There is a very famous film of Picasso painting live. About halfway through creating an effortless masterpiece he says “ Ca va tres mal” (it’s going very badly). Even someone like Picasso struggled to get a painting to go where he wanted it to go. It’s his self-belief, confidence and self-trust that allows him to work through the “bad” stage and experience that tells him that he can make it right. I’m certainly not in that league, but that helped me to understand that I should push through (although sometime you can try too hard and take a sketch too far) and trust my instinct.
Innovation is a team sport, not a solitary occupation. It evolves on the shoulders of giants who have gone before. It’s not a mutation, it’s an adaptation.
Admiral William McRaven’s Commencement Address to students of the University of Texas at Austin in 2014 is one of those moments. This speech is well worth listening to.
Sports science has made considerable strides in the last few years, and many of its techniques and discoveries are highly applicable to everyday life. We can learn a lot about ourselves by using knowledge and practices that take us away from our daily routines.
I have often wondered how it is that we can focus on one thing rather than another, why we can sometimes focus so clearly that we exclude all other distractions. Like internet algorithms, It turns out that we have a system in our brains that does just that. The Reticular Activation System.