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I remember watching my first Steve Jobs biopic. In my junior year of high school, I was an incredibly conscientious teenager, checking off all of the boxes I was told to. Great grades? Got them. Solid SAT scores? Easy enough (i.e., several weeks of studying with 4 hours for practice tests each weekend). Extracurriculars? Started planning that since 9th grade.
It was time to loosen up
Yet, while watching Jobs take what Wozniak built and turn it into the largest company on the earth, I realized that conscientiousness is never enough. Yeah, maybe it gets you a reliable, stable job — you’re a reliable, stable person after all. But to make explosive growth, you need to be explosive. You need an insight.
I dove into a creative lifestyle. I stayed up later, took more risks, and lived more. It was good for me. I needed to relax. I needed to accept that I can’t plan everything. Creativity unfolded to me. I had so many thoughts to write down. I sang more. I thought more. I was more. In Jobs-ian fashion, it started to come naturally to me. Ideas flowed.
“Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while.” —…
