Life flourishes in a relatively slim band. For our planet, being nestled neatly in the Goldilocks Zone, with just the right tilt, afforded us to neither a fireball nor snowball planet be. It took a few billion years to get to this happy Holocene era, wherein life has blossomed – wildly – for the last 12,000-odd years. Opportunistic as life is to maximize good seasons, we humans cracked the game faster than anything that’s gone before us – bacteria may be more successful, but they’ve been around for longer.

Our rapidly evolving tools have allowed us to tinker with time and space. We bend the physical environment to suit our specific needs or if we’re lucky, simply fly to another part of the world where we’re happier, or take a pill to make it so. The narrow band of temperature, pressure, light, sound that humans can operate in natively hasn’t stopped us from dangling into volcanoes, visiting oceanic abysses, listening to the crackle of radiation from distant galaxies, see in the dark with special goggles, command the fates of animals that would otherwise quickly dispatch of a tool-less human, we even routinely get our children to tinker with hazardous chemicals as part of their education.
Who needs big sharp teeth? We have these super-senses and protections that we can apply at will, without the encumberance of waiting for nature’s slow delicate engineering to select it out for us. As a species our context opportunity band is vast. We even have representatives living off-planet for goodness sake.
It isn’t as easy to insulate our brains from context as we do our bodies though.

“You can’t be a sweet cucumber in a vinegar barrel” – Prof Phil Zimbardo

Activating genius appears to require a narrow band to open within the opportunity spectrum. Intelligence is robust and adaptive to almost any circumstance like a hardy weed, but genius is fragile. Too much money or average and uninteresting problems can leave it dormant – as confused venture capitalists in the dotcom boom or parents of evidently bright but underachieving kids have learned to their frustration. Unless character and tenacity are available to bolster the mind, curiosity and courage are blunted out of social convenience, in grownups as much as in young ones.
As fortunate as it may sound to have a genius around, it’s generally an unwanted intrusion. They require an unusual amount of time and space to devote to seemingly unproductive tinkering, they’re always experimenting, testing their ideas out on the world – most of which will be useless/ugly/odd, the urge to tick the cultural checklist of expected behaviours is often mislaid as they wander into realms the rest of us don’t inhabit yet. And most often they aren’t even recognised – it takes talent to spot ‘em – most people can’t discern genius from weird (don’t believe? check the Joshua Bell/Washington Post experiment at post’s end).
Smart we get, genius eh, it’s generally a little too far away from current measures of celebrity – whether in science or the arts. Until such time we can’t relate to them, their context hasn’t been established in our frame of reference yet.

Being in the right place at the right time looks a lot like luck, and sometimes it is. But there are ways to stack the odds.

RIGHT PLACE:

Genius takes what is available to everyone else in a similar environment, but repurposes common elements to solve a known problem in an elegant and unexpected way. Sometimes it comes from the effort of a single person, but most often it’s a collaborative effort of a cluster of people racing each other to the breakthrough; sometimes one person fits the last piece and snags the accolades. Ask any research scientist.

There’s an awfully good set of reasons for smart people to hang out in the same environment together. Sometimes that’s as big as a city – we’re recognising that some cities crystallize a creative class of pioneers, engineers and the cultural experimenters – sometimes it’s in small gatherings like the Lunar Society or TED. But gather they must. The physical context we find ourselves in shapes us profoundly. Stuff happens in physical proximity that simply misses out in digital contact – which is why online dating is still dominated by local searches with 100km range. Choose your spaces wisely and if you have no choice, gather the finest people and tools to defy stagnant or oppressive contexts with vigour. Genius begets genius as contagiously as evil begets evil.

RIGHT TIME:

Being too far ahead of the recognition – and reward – curve has most often led to the archetype of the starving genius battling their life through, and only generations down the line getting what they were banging on about; consecrating museums, cars and companies to their legacy, buying their creations for millions. Smart and talented is almost invariably better than genius if you care to enjoy success while you are with body. Being ahead of your time sounds like a compliment, but is more often a curse. Short of grand old style patience and fortitude, that may pay off eventually, no other time hackery is surer than education. Educating your audience - through informal/ social learning infused through cultural experiences in particular - can shorten the time between generational changes and hasten the crowd to casting the glad eye your way.

“All truth passes through three stages.
First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as self-evident.”
- Arthur Schopenhauer

You need to to be in the right context to frame your work appropriately, otherwise most people simply won’t see its value. Place, people, price give cues to how we allocate worth. Messed up, but there it is. Let’s not totter into the sticky debate of absolutism and relativism, save to say that humans have a hard time recognising standalone genius.

Maybe this will make you feel better: (long, but worth the time-out; a little context: it’s a Pulitzer Prize winning piece) >> Pearls before Breakfast : wherein one of the world’s finest musicians + multimillion dollar Stradivarius test whether people have an innate sense of appreciating quality. (Video snippet & spoiler below)

Click here to view the embedded video.

It doesn’t just happen at the subtle world of the arts, the same goes for simple stuff like food, we have no reference for beautiful artisanal coffee (wine, chocolate, pizza..) until we’ve had really bad coffee and have something to weigh it against, and even then, if the packaging & price don’t give us the right clues, we may miss it. Ah, being human. The upshot of all of this is that even if you are most exceedingly brilliant person in your field, if you’re out of context you’re most likely to be undervalued and overlooked.

“For humans, everything is relative. There are no absolute measures. Our judgement becomes swamped by local context. We can only tell you how pleasurable or painful an experience is based on our previous experience of what is painful or pleasurable, hot or cold, slow or fast and so on.” – Nick Chater (Professor of Cognitive and Decision Sciences UCL)

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Contextual Links:

The International Space Station http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/main/index.html
Phil Zimbardo http://www.zimbardo.com/
The Big Bang’s Echo http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4655517
Lunar Society http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_Society_of_Birmingham
Dan Ariely’s Books – must reads if this fascinates you http://danariely.com/the-books/
the Hershey’s Kiss and Pricing Irrationality http://bigthink.com/ideas/15775
Texts without Context writing and the Web (NY Times) http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/21/books/21mash.html
How Supermodels are like Toxic Assets http://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2010/07/how-supermodels-are-like-toxic-assets.html
Pearls before Breakfast http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/04/AR2007040401721.html

For all of you who believe that genius is about superhuman intellect or world-encompassing insight on command. If you’ve ever been led to believe that working hard infers that you aren’t bright enough to achieve dazzling success on your first pass.
This one is for you.

It’s for those whose vision simply banishes the option of a safe job and bowing to social expectation of settling. For the restless and driven who withstand scorn and scoff of their ideas and persist through countless failures. For those who challenge the impossible.

The difficult is that which can be done immediately; the impossible that which takes a little longer.
- philosopher George Santayana

Many of our species have defied the impossible:
Roger Bannister shattering the myth of the 4minute mile, the Wright brothers giving humans wings, Walt Disney building a kingdom around a talking mouse.. the list goes on through those who reshaped possibilty on a large scale.
To almost all great ones it wasn’t some effortless conspiring of the “Universe” in the fashion of The Secret that powered their world.changing efforts.
Their successes came, borne of sweat, frustration and failure. Yet there is a persistent belief that if you have to work hard it must mean that you aren’t all that smart. We’re seduced into believing the diet pill fantasy. Our society tumbling into soft.headed infatuation with these promising shortcuts to success, like a love.sick teenager not yet topped up with common.sense or cynicism.

If people knew how hard I had to work to gain my mastery, it wouldn’t seem wonderful at all. – Michelangelo

There is one inherently surprising quality to genius (as opposed to fast and hard street smarts for example). It is fragile. Genius is not inherited, unlike genetically-transmittable talents. It is volatile and easily crushed and muted by insult.
Which is why the unrelenting armour of tenacity is so needed as its accompaniment.

The armour your ally against the resistance, laughter, ego.bashing rejections and smug enjoyment you provide for detractors when you make mis.takes.
In China, this strategy comes through the development of an impenetrable “thick face”. Don the armour of determination if you have a truly innovative idea with world.changing capability, and buckle down for what may be a bumpy ride for the ego on that less.travelled road.

It may not make rational sense, looking at the radical pace of technology, but the world is curiously opposed to new ideas (the REALLY new ones that solve problems of long.standing inefficiencies in particular). Determination is wedded to a long.term strategy which will see you through the short term relief opportunities that come up. The quick money offers, the safer jobs and status upgrades, pay.off’s or even sidestepping physical threat as your ideas meet the market.

Great ideas are cheap and plentiful. Those who will actually work to make sure they happen, precious few. I finally realised we have no lack of passionate brilliant people with ingenious solutions. We have all the available capability to deal with the world’s woes very effectively. But the proportion of people who are prepared to risk their own time, money, reputation on birthing their ideas? And then the proportion left after a year or so? Or those who could have the patience to bear 50,000 experiments to perfect the alkaline battery for example?
Only genius buffered by tenacity would refuse to give up or settle for good enough.

Computer engineer & mathematician Howard Aiken said it best “Don’t worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you’ll have to ram them down people’s throats“

That’s why NDA’s are a giggle for the most part these days. If it’s a really great concept, good luck! because there are special devils set aside that will ensure that it is forged and fortified with its dues in time, sweat & tears.

Regardless of whether it’s a clean alternative fuel, getting your body in shape, or getting your business to get to the point where it pays without pain: endurance pays off, exponentially.

“Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence.
Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent.
Genius will not; un-rewarded genius is almost a proverb.
Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts.
Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.”
-Calvin Coolidge

Genius provides the visionary ignition spark and your tenacity ensures you get there, in one piece.

___________________________________________________

this post is part of the monthly theme on Endurance
found here on Hunter of Genius & beyond.

Clarity, for those of us alive now, is as assuringly accurate as financial projections on a start.up business plan¹.

Somewhere along the way we seem to have crashed through some kind of sound barrier, resistance gave way and en-masse we’ve hit a higher frequency. Everything appears to be accelerating to the point where the stable rules have been rendered redundant – even laughable.

Like a car, as we speed up we find that the world outside gets blurred. Without the luxury of advanced warning we have at slow speeds we can only rely on our reflexes to deal with surprises on the road, or a blink moment to catch a sign for a turn-off. Clarity? Only those a few metres ahead.

Please point me to the one person who could have predicted the depth & breadth of Facebook². Not just a category killer, but evolving into a staggering sociological force of nature. Social media is reshaping our private and professional lives profoundly.

Honestly, no-one can guarantee the Next Big Thing. Money, labour, political clout – none offer this certainty. Don’t bother listening to any business school stalwart who may assure you otherwise. Would you have placed a bet on a drop-out³ with no car, house or job being offered a billion dollars for his brainchild – and turning it down. WTF?!

The outer bounds of age been pushed out forcefully by an entire generation. The boomers. Pioneering a new stage of adulthood untested before: the 60 of today is more like 40. Retirement is what we strive to achieve in our 30′s. Job for life a joke.

Science, particularly physics and mathematics have witnessed some particularly odd phenomena over the last few decades. The findings bubbled out into quantum mechanics, string theory, fractals, strange attractors and chaos theory. Reality as we know it, has been collapsing in labs for years.. the rest of us are just catching up now.

If the smartest human beings in the world haven’t a clue where it all leads.. but watch in amazement as laws of time and space are scrambled.. then I guess the rest of us don’t stand much chance. Within that there’s a delicious sense of freedom somehow. We’re all f*cked – no-one has the manual, at least now we know that we don’t know.

So it finally occurred to me that⁴ the kind of clarity that befits genius isn’t the intellectual ability to analyse or predict the future from extrapolating current data, number crunching, or even visionary epiphanies. Genius isn’t about wrapping your head around the complicated – it’s embracing the complex (yes they are different.very). Clarity these days seems to be more akin to a quiet certainty, somewhere beyond the noise and static. Confidence. Faith?

It took Einstein 5 years to fill in the blanks from the heuristic leaps he made in his Annus Mirabilis. He dared to look like a fool because he didn’t have all the scientific evidence to back his claims; and he was working a pretty crappy job at the time⁵.

True genius has never found a more welcoming environment. Find your own signal in the noise. Do you need to see the invisible carrier waves coded with your favourite TV program before you’ll watch? Don’t spend your valuable time hunting for visible, plausible evidence to support your vision before you do anything about it.

¿ʇı ǝǝs oʇ ʇı ǝʌǝı1ǝq/see it to believe it?

It may be a little blurry around the edges, you may have no idea how it can be achieved yet. But if you have a vision, get it out in the daylight & share it.

What do you know but can’t prove?

What do YOU know clearly?

1. if you’re an entrepreneur, VC or a bank manager you’ll know just what I mean!
2. Rupert Murdock could have saved himself some pocket-change! LOL
3. Ivy League it needs be noted – Harvard’s not a shabby place to leap from
4. I wasted much precious time desperately hunting clarity only to finally realise that’s like grasping water. I’m a little slow sometimes
5. he would’ve had some damn good excuses for not presenting his theories – what holds you back?

This is a 10 part unfolding checklist that should have been called Developing Genius (because I believe it’s entirely possible – though the pathways may relate less to cause and effect than our traditionally schooled minds may feel comfortable with. Crisis; playful probability; character and will; count for more in eliciting our best selves than can be predicted by an IQ test.

1. COURAGE
2. CURIOSITY
3. CHARACTER
4. CLARITY
5. TENACITY
6. upcoming
7. upcoming
8. upcoming
9. upcoming
10. upcoming..

INNOVATE or IMITATE? Have you been paying attention to the global innovation obsession within business lately? [currently the most requested topic for speakers globally BTW]

And the consequent panic emerging from the apparent shortage of talent to produce said innovation? Whether entrepreneurial or multinational-scale the mania is on the move. The very word innovation, so overworked it’s threatening to become one of those trance-inducing sirens that lures desperate managers into all manner of money-draining consultancy cesspools. Blahblahinnovationblahblahblah blahbl.. oh wait did he say innovation?! signsign BUY quick!

Talent is being taken VERY seriously by those who need strategic advantage in the future. So much so that it held priority at the Davos session of the World Economic Forum this year. The hunt for genius is on >>

“cherish forever what makes you unique, cuz you’re really a yawn if it goes” – the Divine Miss M Bette Midler

Yet another perfect popped pea in a ipod pod is not what the world needs now. WE WANT YOU! to be all you can be..
Fight for your right to be you. Not for some dumbass war on behalf of oil interests, religious hypocrisy or political ideals masking profiteering. But for you. Genius that you are. 1st class you, not some 2nd class somebody else’s socially acceptable version of you.

“To be nobody-but-myself – in a world that is doing its best, night
and day, to make you everybody else – means to fight the hardest
battle which any human being can fight, and never stop fighting.” – words of wildman poet e. e. cummings

True innovation and worldchanging ideas ONLY love those true to themselves. If you’ll fight to be you, you’ll fight for the big idea against the gigglers, system stalwarts and devil’s advocates. So often brilliant beings smother their characterful colourful selves for fear of being the lone freak.. and give birth instead to the sub-optimal cubicle slave who plays it safe & ticks all the right social boxes then still wonders : why oh WHY : they feel so empty. Yeah life as a zombie must be pretty f#!%! up. Is THIS your birthright?
I bloody hope not!

You’ve heard all the old chestnut/new age mantra that if you do what you love the money will follow? “yeah yeah but in the real world..” but hark! dear friends the maxim is coming true!
Check out Keith Ferrazzi’s article in Fast Company on finding your genius for profit and pleasure; that only your particular combination of talents, life lessons, culture and character unlocks. Never has there been a time when you will be more celebrated for being unique. Economists the world over are urging on you to do just that. Seems we’re finally disassembling the Industrial Revolution’s cog-hungry machinery. (thanks China/India for filling the gap). Creativity and the bearers of unusual opinion are starting to fetch a very high price.. aaah renaissance 2.0 naturally :-P

Genius is marked by CHARACTER – whether you’re an alpha geek, creative freak, cynical curmudgeonly old crust, a fairy godmother or prankster empirebuilding entrepreneur. Character knows no bounds of age, colour, culture, ability, wealth bracket, even species – everything is imbued with it. The willingness and courage to embrace it, the only barrier.

So hooray for those daring enough to have an opinion of their own. They’re more interesting, engaging, memorable. They come up with fresh ideas with an inconsistency bound to drive those brave enough to hire big characters crazy. Their views may not be popular, they may not be blessed with ravishing goodlooks, but damn, full-blooded characters are never boring to be around. And often have a sexiness that defies logic (try Rasputin on for size!)

Who ARE you? Is your work an expression of your passion? What do you dream of that you’ve never told anyone? Do you LOVE who you are? What do you really dig(g) about being you? What did you use to love doing, that you don’t do anymore? What do you stand for? Who would stand up for you? What makes you special? What are your stories?
… ask! Interrogate your soul, let the questions open a quest.
Do it Uncle Walt style :

Re-examine everything you have been told at school or church or any book, dismiss what insults your own soul and your very flesh shall be a great poem

BTW. If you are one, you know that you will frustrate and jangle control-freak managers, teachers and well-meaning friends & family, but frankly please all & you please none. We will all be the poorer if globalisation means we liquidise and homogenise our cultures: diversity fertilises creativity. Celebrate your unique coding and share it.
Be triumphantly you*!
Because you’re worth it ..hohoho

PS. if you have time check out Tom Peter’s (patron saint for brandYOU characters) views on talent if you need more voooma to substantiate any urges to run like hell to the light

..how often do you look at the world curiously and ask
WHAT IF…
WHY DO THEY..
SURELY WE COULD..
wow, WHAT’S THAT..
Interrogate reality; and don’t trust your perceptions, they’re prone to error, and the great swell of humanity seeing things the same way doesn’t make it true [the Earth's flatness is one of the best examples of tenacious mind-bending wrongness].
Experiment! o’citizen scientist. (If only using your imagination as the lab with a gedankenexperiment as Einstein did).

“Great Questions lead to Great Quests”

(inspired by the legendary quizzmaster of all-time, the facilitor genius, Socrates)

We develop better taste in problems when we command our curiosity toward higher resolution questions. Clunky, blurry, cluttered, complex questions elicit the same in their responses. Junk in; junk out principle.

Some of the best questions are the simplest. For those who enjoy the gladiatorial frenzy* of a good question lobbed into a ring of fine minds, the Edge.org Annual Question is good spectator sport and handy social currency to appropriate for dinner parties.

All matter is just raw material waiting to be interpreted.
Peer in deeply and innocent of assumption when you chance on something that tugs your curiosity. We haven’t barely reached the edges of what’s certain. Ask any working scientist who must crush what they believed true yesterday under today’s weight of evidence.
It’s our filters – inherited and self-defined – that tweak the quality of the reality we get to see, the game we get to play.

* ah one can but dream of such nerdy pursuits,  the result is thrilling but perhaps it’s more in the fashion of well-mannered jousting, with light sabers, no limbs sacrificed en route but perhaps some synapses singed. Good fun.

Life shrinks or expands in proportion to your courage – Anais Nin

There is nothing quite so sweet clear and pulse-racing than being in the presence of someone who is living their life’s purpose. passionately. These are beings who bear a beauty made only more attractive by their battle-scars. Humans who have really used their hearts, minds, bodies and let life live through them.
They are disproportionately sexy.

Those who dare to look ridiculous. As they foolishly and audaciously take on dragons and dreams far beyond their human capabilities or common sense. Without those who get laughed out of hand because they believed the impossible, humanity would still be pottering about in fear of the wrathful weather gods from their caves.

Speak your mind and stand up for what you passionately believe in, your environment may not support you and others may ridicule you. And you may not even be right this time. But in the tradition of the Wright brothers, Copernicus, Gallileo, Bell, Magellan, Branson, Rosa Parks, Nelson Mandela, Gandhi, Soichiro Honda, Churchill, .. if you have a vision it is your clarity that helps us out of the doldrums of chaos that we humans occassionally drop into, and so becomes your responsibility if you have seen further. The mark of the great is that they don’t let the limited holding pattern of current reality stop them from helping to guide humanity to higher ground. No matter what.

Schopenhauer said it best: All truth passes through three stages. First it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.

This aspect of genius has nothing to do with being especially talented. It has everything to do with the guts it takes to really LIVE in this crazy chaotic shared game.space. It is true genius though, and requires a distinct intelligence.
Courage comes from the original French root Coeur (heart). Those lionhearted among us have an intelligence not governed by solely by rationality, but one that offers absurd amounts of strength, determination and insight that outstrip all logic. This was Einstein’s singular genius above all. . making the heuristic jump to truth that had not been imagined before, to see the solution and progressively use empirical evidence to fill in the gaps to create the bridge for reality to catch up.

I went to an exhibition last year Hands that Shape Humanity that is a celebration of the bright and brave who walk among us. It supports the Peace Trust, established by one of South Africa’s bravest souls, the Arch (Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu) ..and well worth the time to ignite your own courage and creativity when the exhibition comes to your city. Go rediscover people who have acted.thought.spoken so daringly that they have become larger than life.
38 legends :: among them Jonah Lomu, Tom Peters, Edward de Bono, Tom Robbins, Gary Kasparov, Carlos Santana, Craig Venter, Isabelle Allende, Gary Player, Anita Roddick, Wayne Gretzky, Phillipe Starck, Paolo Coelho.. just go see for yourself >>

Big hearts. Big souls.

so again: IF YOU HAD THE GUTS, what would you do? today?