Creative Thinking Hacks from the Book “Originals”

Adam Grant is an organizational psychologist and best-selling author of several books, including Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World. Published in 2017, Grant’s book quickly became a #1 New York Tims bestseller and is celebrated by many modern-day creatives and innovators.
The book shows how some of the greatest innovators in the world think, work and come up with ideas. He defines these people as “originals,” the people that don’t only have ideas but take the action to champion them.

 “Originals drive creativity and change in the world. They’re the people who you want to bet on,” Grant said in a TED Talk he gave before his book came out.

While Grant looks at several greats, like Leonardo Da Vinci and Martin Luther King Jr., he also shows us all how we can find ways to enhance our creativity thinking, identify ideas that work, and break the status quo by fostering diversity and originality.

 “In these pages, I learned that great creators don’t necessarily have the deepest expertise but rather seek out the broadest perspectives. I saw how success if not usually attainted by being ahead of everyone else but by waiting patiently for the right time to act. And to my utter shock, I learned that procrastinating can be good,” Sheryl Sandberg, the Chief Operating Officer of Facebook, writes in the forward to the book.

 Below are some key takeaways from Grant’s book that all of us can consider in our personal and work lives.

 Practice vuja de

We all know about Déjà vu, when we see something new and think it’s familiar. Grant wants us to practice the opposite. It’s called vuja de. This comes when we encounter something familiar with a fresh perspective, helping us gain new insight into old problems. As humans, we tend to “rationalize the status quo as legitimate,” but that’s a “default system,” as he puts it.

 “The more expertise and experience people gain, the more entrenched they become in a particular way of viewing the world. As we gain knowledge about a domain, we become prisoners of our prototypes,” Grant explains.

 We escape this when we strive for vuja de, Grant argues. Try to look at something you’ve seen many times before and see it with fresh eyes, whether it be a manuscript you’ve put hundreds of hours into or a painting that just doesn’t look quite the way you want it to. Often reworking something that you know backwards and forwards can lead to creative and original ideas. No, this isn’t an easy task. One of the first people to coin this term was author and professor at Stanford University, Bob Sutton in his book Weird Ideas That Work.

 Here’s what he has to say about vuja de:

 “The vuja de mentality is the ability to keep shifting opinion and perception. It means shifting our focus from objects or patterns in the foreground to those in the background… It means thinking of things that are usually assumed to be negative as positive, and vice versa. It can mean reversing assumptions about cause and effect, or what matters most versus least. It means not traveling through life on automatic pilot.”

 Original ideas don’t need to come from scratch

Being the first doesn’t always mean you’re the best, according to Grant. Just because you’re the first one to come up with an amazing idea doesn’t mean your iteration of it is or will be the best one. On the other side of the coin, just because someone else has come up with an idea does’’t mean you can’t take that idea and improve upon it. Think about Facebook or Google, they weren’t the first of their kind. Their creators had time to look at similar services that came before and perfect off of that. And, today, Google and Facebook are the most successful in their respected fields.

 To be original you don’t have to be first, you just have to be different and better, Grant argues. And a huge part of this is when your idea is presented. Timing can account for 42% of the differences between success and failure — something to keep in mind when you’re thinking about when to release your idea into the world.

 Striving for perfection will only slow you down

Some people never achieve originality because they obsess over their ideas, trying to refine them to perfection. In his book, Grant says it’s not about always being right or perfect, it’s about generating ideas and not being afraid to try something out, to take action.

 “If you look across fields, the greatest originals are those that fail the most because they are the ones who try the most,” Grant said in his TED Talk. We shouldn’t be afraid of our actions, we should be afraid of our inactions.

 Grant also said it’s important not to be hard on yourself. If your first idea stinks, that’s not because you stink. It’s okay for us to tear apart our ideas, but when we start personalizing those insults and criticizing ourselves, that’s when it gets harder to take risks and accomplish things.

 Procrastination can be a good thing

This one may be surprising, but those who procrastinate moderately tend to be more innovative and more creative. In an experiment, Grant conducted he found that students who procrastinated in delivering proposals were 25% more creative than those who didn’t procrastinate.

 “Procrastination gives you time to consider divergent ideas, to think in non-linear ways, to make unexpected leaps,” Grant said.

 Taking the time to procrastinate and not rushing to get everything complete allows you time to think. Grant uses the example of Leonardo Da Vinci. He worked on the Mona Lisa for 16 years before he got it right. Or Martin Luther King Jr. who was up all night working on his “I Have a Dream” speech even though he started writing it months beforehand. He was editing it minutes before he even delivered it. And he ended up entirely veering off script, adding the “I Have a Dream” bit, which was not originally a line in the speech.

 “By delaying the task of finalizing the speech until the very last minute, he left himself open to the widest range of possible ideas. And because the text wasn’t set in stone, he had the freedom to improvise,” Grant said. This doesn’t mean you should procrastinate to the point where you get nothing done, Grant warns. But a little bit of procrastinating can see creative benefits.

 Not a procrastinator? Grant admits that he isn’t either. But there’s still a way to practice “strategic procrastination.” If you’re working on an idea, make sure to take breaks. The idea in progress will stay on your mind, incubating as you explore various options. This is a good way to avoid getting locked prematurely into the first idea you come up with. Take some time to mull over your thoughts. You may be surprised by what comes to you.

 Why groupthink can harm creativity

Grant says one of the biggest enemies of originality, particularly in the workplace, is groupthink. Groupthink is a phenomenon that often happens within a group of people in which the desire for harmony and cohesiveness results in a lack of diversity and individuality. We don’t tend to take alternative courses of action in a group. We often stick with the mainstream.

 Grant says we should be looking for people that don’t necessarily agree with us to be on our team or in our group. When it comes to hiring, managers shouldn’t always be focused on finding someone that fits the workplace culture. Choosing people with different perspectives challenges the status quo and can help a company grow.

 When working with others, try to choose people that have similar tactics but maybe not the same goals or beliefs. It shouldn’t be an “all or nothing” scenario. There should be room to push back, to challenge one another. Working with enemies is often a better tactic than working with frenemies, Grant says. This may be surprising, but research shows that predictably-negative relationships are actually less stressful than those that may keep you second-guessing. Plus, if you can win over that enemy, there’s more of a chance that relationship will stay positive.

 To learn more about Adam Grant, his teachings and his book, visit his website.