Stop me if you’ve heard this before.
To succeed, you must eat, sleep and breathe
your work. You should put your blinders
on, block out all distractions and keep your
eyes on the prize.
For most millennials, this is our mantra.
however,Isaac “Biz” Stone ,cofounder of Twitter and Blogger, his success proves otherwise.
But what’s his secret? Growing up, did he
solely focus on startups until he reached
10,000 hours ?
To understand Stone’s success, let’s rewind to his years at Wellesley High School. Back
then, his friends were drama nerds, his favorite movie was The Princess Bride and
he directed and starred in the school’s production of Robin Hood (posters around
town read, “Isaac Stone presents: Robin Hood, Starring Biz Stone!”). He even found
a way to put together the play after the
school unexpectedly cut its budget.
“We were scrappy. I remember going door-
to-door in January collecting old Christmas
trees for the backdrop of Sherwood Forest,”
Stone recalled. “Come show time, we drew a
full house. We did matinees, evening shows,
and more. It was so successful that we even
took the show on the road for a little
while.”
It’s easy to assume that Stone’s devotion to
theater put him behind peers who spent that
time hacking away in computer labs.
However, University of Michigan
Psychologists Mary Gick and Keith Holyoak
say the opposite. In 1980, they conducted a
fascinating experiment that explains why
Stone’s “irrelevant” experiences actually
boosted his creativity, problem-solving, and
entrepreneurial abilities.
To illustrate, consider this brainteaser:
"Suppose you’re a doctor faced with a patient who has a malignant tumor in his stomach. It’s impossible to operate on the patient, but unless the tumor is destroyed, the patient will die.
There is a kind of ray that can destroy the tumor. If the rays reach the tumor all at once
at a sufficiently high intensity, the tumor will be destroyed. Unfortunately, at this intensity,
the healthy tissue that the rays pass through on the way to the tumor will also be destroyed. At
lower intensities, the rays are harmless to healthy tissue but will not affect the tumor
either.
What type of procedure might be used to
destroy the tumor with the rays, and at the
same time avoid destroying the healthy tissue?
If you can’t solve it, you’re not alone. Only
3% of Gick and Holyoak’s subjects could.
Now, read this unrelated passage and see if
anything changes.
A fortress was located in the center of the
country. Many roads radiated out from the
fortress. A general wanted to capture the
fortress with his army. But he also wanted to
prevent mines on the roads from destroying his
army and neighboring villages.
As a result, the entire army could not all go
down one road to attack the fortress. However,
the entire army was needed to capture the
fortress; an attack by one small group could not
succeed.
The general therefore divided his army into
several small groups. He positioned the small
groups at the heads of the different roads. The
small groups simultaneously converged on the
fortress. In this way, the army captured the
fortress.
"When this military story preceded the
medical problem, subjects were 67% more
likely to find the solution! If you’re still
stumped, you kill the tumor the same way
the army conquered the fortress (blast low
intensity rays from different sides of the
tumor and have them converge in the
middle. That way, the collective ray will
have a high intensity to destroy the tumor
without harming the healthy tissue around
it).
Drawing powerful analogies between two
unrelated worlds is called conceptual
blending. This process has sparked countless
breakthroughs, including Henry Ford’s
famous idea for automobile assembly lines,
which came after he saw slaughterhouses
process pigs the same way.
For Stone, conceptual blending between
theater and startups was his X-factor. It
gave him unique insights beyond others in
the tech industry. His knack for
understanding a customer’s pain points
derives from his acting years, when he
learned to empathize and put himself in
other peoples’ shoes. His charisma on stage
later translated to the boardroom, where he
won over investors instead of audience
members.
“If you want to be good at what you do, you
have to have new, varied experiences as
much as possible,” Stone explained. “I’ve
always thought that creativity and problem-
solving comes from lateral thinking. In
other words, the ability to connect dots you
otherwise couldn’t connect if you didn’t
have a robust set of experiences to draw
from.”
Today, Stone still adds to his robust set of
experiences. Most recently, he produced a
short movie for Project Imagit10n , a film
festival sponsored by Canon and legendary
director Ron Howard. Just like high school,
Stone did it all: he spent many late nights
writing storylines, casting actors and
directing on set. The result was Evermore , a
moving film about a girl who reunites her
mother and grandfather using motifs from
Edgar Allan Poe’s The Raven .
“I feared the ‘go back to your day job’ comment,” he said. “But it’s always worth getting new experiences when you can. The
more things you do outside your comfort zone, the more you’ll make leaps and jumps
when you return to your ‘normal work life.’ The more you’ll be able to see further
ahead than others.”
Stone’s story shows the importance of exploring the unimportant. His outlet was
theater but for you it may be improv
comedy, photography, or painting.
For me, it’s writing. Stone helped me
realize it’s beneficial to pursue interests
outside work. Before, I felt downright
guilty. I thought the time I spent writing
took away from my job as a product
marketer. But the opposite is true.
Writing made me an organized thinker, stronger
copywriter, and enabled me to learn through interviews and research I would
have never done otherwise.
Looking beyond our industry helps us succeed within it. Next time you find yourself eating, sleeping, and breathing your work, just remember: taking your
blinders off doesn’t mean taking your eyes
off the prize.
Source: FORBES
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