The creative world needs fewer experts and more explorers || Unthinkable #145
A friend of mine is a writer and marketer who loves to teach. Let's call him John, because that's his real name.
A few weeks ago, John called me with an issue. He felt completely and utterly tapped creatively. He had nothing left to offer his subscribers. For almost a year, he'd spent several days per week sharing tips and tricks, processes and frameworks, big ideas and tiny techniques -- all the things he'd learned over the years as a prolific writer and marketer. And after a year full of building credibility by sharing everything he knew ... he'd run out of ideas. John believed the problem was that last part: "he'd run out of ideas." After speaking together, we realized the actual problem was the part right before that: "building credibility by sharing everything he knew."
On our call, we identified a common problem that many of us face when we create things for a living, especially things meant to teach or inspired or rally and change a community. This issue is everywhere, plaguing creative people, unbeknownst to them -- until you feel you're out of ideas, like John.
I asked John (paraphrasing for clarity here): "What if, instead of sharing what you already know with certainty, you share things you'd like to know, then show them what you're learning as you go? What if you feel stuck because you've relied more on your existing knowledge than your curiosity, and knowledge is limited? You're out of answers to give them, but surely, you're not out of questions about this work you do? My friend, I think the problem is you're acting like an expert. What you acted like an investigator instead?”
Silence.
"John?"
Silence.
"Hello?"
Then finally, "Aw crap, I think you're right."
* * *
We spend so much of our time as students learning a simple truth: success is having the right answer. To get something wrong is to be subtly ostracized or even outright shamed. After literal decades of this philosophy being beaten into us, day after day, class after class, grade after grade, we enter the workforce unwilling to be wrong. Most people won't say or try anything unless they're absolutely certain they're right. But in this line of work — creative work — you're better off looking for Sasquatch than absolute certainty.
How many correct answers do you possess? For John, it was one year’s worth — one year's worth of certainty and answers before he felt tapped. He was out of ideas.
The thing is, we each possess our very own endless idea machine. As kids, we use it constantly. We're born with it. It comes standard with our operating system. So let's remember how to operate this system, shall we?
* * *
Experts vs. Explorers
In this episode of Unthinkable, we learn to reboot that endless idea machine. We wade into some uncomfortable waters, like the problems with experts and expertise (or at least Expert Overload), and what we really experience when we "run out of good ideas."
Your knowledge is finite. Your curiosity is infinite. So why, oh why, do we usually rely more on our existing knowledge than our boundless curiosity? We live in a society that seems to value the ability to have the answers, but the path to making work that matters just might mean admitting, "I don't have the answers, but I'm going to figure this out."
What if we stopped acting like experts and started acting like ... well ... something else?
In this episode, we hear stories from keynote speaker Andrew Davis, bestselling author Shane Snow (Dream Teams, Smartcuts, The Storytelling Edge), and Dr. Jade Wu, sleep psychologist and researcher from Duke University.
Listen below, find key takeaways after that, and follow the show wherever you get your podcasts:
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SPECIAL THANKS TO THOSE INVOLVED IN THIS EPISODE:
Andrew Davis: akadrewdavis.com | twitter.com/DrewDavisHere
Shane Snow: shanesnow.com | twitter.com/shanesnow
Jade Wu, PhD: jadewuphd.com | twitter.com/jadewuphd
Key Takeaways:
5:39 - Expert versus visionary To set the stage for the discussion on expertise comes a quote from author and speaker Andrew Davis. Andrew believes that true experts are in fact visionaries who embark on learning journeys.
“We've been told that there's a very simple formula for success. All we have to do is become an expert by using our experience and our time doing that thing to become an expert. And what ends up happening is you constantly have a next thing you need to do to get the experience to become the expert. Like if I write a book, I'll be an expert. If I work a little longer, I'll be an expert. If I work for a bigger brand, maybe then I'll be considered an expert...experts follow a path, and that path never ends. There's always one more thing you're supposed to do. But visionaries embark on a quest. That quest is sparked by the questions they ask. And experts prescribe a solution. They've prescribed the solution. They say these are the five things you must do if you want to be successful. Visionaries present a solution. They know this isn't the answer. They're on a journey to find out how to best answer this question, and they hope you go on the journey with them. At the end of the day, experts build lists and visionaries build legacies.”
12:52 - Investigating the unknown Much of Shane Snow’s work lies in journalistic endeavors, where he investigates varied points of interest in the quest for uncovering deeper meaning - whether it’s an article about ice cream or the CIA.
“I started a non-profit for investigative journalism, basically to fund investigations that newspapers couldn't afford, because they take too long or cost too much. And so we had a team, there's still a couple of people working on it. But we got some donations, we had a team, and we worked on some of these investigations. The biggest one that I've done on my own in investigative journalism is one that came out last year, where we unearthed old radio recordings that the CIA had broadcast in Guatemala in the 1950s, where they basically did this terror campaign, like war of the worlds, where they convinced Guatemala City that a civil war was going on. And it was all a CIA hoax.”
13:53 - Don’t stay in your lane Shane feels that having diverse interests only serves to enhance your expertise in your primary field, giving you new and unique perspectives.
“I actually feel a lot of pressure to have what I spend my time on matter. And so some of these things, like the ice cream, in a way it feels like playing video games. Like, what are you doing with your life? You're playing video games. Like I should be working. I should be doing something meaningful for the world. And part of that is my personality and we all deserve a break and to have fun, you know, that helps us not go crazy, so that we can do the work we are meant to do. But I do feel that pressure a lot. I would say what I have told myself over the years is that if all I did was focus in my lane, then I couldn't possibly become better than the best person in that lane. I couldn't possibly become more creative than someone who's been working harder than me, who's more talented than me. However, if I explore outside of that lane, even if that thing that I'm exploring doesn't matter, what I'm learning in that journey can help me import ideas or heuristics or perspectives into my primary lane, so that I can be more clever than whoever's in there. And that's kind of been my philosophy.”
17:30 - Connecting the dots between two worlds One of Shane’s recent projects took his fascination with immigrant America and married it to trends in the business world.
“I became fascinated with the idea of immigrant behavior. That was really what it was. There's, you know, there's a cleaner version of this story and there's a more kind of business-oriented version of the story. But really what it was is there were a few things that I was seeing, but what was going on with immigration in America? People are afraid of their neighbors when they come from different places. That's not a news story. So I was interested in what certain groups do to become accepted, to succeed...So I went in really deep. And then because I was running a business and because I'm a business and psychology writer, I wanted to eventually see if I could connect dots between what I was learning about immigrant behavior and non-geographic immigrant scenarios, basically. You know, what can we learn from groups of immigrants that moved to a place, are hated, and then succeed spectacularly.”
22:40 - Channeling your inner Michelangelo
Shane’s literary agent understood that Shane’s process was a masterpiece in reverse: instead of planning a book, he had discovered a book through a process of exploration.
“The thing that my agent said, my literary agent when I was working on this project - because as soon as it got a little bit closer to the business stuff, I started talking to him about it. And you know, over the course of the year, I eventually made it into something that could be a book proposal. And he described it as the - a really flattering analogy actually, as Michelangelo chipping away at the marble and finding the David inside. Rather than planning to make a statue, he found the statue. That's what my agent described the process as. And you know, I was like, yes, I am Michaelangelo. But not at all. Which I think is actually a better analogy than any of the things I've said so far.”
23:43 - Lowering the stakes Jay understands that each of Shane’s projects lends a richer understanding to the work that came before, and also provides a fertile testing ground for new ideas.
“We all have existing work. We can all start to imbue those things with new ideas to test them. Partly that helps us force ourselves to articulate the ideas out loud or in writing. And in doing so, it sharpens our thinking, because we're refining how we communicate. And also by articulating those ideas, we find new questions or avenues that we need to investigate and pursue. But in addition to that personal intellectual benefit, there's also a resource benefit. We don't need to find any additional time or dollars to start pursuing something new. It can be as simple as finding little pockets in existing projects you're already creating to test out your new ideas. An opening line here, an anecdote there, a quick conversation with a friend, a single slide, a moment in an episode - this is all a form of lowering the stakes.”
29:20 - The stamp of expertise Dr. Jade Wu literally couldn’t be more qualified for what she does: behavioral sleep medicine. But that doesn’t stop her from feeling like she’s on a journey of learning.
“I like to share my expertise. So I like to share my knowledge. I like to share the things that I spent a lot of time learning and exploring and trying to figure out. So I like to share that. So in that sense, I am an expert. And by the way, there's one more stamp on my name, which is that I am now board certified in behavioral sleep medicine, which is - like literally, there's not another exam I can take. There's not another set of letters I can add to my name to go further in my field. So technically I think I am at the peak of expertise in my field, technically. But I'm still always learning. I'm always finding new things.”
30:41 - The cost of expertise Jade describes the monetary and mental toll that led to receiving her Ph.D. For better or worse, traditional structures of expertise serve at gatekeepers to a select few.
“So what it took for me to get my Ph.D., I had to do really well in college. I had a 3.95 GPA Summa cum laude from Cornell University. And that gave me the opportunity to apply for research assistantships at NIH and Mayo Clinic, where I got more experience, which allowed me to apply for graduate school. And that was, oh my gosh. That was a huge long process in and of itself of at least six months of hard work, just to apply to graduate school. And also thousands of dollars by the way of money I didn't have as a 21-year-old, flying around the country going to interviews. I was very lucky to be offered a position at Boston University as a graduate student. I spent five years there [doing] classes, teaching, research, a crapload of networking, a crapload more of clinical work, and constantly applying to get more funding.”
38:17 - Real experts have more questions than answersJade doesn’t think that telling people what to do counts as expertise. Instead, it’s all about coming up with hypotheses to explore.
“I think if someone claimed to be an expert, but mostly they gave statements and they told other people what to think or what to do, and they didn't have good questions, I wouldn't call them an expert. Because when you're a real expert, when you really know what you're talking about, you find that everything that you learn generates three more things you don't know that you're curious about, that you just have to figure out. And sometimes you can't figure it out without launching on a years-long odyssey to figure it out. And sometimes figuring it out means taking a really long time to figure out what is even the right question to ask. So absolutely - I think people who are real experts are just bursting at the seams with questions.”
39:57 - The line between arrogance and curiosity Jade acknowledges that it can appear arrogant to say you want to solve a brand new problem. But for some people, the thirst for knowledge overrides any sense of impostor syndrome.
“Who am I to say: there's literally no knowledge on this in the world. Nobody knows about this. But I'm going to create this piece of knowledge, and I'm just going to do it. That actually I think takes a lot of balls, for lack of a better way of putting it. It's either a little bit of arrogance, or the curiosity and the itch of ‘I need to know’ is just so strong that it overrides any sanity of like, who am I to look into this? Like other people haven't, why would I? That I think is a reasonable question for all of us to ask. You know, who am I to do this? And sometimes when we ask that too much, we have imposter syndrome. But I think there has to be a voice that's louder, that overrides that, that says I just need to know.”
45:15 - Dr. Anthony Fauchi: an inspiring idol Jade pays homage to Dr. Fauchi’s role as an expert who wasn’t afraid to challenge his own assumptions and admit that he was wrong.
“Anthony Fauchi, back in the days way before COVID, he was an AIDS researcher. And he was on the front lines in the early days of AIDS and when this was becoming a big thing in people's consciousness, he didn't just sit in his ivory tower and look at previously published research to say, how are we going to handle this epidemic? He actually went to gay clubs. He went to gay bath houses. He went to community-organized events to talk to activists. And he was swayed by their arguments. He had his mind changed. And he was very humble and very okay with admitting that I had no idea that this was their experience. I was on the wrong side of history to begin with. They were on the right side of history. And here's what I need to do to amend those wrongs. I think that attitude from someone who was already an expert, who was the head of, I believe the national institutes of allergy and infectious disease. Someone who is in that position has in a way earned their right to just sit back and say, obviously I'm an expert in this area. Look at all the credentials I have and all the positions I have. But he didn't sit up there on his throne. He came down into the real world to not only use a scientific method, but to use his empathy and to use his curiosity. And I think he is one of the most inspiring scientists because of that.”
50:00 - Get feedback early and often Shane urges others to seek out low-stakes feedback wherever possible in the pursuit of publishing new, original ideas.
“My strong opinion is that as early as you can, getting feedback, exposing yourself to feedback in ways that are low-stakes so that your ego doesn't get involved is really, really helpful. One other thing I'd say on this is I know some people that they will not make a decision without polling a million friends, you know, without collecting data. And that's not creativity either. That's like an over-reliance. You're not doing any exploring. You're not doing any kind of creative thing there. You're just eliminating the risk entirely. For me, what helps is break down the thing so that when you're getting feedback, you're getting feedback on components of it. But you're the one that's assembling it.”