Author of seven books, including The Accidental Creative, Herding Tigers, Die Empty, Daily Creative, The Brave Habit. I help creative pros and leaders to be brave, focused, and brilliant every day.
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BFB: The $750k music machine
Published 4 months ago • 4 min read
Happy 2025! I don't know about you, but I usually charge into a new year with all of the energy of a 20-year-retired prize fighter trying to get back into the ring after decades of too much rest and too many churros. I am awed by those who jolt from the starting blocks with unbridled enthusiasm. But if that's you, congrats!
So this week, here are three ideas to help you get your year off to a good start.
Brave: The Objective-less Life
Over holiday, I read a book called Why Greatness Cannot Be Planned: The Myth of the Objective. While I disagree with some of what's suggested in the book, the key points hit home. Many of the greatest discoveries in business, tech, science, and the arts didn't happen because someone defined a crystal clear objective. Instead, they were the result of staying attuned to happy accidents along the way, and following their intuition wherever it lead.
One key reason why objectives can be limiting is that we often don't know what we're looking for because we are only capable of connecting dots that already exist in our adjacent environment. The authors call these "stepping stones". As an example, they discuss the development of the first computers:
You might wonder, why didn’t the designers simply set their objective to build a fast computer in 1946? After all, we now know it’s possible. Why start so slow? But the world always works this way. Before anyone had explored the part of the great room filled with computers, no one could know what was even possible there. You have to visit before you can depart. In short, the stepping stones to faster computers were not yet known in 1946 because they had not yet been discovered, just as we do not yet know the stepping stones that may lead to computers two million times faster than today’s. Stepping stones are portals to the next level of possibility. Before we get there, we have to find the stepping stones.
So, the authors suggest that instead of setting some grand objective, we should instead play with the "stepping stones" in our tool kit and see what we can make of them. Doing that, we might just make an unexpected leap.
Is there any way in which your current big objective(s) could be limiting how you approach your work? Your creativity? Your ability to be flexible?
Focused: The Multi-Level Why
In December, our family took a river cruise up the Rhine from Basel to Cologne, stopping in towns along the way to explore the Christmas markets. On Christmas day, we docked in a small town called Rüdesheim to visit a museum of automatic music machines.
Produced over a century ago, these machines were capable of replicating the sound of a full band. They contained drums, piano, violins, horns, and more, and were very impressive, especially for the time. One machine we saw was dubbed the "8th Wonder Of The World" for its ability to replicate the sound of an orchestra. Hotels would purchase these machines and have them on display in their lobby to entertain guests. One of the machines we saw sold for the equivalent of $750,000 in today's money.
Well, at least one of them did. The maker took orders for dozens more, thinking he'd finally found his fortune, but before he could fulfill the order he was disrupted by a new device - the phonograph. With this new device, music could be performed once in a studio and played anywhere in the world over and over. And, much less expensively. So, no more need for the expensive automatic music machines.
There are many solutions to any problem. For example, "How can a machine produce music when a band isn't available?" can be answered by creating a machine that replicates a band, or a machine that replicates the performance of a band. Both solutions to the problem, but one is much more scalable.
When we are focusing on a problem, we have to train ourselves to abstract from the obvious answer. We have to think at multiple levels of "why?"
Is there any place in your work where you are blinded by the obvious answer and need to think more abstractly?
The "8th Wonder Of The World" in Rüdesheim.
Brilliant: Hunches
This week's podcast episode features an interview with Bernadette Jiwa about her book Hunch. Bernadette has discovered that there are three core qualities that tend to be present in those who are able to routinely spot great ideas.
What they share from my research is three qualities: Curiosity, empathy and imagination.... You're paying attention to what's going on in the real world. You're asking yourself the kind of questions, like "what's wrong? And how would I fix that?" Or "what's happening there that shouldn't be happening?" Or "what's not happening that should be happening?", which is flipping that. And just observing, paying attention.
The better we become at paying attention to our environment, asking curious questions, and putting ourselves into the minds and lives of those we aspire to serve with our work, the more likely we are to be able to spot great ideas when they cross our path.
What questions should you be asking (that you're not)?
Podcast: Hunch
This week's Daily Creative podcast episode features Bernadette Jiwa discussing how to develop hunches and generate brilliant ideas.
Thanks for subscribing. If you found this helpful, please share it with others or consider purchasing one of my books.
Until next time, may you be brave, focused, and brilliant.
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Todd Henry
Arms dealer for the creative revolution
Author of seven books, including The Accidental Creative, Herding Tigers, Die Empty, Daily Creative, The Brave Habit. I help creative pros and leaders to be brave, focused, and brilliant every day.
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