Monday
Jan162012
Tuesday something controversial: Episode 38
Monday, January 16, 2012 at 7:53PM
Podcast 38 by Jeremy Current
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Creativity is a mysterious thing. I'm reading Steve Jobs' biography right now among a couple other books on the night stand. There are two remarkable things about him that were surprising to me at first but maybe they shouldn't have been.
The first surprise was that he was a regular drug user. He grew up not only smoking marijuana in high school but regularly dropping LSD. Now it makes sense to me that John Lennon and George Harrison were smoking a bowl with Lucy in the sky or Harry Nilsson and Ringo Starr were doing a line in the chinese restaurant bathroom, but think about a computer nerd getting down with some drugs. The stereotype I have in my head of a pocket protector wearing engineer goes right out the window. Jobs was serious about computers but he didn't take the typical path. Now some of you are sitting there thinking, "He had Steve Wozniak doing the nitty gritty technical stuff so he didn't have to be so technically saavy." Point taken. Still though, as a leader of people and someone SO incredibly confident in his own opinions, I'm impressed that he was willing to lose control of his senses. It takes trust in oneself to use drugs. To see where your mind goes when most of the train is led by the subconscious. And he wasn't super private about it either. He would pop raunchy interview questions to prospective employees to try to throw them off and see their true colors. "How old were you when you lost your virginity?" he would ask. "How many times have you done LSD." He was perfectly comfortable with his decisions and I think it came from a lot of personal searching and experimentation.
The second quality was that he was intensely critical of people. On more than one occasion he would call the work of his designers and engineers "total shit" for no other reason than to get to the final product. Anything less than the final product being shipped was total shit. It's a very black and white mentality but it caused Apple to produce some intensely cool shit. Criticism is something so scorned these days. People just aren't strong enough to be confronted with the fact that most of the work we do could be way better.
So here's the thing. This isn't about Steve Jobs. He's just the messenger. We're living in a world where few people are strong enough for criticism and there's a ton of mediocrity in the world. I spent half the afternoon looking for bands to play shows with in the areas surrounding New York. Ninety-nine out of one hundred bands were total shit. I'm not saying everyone should do a bunch of drugs and be critical of one another but I think we could use some personal searching and exploration and maybe we shouldn't settle for mediocrity. If you're going to be something, be something great. And if you're going to create something, maybe drugs and criticism aren't the worst tools to get you there.
Subscribe to my podcast in iTunes...
Creativity is a mysterious thing. I'm reading Steve Jobs' biography right now among a couple other books on the night stand. There are two remarkable things about him that were surprising to me at first but maybe they shouldn't have been.
The first surprise was that he was a regular drug user. He grew up not only smoking marijuana in high school but regularly dropping LSD. Now it makes sense to me that John Lennon and George Harrison were smoking a bowl with Lucy in the sky or Harry Nilsson and Ringo Starr were doing a line in the chinese restaurant bathroom, but think about a computer nerd getting down with some drugs. The stereotype I have in my head of a pocket protector wearing engineer goes right out the window. Jobs was serious about computers but he didn't take the typical path. Now some of you are sitting there thinking, "He had Steve Wozniak doing the nitty gritty technical stuff so he didn't have to be so technically saavy." Point taken. Still though, as a leader of people and someone SO incredibly confident in his own opinions, I'm impressed that he was willing to lose control of his senses. It takes trust in oneself to use drugs. To see where your mind goes when most of the train is led by the subconscious. And he wasn't super private about it either. He would pop raunchy interview questions to prospective employees to try to throw them off and see their true colors. "How old were you when you lost your virginity?" he would ask. "How many times have you done LSD." He was perfectly comfortable with his decisions and I think it came from a lot of personal searching and experimentation.
;)
The second quality was that he was intensely critical of people. On more than one occasion he would call the work of his designers and engineers "total shit" for no other reason than to get to the final product. Anything less than the final product being shipped was total shit. It's a very black and white mentality but it caused Apple to produce some intensely cool shit. Criticism is something so scorned these days. People just aren't strong enough to be confronted with the fact that most of the work we do could be way better.
So here's the thing. This isn't about Steve Jobs. He's just the messenger. We're living in a world where few people are strong enough for criticism and there's a ton of mediocrity in the world. I spent half the afternoon looking for bands to play shows with in the areas surrounding New York. Ninety-nine out of one hundred bands were total shit. I'm not saying everyone should do a bunch of drugs and be critical of one another but I think we could use some personal searching and exploration and maybe we shouldn't settle for mediocrity. If you're going to be something, be something great. And if you're going to create something, maybe drugs and criticism aren't the worst tools to get you there.
Reader Comments (2)
Yes! Settling with mediocrity is not a part of the path to living the best life. I find that as I get older it becomes more and more important to never settle, to be totally present and to be completely invested in whatever I put my energy into, and to make it (whatever IT is) the best it can be.
Being present of mind and ability is such a simple attribute. The problem is that everything in our society, especially the media, seeks to distract us. Thanks for the words, Katie.