On being original

Julia Sim • OG

I tend to mostly value sincerity over originality. I think I perform better when I focus less on being original and more on being honest.

Timothy Ferriss • Tribe of Mentors: Short Life Advice from the Best in the World

One form of originality is creation. Another form is synthesis.

People often focus so much on creating new ideas that they overlook the value of synthesizing ideas from different sources.

Innovation usually mean connecting previously unconnected concepts.

James Clear • 3-2-1: On Seeing Opportunities, Originality, and the Magic of Books | James Clear

“What is originality? Undetected plagiarism.” — William Ralph Inge

Austin Kleon • Steal Like An Artist - a book by Austin Kleon

Thumbnail of What I’ve Learned After Three Years on Substack

Rob Henderson • What I’ve Learned After Three Years on Substack

Which is all to say: there is always something a little, well, dangerous, about the concept of originality: a danger that has been elided by our contemporary startup-statured culture, which holds as gospel that imitation is for normies, and innovation for the kind of geniuses most people now secretly believe themselves to be.

Tara Isabella Burton • Original Sin—A Theological Reading of Innovation

There’s a frustration in feeling like every idea has already been picked apart by someone smarter, faster, and with a larger audience than you. For many, the impulse to add to the conversation is suffocated by their fear of redundancy. I’m sure a lot of us can relate to that—I know every time I go to write an essay, I feel like I’m just echoing ide... See more

The death of the public intellectual

Anyhow, the older I get, the less impressed I become with originality. These days, I’m far more moved by authenticity. Attempts at originality can often feel forced and precious, but authenticity has quiet resonance that never fails to stir me.