No one wants to hear everything that's in your head. They just want you to live up to what comes out of your mouth.
Adam GrantRead
Creativity is generating ideas that are novel and useful. I define originals as people who go beyond dreaming up the ideas and take initiative to make their visions a reality.
Interpretation
Creativity involves generating new and practical ideas, while originals are those who actively pursue their visions.
In this quote, Adam Grant emphasizes that creativity is not just about having unique ideas, but also about taking actionable steps to bring those ideas to life. Original thinkers are distinguished by their ability to transform dreams into reality through initiative and effort, demonstrating that creativity is a dynamic process that requires both imagination and action.
In practice
During a team meeting, I might quote this to inspire my colleagues to take action on their project ideas.
No one wants to hear everything that's in your head. They just want you to live up to what comes out of your mouth.
In the eyes of many people, giving doesn't count unless it's completely selfless. In reality, though, giving isn't sustainable when it's completely selfless.
When you procrastinate, you're more likely to let your mind wander. That gives you a better chance of stumbling onto the unusual and spotting unexpected patterns.
We have many identities, and we can't be authentic to them all. The best we can do is be sincere in our efforts to earn the values we claim.
We all have thoughts and feelings that we believe are fundamental to our lives but that are better left unspoken.
You want people who choose to follow because they genuinely believe in ideas, not because they're afraid to be punished if they don't. For startups, there's so much pivoting that's required that if you have a bunch of sheep, you're in bad shape.
Before we start anything creatively, we have a firm understanding of our objective and our frame of mind for the campaign. Who's our audience, and what's their day-to-day behavior? How can we complement those behaviors? How is our message more than an interruption? Why would people care about what we're saying?
Finding the medium that excites your imagination, that you love to play with and work in, is an important step to freeing your creative energies.
It isn't till now, in the American Century, as we have recklessly dubbed it, that tribal pressures toward conformity have been brought to bear so ruthlessly upon men and women seeking to work creatively.
In any creative industry, the fact that others are moving in a certain direction is always proof positive, at least to me, that a new direction is the only direction.
In order to be open to creativity, one must have the capacity for constructive use of solitude. One must overcome the fear of being alone.
We need to make the world safe for creativity and intuition, for it's creativity and intuition that will make the world safe for us.
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