Academia instilled in me many wonderful values and ways of thinking, but it also left me with some warped assumptions about what is and isn’t worth doing.
One of the thorniest academic adages that I’m actively trying to unlearn is the belief that no one cares about your work unless you are THE FIRST MOST FIRSTIEST WHO EVER FIRSTED INTO THE GREAT FIRSTINESS. Your work can’t simply reinforce existing ideas, it’s gotta be a capital D ✨ Discovery ✨.
This emphasis on breaking new ground is particularly true when writing grants and scientific articles to convince others to fund your work and pay attention to your ideas.
For a scientific hypothesis to secure a grant or a slot in a high-impact journal, it’s got to meet an incredibly high standard of originality. Any scientific proposal or manuscript seeking publication cannot solely reinforce a previously established tennant or, god forbid, merely (fail to) replicate the results of a previously published study. To make the cut, your work needs to go where no science has gone before *flips on shades*.
The consequences of this overemphasis on originality are that:
Lots of other fields and creative pursuits suffer from a similar curse. Whether you’re writing a fantasy novel, launching a start up, or designing an elevator button panel, capitalism demands “innovation” and “disruption” while heralding the individual as the ultimate wellspring of creativity. This leads to disconnection and glorification of the tired “lone genius” narrative.
Focusing too much on being original is counterproductive and often backfires, especially when you consider that “true” originality, as in ideas arising from nothing, is a complete myth. All ideas are born on the backs of other ideas.
Taking a concept or idea and putting your own spin on it, framing it through your experience, expressing it in your voice is and always will be worth doing.
There’s an alchemical process invoked when we hold a thought in our brain, turn it over and around, then externalize it. The idea takes on a richness and texture it didn’t have before, making it way more likely to stick in our brains where it can connect to other ideas and spark insight.
Deprogramming an entrenched belief is no easy task, but I fully subscribe to the “change your thinking by first changing your actions and not the other way around” approach.
Writing articles for this blog is one way I challenge that belief that my creations must be trailblazing and radically original. I choose topics that interest me, independent of the volume of similar articles that already exist on the web. I try not to concern myself with questions like “does the world really need another article on callback functions?” Because the truth is there are as many ways to describe a callback function as there are coders around the globe, and different phrasings will find puchase in different minds.
Similarly, coding projects where the goal is to “build a clone of the XYZ website/app” have also helped me remember that imitation and iteration are natural, necessary parts of creativity and learning. It’s like taking apart a car engine or a blender and then putting it back together to understand how it works - you learn loads from the process even though it’s not your name on the patent.
When it comes to creative output, what ultimately matters more than where an idea comes from is what you do with that idea.