Boring and basic
In case you didn’t know, this is the entrance to the Louvre Museum in Paris. It was designed by I. M. Pei. (Image by matt_86)
“I think everyone has heard of that by now,” he said.
And I sat back and thought about that. There was no way it could possibly be true, but I didn’t think it would be very nice to say that in reply.
Certainly, my toddler nephew hasn’t heard of this whatever business practice we were discussing.
And it’s probably foreign to the Gen Z middle schoolers I worked with last year.
What about the elder Gen Z’s, now college graduates? Are they responsible for catching up on the last twenty years of books, thought leaders, TED Talks (nobody watches TED talks anymore), and business trends, all by the age of twenty-five?
To paraphrase and repurpose Matthew McConaughey’s iconic creepy-guy line from Dazed and Confused, we keep getting older, but the college kids stay the same age. There’s no way they could possibly know all that we know, especially when we keep learning and growing, too.
Recently, a teacher friend was asked to give a presentation to his colleagues on some of the latest research on education. He wanted to use Carol Dweck’s Mindset as a jumping off point.
Well, it turned out that he needed to begin with presentation on Dweck’s concept of growth mindset vs. fixed mindset, because this foundational concept was unknown to everyone on the teaching team but the administrators.
Not everyone needs to read the book, which was originally published in 2006, but a ten-minute summary of its highlights could change their lives.
From there, the teaching team would have a shared language to talk about the latest innovations in their field. Railing against their ignorance would be as useless and cruel as these teachers railing against the ignorance of their ten-year-old students. Why should we know anything that we haven’t been exposed to? That’s what education is for.
Though the impulse that drives me as a creator is to go deeper into the learning and share what I find, I’m discovering that the things that I take for granted — the simple, basic ones — are often the most useful to share.
This reality came alive for me this week when I posted a video on productive procrastination, a term I believe I heard first from my friend Rose Shue but have seen since in many places. When Rose mentioned productive procrastination, I knew immediately what she meant because it matched my own experience.
So my video wasn’t explaining what productive procrastination is. It was just reminding people that they can give themselves permission to do it and why it is a valid approach to task management.
That’s why, when I was editing the video, I thought, “This is boring and basic and everyone knows this. What am I contributing here?”
But as I write this, the video has been presented to 1,633 people. There were 270 repeat viewings. Some 19% of them gave it a like. Forty-two people favorited it, and it was shared 15 times.
None of the comments said, “This is boring and basic.”
Age obviously isn’t the only factor involved in what someone knows, but it’s worth noting that 82% of viewers are younger than me, and more than 17% are younger than Rose.
Turns out, after more than twenty years in education, I’m still teaching — just not in a classroom.
This pattern is repeated with my clients. They tend to undervalue what they have to say and dismiss the uniqueness of their perspective. They ideas they mention casually in conversation are gems.
It isn’t just that the Gen Z kids will find value in their insights. It’s highly likely that their colleagues will, too. Of course, they get to choose who they want to share with and under what circumstances. But my assertion is that if they’re ruling out possibilities because they think they have nothing original to share, their premise is wrong.
Even when we’re sharing an idea that has been shared before, we’re sharing it in a different context, in a different voice, colored by our own experiences, and connected to the unique array of other ideas we’ve been exposed to. Nobody else has read all of the books we’ve read, been to all of the places we’ve been, and had all of the conversations we’ve had. The truth is, we don’t have to try that hard to be original.
I would probably not have learned this if I hadn’t started sharing my ideas outside of the classroom. But now that I see the benefit of sharing foundational concepts, I feel a responsibility to speak up about it. Maybe it was already totally obvious to you, but that’s okay — that doesn’t mean it’s obvious to everyone.
