These highlights are derived from Chapter 5 of the Book, The Heart to Start, by David Kadavy.
I’ll try my best to condense this chapter, but honestly I find myself highlighting every single letter and space between letters.
Opening Quote:
If you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it.
C.S. Lewis
The Collective Consciousness
“Big ideas tap into the collective consciousness.”
“As society progresses, a vacuum grows between the status quo and the true desires of people in the world. The more distance that grows between what people are really thinking and what is actually going on, the more powerful that vacuum becomes. Seth Godin talked about this in more detail in his book Unleashing the Ideavirus: If something is going to go “viral,” he explained, it has to puncture a “vacuum.”
“Have you ever had a friend share an article with you and say, “I thought this so many times but I never put it into words”? Have you ever noticed comments on the YouTube video for your favorite song – everyone saying that the song says exactly what they’ve always wanted to say? This is what happens when you puncture a vacuum. You tap into the thoughts of not just one person but many people. All that pressure propels your idea. It makes people share it.“
“There’s a constant tension between the way things are, and what’s really on the minds of people. Most people don’t even notice the chatter going on in their heads. But when you echo that chatter, people notice. Your idea punctures the vacuum.”
Listen to Yourself
“It’s impossible to predict exactly when a vacuum is ready to be punctured. Too early, and people aren’t ready for it. Not enough people are thinking that thing, so the thing is either taboo or too weird. Too late, and the vacuum has already been punctured or deflated. But there’s one compass that always has potential to lead you to an explosive idea: The Voice.”
“I’m not saying that someone stole my ideas, or that my ideas were anything special. They were in my mind, and at the same time, they were in the minds of hundreds or millions of other people. People around the world are always coming to the same conclusions at the same time.“
Examples:
“Charles Wheatstone and Samuel Morse raced to invent the telegraph long before they knew one another existed. Joseph Swan and Thomas Edison simultaneously invented the light bulb. Several mathematicians invented calculus at the same time, and every human culture on the planet invented spoken language.”
“Whether or not someone lives on to be known as the person who invented something depends upon too many factors to have complete control over the outcome. But one factor is absolutely critical to doing something notable: You have to listen to the voice in your head and pursue its ideas.”
You can Always Re-roll Dice
“if you keep listening to The Voice and you keep rolling the dice, you’re going to come up with some winners.”
This is the quote of the chapter:
It’s better to be right one time out of a hundred than to be right zero times out of zero.
Just do it
Shia Labeouf
The Following chapter- 6: Go for the ‘the Pump’