I’m not sure I believe in coincidences, but when I happen upon the same (or similar) phenomenon repeatedly in a short space of time, I try to stop and pay attention. For instance, it just so happened that of all the podcasts I listened to this week, a couple of the conversations and interviews led me to the same place.
The first was a conversation between Adam Grant, author of Think Again, and Jennifer Lynn Barnes, author of The Inheritance Games. During the interview, Adam expressed how he always felt he couldn’t be a successful fiction writer because he’d always placed the bar for originality too high. This was quite striking because Adam Grant is considered to be one of the most successful non-fiction authors and high-achieving academics of our time. I found it quite insightful and surprising, that someone with Adam Grant’s track record could consider something like fiction writing beyond him or out of his reach. In response, Jennifer Lynn Barnes offered the brilliant insight that originality isn’t as important as we think it is. I’ve written a thing or two about originality as a creative. Still, I found it reassuring to hear another highly-acclaimed author validate my views on this, that the execution of an idea is almost always more important than the idea itself, as well as whether or not something resembling that idea is already in existence.
If that wasn’t striking enough, later in the week, I listened to the People I Mostly Admire podcast, hosted by Steven Levitt, during which he replayed a conversation he had with Steven Pinker, author of The Better Angels of Our Nature. In the podcast episode, the producer mentioned that Steven Levitt has a track record of pointing out how obvious his guests’ ideas are. This is no trivial statement, as the podcast has hosted at least a dozen guests that are Nobel laureates and at the apex of their respective fields. Suffice it to say that this calibre of guests tends to bring to the conversation ideas that the listeners would consider fascinating and ground-breaking. And this is where Steven Levitt almost always brings a pin-shaped observation to the table, to burst the conversation bubble with a flippant and yet (almost impossibly) reverent remark about how obvious and basic the idea is. The overarching theme with these conversational exchanges is that these brilliant and ground-breaking ideas seem obvious in hindsight, and it begs the question of why no one has considered working on them before the guests who talk about them on the show.
So, to recap, one exchange between Adam Grant and his guest revealed that originality isn’t the holy grail we make it out to be, and another exchange between Steven Levitt and his guest revealed that everything seems obvious and unoriginal in hindsight until it is birthed, at which point the birther is lauded for their originality. When I put the two insights together, it accentuates a thought that has misled me for so long, which is the idea that if a creative project or task or idea seems too simple, straightforward, or obvious, then it’s not worth doing. This is something I’ve struggled with in my creative career, something that has often held me back from doing things that I now know I should have done. I’ve found in the past that when something seems obvious to me, it is a huge deterrent to pursuing it. The moment something reveals itself as obvious, it would make me want to go “nah, someone else has done it, so why bother?” Now, I write this primarily as a note to self, and for anyone else who needs to hear it, that if something is obvious, that’s all the more reason to pursue it, and here’s why.
The first reason is simply that “obvious” is a subjective quality. In other words, something may not be as obvious as you think it is because what’s obvious and simple and trivial from your standpoint may be groundbreaking and huge and fascinating to someone else. This is because we’ve all walked different paths, led different lives, and amassed different, and dare I say unique life experiences in the process. Something that is obvious to you is so because you’ve lived a life where you’ve come upon the right set of variables to connect the dots and identify said thing as obvious. But there’s no telling that other people would have the right set of variables to connect the dots, ergo, there’s hardly a thing as the state of being objectively obvious.
Secondly, let’s assume that the first point is moot and that some things (or maybe even all things) are objectively obvious. Even then, I’d argue that it’s okay to still pursue ideas that you identify as obvious. This is because even if an idea is obvious, your execution will be unique and original because of what you bring to it by virtue of your life experiences. As the expression goes in creative circles, ideas are a dime a dozen. In a world where everyone and their gran can come up with ideas, it’s the execution that sets the successful creatives apart from the rest.
Thirdly, again, let’s assume that just like the first point, the second is also irrelevant or debatable. In other words, let’s say there’s such a thing as objective obviousness, and some obvious ideas are given only to unoriginal execution. If this combination is possible, say an idea is obvious and its execution is unoriginal, I’d argue that it still needs to be done, because if the idea is so obvious to reveal itself to you and dwell on your mind, then it must be important enough that the world too needs to be reminded of it. In other words, even if all you’re doing is reinventing the wheel, it isn’t a waste of time because at the very least, the world would end up with another wheel, and the world would always need more wheels anyway.
If there's one thing I'd love for you to take away from this spiel, it's the idea emblematised in the quote by Michael Stipe, lead singer of R.E.M, who said "sometimes I’m confused by what I think is really obvious. But what I think is really obvious obviously isn’t obvious". In other words, sometimes, "obvious" isn't always so, so why let it deter you from pursuing the ideas you know you should?
PS: Just a reminder that my latest record, One More Time is out now, everywhere. You can listen to it on several platforms. Please share it with a friend, share it with your social networks, and consider subscribing to the newsletter (below), my YouTube channel, or wherever else you listen to music.