"Why Greatness Cannot Be Planned: An Exploration of Freedom in Creativity, Innovation, and Creation" Reading Notes

Author: Kenneth Stanley; Joel Lehman
Recommended rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Excerpt#

It is not easy to "govern by doing nothing" if you have sufficient resources.
If you start out striving for a specific goal, you won't get far. Goals narrow your scope of exploration. For great endeavors, goals are misleading. Greatness is not the result of goal guidance, because the path to greatness is never a straight line, and often, being fast is actually slow—without specific goals, each time you just choose the next stepping stone, you can find treasures.
Although schools do grade students based on their progress in a particular subject, the goal of the school is to cultivate students who can achieve high scores. However, the school itself is also divided into different levels because of this. At the national level, each country has set various goals, such as low crime rates, low unemployment rates, or low carbon emissions, and has invested a lot of effort and resources into tracking the progress of these goals and other similar goals. Behind the pursuit of these social goals, there is an assumption that is not often humane but rarely questioned, that any worthwhile social achievement is best set as a goal, and then everyone works together and perseveres towards that goal. This begs the question: are there things in this world that can be accomplished without setting goals?
All of our pursuits can be precisely defined as specific goals and then gradually advanced in a mechanical manner. This idea is undoubtedly a good psychological comfort when we face the difficulties and confusion of life. Because if from the beginning, there are neat and uniform milestones to continue to guide the world, like a clockwork clock, fixed and reliable, people will definitely feel a great sense of security.
"No goal, no motivation" sounds pleasing to the ear, but it is frustrating to do—massive goal calculations, evaluations, and measurements will invade every aspect of life, as if to turn us into slaves of "goals" and exhaust ourselves for the impossible "absolute perfection". Perhaps sometimes, "goals" can provide meaning or direction in our lives, but they also limit our freedom and become a cage that imprisons our desire for exploration.
The goal-oriented approach leads us to focus only on the rewards and scenery at the end, and neglects the uniqueness and unique value of each exploration path itself.
In a sense, we are all playing the same game in various aspects of life. In our cultural concept, setting goals, striving to achieve goals, and measuring progress in the process have become the main ways we pursue success.
If you are a person with "no great ambitions" and only want to achieve some ordinary wishes, setting goals will be very effective, which is also one of the main reasons why people rarely question goals. For example, if a manufacturing company decides to increase its production capacity by 5%, even if it succeeds, not many people will be surprised, or if a software company wants to upgrade its product from version 2.0 to version 3.0, it will also succeed, and there is nothing surprising about it. Such "daily small goal achievements" make us mistakenly believe that setting goals is almost effective for anything, but as "ambitions" become more and more "lofty", the hope of achievement becomes more and more elusive—this is the most thought-provoking place.
It is useful to consider success as a process of exploration and discovery.
If you have never seen a watercolor painting, it is unlikely that you will suddenly create one.
Things that serve as stepping stones are gateways to higher possibilities. We must find this stone first and step on it firmly before we can take a step towards discovery.
In fact, if you want to achieve more so-called great achievements, goals often become stumbling blocks, such as goals related to exploration, discovery, creativity, invention, or finding true happiness.
When the greatest achievements are set as goals, the possibility of achieving them becomes almost slim.
If your goal is to invent the microwave oven, you will definitely not think of studying radar; if you want to invent an airplane (like countless inventors have done for years), you will not think of spending decades inventing an engine; if you want to learn like Charles Babbage in the 1920s, trying to build a computer, you will not think of spending the rest of your life studying vacuum tube technology.
Those "lofty" goals are often deceptive. If we are only pursuing the end result, we will only end up with an empty promise. We often have to give up our goals, and as a result, we have the opportunity to achieve them again.
If you want to figure out a new direction or a truly new way of doing something, you just need to play your own music and improvise. True inventors are nothing more than "moving with their hearts and acting freely".
Sometimes, the best way to achieve "grand ambitions" is to "not deliberately pursue a specific ambition" (because the more deliberately you pursue, the more it goes against your wishes).
Our world is filled with various goals and standards set for the sake of success, which makes our lives mechanized and suppresses our passion for life. However, there are other ways to happiness and success. When your intuition tells you that something important is happening, you can not only believe it but also believe it firmly. Even if you cannot explain it clearly, you do not need to rack your brains to come up with a reason to justify every little whim.
Being too obsessed with goals is also unhealthy. The criteria for judging "where all our time has gone" based on goals are fundamentally wrong.
"While you are planning, life is quietly moving forward." - John Lennon.
There is no magical formula for changing the world, or rather, great achievements do not have a so-called success script, they often come into being without careful planning.
Choosing a realistic life goal is not unfamiliar to all of us. Just think about the old saying "be realistic, don't daydream" and you will understand. Although the pressure of choosing realistic life goals obviously has a greater impact on musicians, their stories actually reflect a broader cultural tradition: in the choice of life goals, following one's heart seems more foolish than pursuing practicality.
Those who achieve great achievements are willing to give up their original goals and seize new opportunities when they arise.
Those who are busy looking for love will only show their own lack of love, and those who lack love will never find love. Only those who have love can find love, and they never need to search for it." Many people will realize this sooner or later.
Without the hobbies he cultivated for his own entertainment, people might never have discovered the importance and value of these cave paintings. So, these hobbies unexpectedly became stepping stones to great discoveries.
Everyone has the right to pursue the passion of life, even if they deviate from the original plan or conflict with the original goals. Because the courage to change direction sometimes brings unexpected rewards.
Life is full of risks, and some choices will indeed not succeed; but those who ignore the joy of surprises rarely achieve their dreams.
"I will not follow the path, but go to where no one has set foot and leave my own footprints." - Muriel Strode, "A Soul's Faring"
If we set a certain picture as a goal, we will never be able to cultivate it. The reason why all the pictures on the website are discovered is that they are not the goals of breeding and iteration themselves. The website users who discovered these pictures are without exception those who did not initially set them as their own goals.
If we focus too much on the goals we hope to achieve, we may ultimately overlook the most crucial steps to achieve them.
No matter how tempting and persuasive it may seem, lofty and grand goals cannot guide you to their side. Grand goals themselves are the most unreliable compass.
Among all the biases we have listed, there may be one of the most deeply rooted a priori fallacies or natural biases; it not only occupies the supreme position in the ancient world, but also still has almost undisputed dominance over many of the most cultivated minds... This is, the conditions of a phenomenon must, or at least may, resemble the phenomenon itself. - John Stuart Mill, "System of Logic".
Almost all major inventions were invented without considering the invention itself.
The discovery of electricity did not consider computers, and it did not even consider vacuum tubes. The invention of vacuum tubes was not for the purpose of promoting the manufacture of computers. Humans just lack enough foresight to understand what new inventions will be driven by a discovery.
The prerequisite for creating great inventions is that all the prerequisites already exist.
True passion is the fundamental reason that drives you to succeed.
The disconnect between the ideal way our world should work and the way it actually works is the problem we should really pay attention to and worry about. When we are committed to pursuing our dreams, we should at least know what those dreams are and pursue them with passion and perseverance. But if we accept this idea without thinking, it will lead to absurd behavior and results. Just as you cannot evolve human intelligence in a Petri dish based on intellectual measurements, determination and intelligence alone cannot create a computer—we need stepping stones! Just as you cannot become rich simply by finding a high-paying job, because a pay raise today does not guarantee a continuous pay raise in the future. The reality we need to accept is that many things cannot be achieved simply through effort.
Many people have indeed achieved their goal of becoming rich, but not because they dreamed of becoming rich, but because they pursued their passion, and this tireless pursuit happened to bring rich material rewards.
The problem is that lofty goals are different from ordinary goals, and the best way to achieve these lofty goals is to ignore them. This idea seems to go against conventional intuition and traditional wisdom.
Grasping the uniqueness and novelty of every moment and enjoying unexpected joy. - Andre Gide
It doesn't take much effort to say what kind of person you want to be, where you want to go, or what you want to accomplish. The real challenge is how to achieve these desires. More precisely, the real problem is that it is difficult for us to determine the stepping stones between here and the ultimate goal.
Because great discoveries are never accidental.
These great discoverers are not fanatical, uneducated people, nor are they purely lucky to encounter great discoveries.
In the field of observation, opportunities favor prepared minds.
Novelty search does provide a more interesting sorting: from simple to complex.
Ultimately, we must acquire some knowledge in order to continue creating novelty, which means that novelty search is an information collector for constantly accumulating knowledge about the world. The longer the search, the more information about the world it will eventually accumulate. Of course, the amount of information and complexity go hand in hand, and more complex behaviors inevitably require more information.
The more "lofty" the goal, the more deceptive it is.
Overly "lofty" goals can never be achieved through the pursuit of effort—unless these goals are just a step away from us.
In order to prove that the United States is making progress, you can present various evidence: school test scores, crime statistics, arrest reports, or anything that can help politicians get elected and ordinary employees get promoted. After setting such statistical standards, many people in the institution will rack their brains to make it look like there is progress, even if there is actually none. - David Simon
Evaluating teachers based on students' test scores directly forces teachers to engage in test-oriented teaching, and the ultimate result is not the cultivation of students with rich knowledge and practical skills, but the production of test-oriented students who are good at memorization and exams.
In fact, economists have realized that relying too much on GDP is meaningless, even though it is widely used as an economic indicator in various countries. This paradox is also known as "GDP worship".
Only in the case of relatively ordinary goals, are standards useful.
When we are guided by a fundamental error, no matter how accurate it is, it is useless to us, because its result is just a better evaluation of the interfering factors on the way to the correct path, rather than a true stepping stone.
With the popularity of "test-oriented education" and the increasing pressure of goals such as "striving for high scores", reliance on this "intuition" has obviously been suppressed, and the result is that most teachers' autonomy, intuition, and creativity are deprived, and teachers' enthusiasm and original intentions for teaching are gradually exhausted.
Sometimes, emphasizing goals too much is a very dangerous practice.
In the long run, great causes can be achieved not because of goals, but precisely because there are no predetermined goals. This is a disappointing conclusion for those who hope to promote progress through mandatory standards; but for others, it may be an enlightenment.
I tell you: you must accept the restlessness and confusion in your heart, because it will make you a shining star. - Friedrich Nietzsche
The general process of applying for research project funding is as follows: scientists submit proposals to funding agencies and provide proposals that explain their research ideas; the proposals are then sent to a review panel composed of expert peer reviewers, who are usually senior scientists in the field covered by the proposal, such as biology or computer science; the reviewers then give ratings, including different levels from poor to excellent. Generally, the proposals with the highest average ratings are most likely to be funded.
If you follow the trend and do popular research, and echo it like a parrot, you may gain widespread recognition and support; on the contrary, a truly interesting idea may provoke controversy. In the boundaries of what we currently know and don't know, there are still some questions with uncertain answers. That is why in the unknown field of science, experts' opinions should remain divergent and divergent. It is precisely in this "wilderness" borderland between the known and the unknown that we should let the greatest minds of humanity explore, rather than "indulge in pleasure" in the comfort zone of the greatest consensus.
The fear of risk is one of the main reasons why people cling to goals. Although a certain degree of risk is the price that must be paid for exploration and progress, those who are responsible for funding usually do not want to take on excessive risks in order to avoid wasting resources on unrealistic and fanciful projects.
Once personal interests are involved, few people are willing to bet on overly ambitious goals, because most people have the intuition that merely setting a lofty goal does not guarantee its achievement. For this company, the deception of goals is too great, and the risk is not worth taking.
To be successful, do not aim for success as a goal; just do what you love and believe in, and success will naturally come. - David Frost
Houses should still be built according to the design drawings; software should still be designed according to established specifications; when you are preparing dinner for tomorrow, you can continue to follow the recipe. If you set a goal for exercise and stick to it, you can improve your physical endurance. All of these are moderate goals, which are not the subject of this book's argument and refutation, so there is no need to give up on them.
It is often wiser to determine where to go based on the current position rather than based on where you want to go. Everyone has the ability to transform the present into the future, but no one can turn the future into the present.
Protecting differences and accommodating divergent views is a virtue.
When everything has been said and done, when dreamers are tired of old visions, when the ashes of expectations without return settle on the insurmountable future, there is only one rational light that can penetrate the darkness: in order to achieve our highest goals, we must first willingly abandon them.

Summary#

The limitations of goals: great endeavors cannot be guided by goals, as goals limit the development of great endeavors. Many important breakthroughs are discovered step by step in exploration. No one knows that vacuum tubes will eventually invent computers. In great endeavors, flowers planted unintentionally will bloom and bear fruit when you least expect it. Any major invention is almost always invented without considering the invention itself.
Regarding hobbies: When we were young, teachers asked us about our dreams, and we would say many lofty ideals, such as becoming an astronaut or a scientist. But as we grow up, these ideals gradually dissipate due to the harsh reality. The book tells the case of a non-professional archaeology enthusiast who accidentally discovered ancient cave paintings near Altamira Mountain in Spain. Without the hobbies he cultivated for his own entertainment, people might never have discovered the importance and value of these cave paintings. So, these hobbies unexpectedly became stepping stones to great discoveries.
Instead of focusing on goals, the author suggests focusing on the process of exploration and discovery. Not deliberately pursuing a specific direction, but groping for the next stepping stone in the original stepping stone.