bigger point for me is that championing a new idea, that diverges from the norm can be a lonely existence. Would you rather have friends or an idea that only you understood?
Yes, but on the other side of the continuum, where do you draw the line?
Everybody thinks they are special and different and weird in a constructive sort of way. It is when they start realising they actually are not (in all probability because they did not work enough for it, like writers who didn’t write?) that the problems arise.
In my mind it’s always been a tug of war between Nietzsche’s concept of being an exception and Freud’s Schizotypal Personality Disorder.
It is a long drawn inference. But I promise you, it is there. :)
Maybe the world has become as it has, because now we think we are awesome and go on to realise we are not. And in all probability Galileo and Van Gough started with not knowing who they are and arrived at being something.