Hidden Genius

Join a group of people focused on collaboration over competition.

In a tweet, Musk suggests that people need to develop better “mental firewalls for the information constantly coming at us,” adding that a course on critical thinking should be a requirement in middle school. “Who wrote the software running in your head? Are you sure you actually want it there?”

The first is to evalute the current state of your beliefs. In her podcast, Rationally Speaking, Galef often asks her guests the following questions: “What have you changed your mind about?” and “What do you think are the strongest arguments against your view?”

Servant leadership was popularized by the late Robert Greenleaf, who believed that organizations are at their most effective when leaders encourage collaboration, trust, foresight, listening, and empowerment.

Goggins decided to do something that sucks every single day—because suffering begets growth. Often, that means acting against your first instinct. It’s pouring rain outside? Go run anyway. Your house is a mess but you’re tired? Clean it anyway.

“I saw this show on the Discovery Channel,” says Goggins. “It was just guys going through Hell Week [the brutal Navy SEALs training exercise]. They were freezing, there was a lot of water, and it brought back memories of me going through pararescue training. So at 297 pounds, I decided to try to be a Navy SEAL.”

In a blog post titled, “The Four Quadrants of Conformism,” technology investor Paul Graham says most people fall into one of four categories: those who are aggressively conventional-minded, passively conventional-minded, passively independent-minded, and aggressively independent-minded.

Creativity is simply the ability to generate fresh ideas, think of new ways to solve old problems, and create original work.

He believes the big, juicy failures are where true, groundbreaking originality lies.