ash write

Edison had it right when he said, “Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration”. However, from the way people have been talking about it, you’d think the 99% is all you should care about. That 1%, however, is what keeps design sexy and isn’t all that mysterious.

We look at inspiration as sacred, as if it were some divine communication with Bodoni’s holy ghost. However, if you look at true moments of inspiration, you’ll find they have one thing in common: the ability to see connections.

Take Sir Isaac Newton. The legend goes, he was hit by an apple and suddenly realized gravity. Regardless of whether Newton was actually hit by the fruit, his story is classic in how we regard inspiration. It’s as if some divine force threw the apple from the tree to knock the sense into Newton’s head.

Romantic, but to see Newton’s discovery as sacred is a mistake, and not fitting to Newton’s memory. Fruit falling from trees is about as occult as the sun rising every morning: it has happened innumerable times in history and will continue to do so. Also, give our forefathers a bit of credit. The concept of gravity itself as a force that drew things to the ground wasn’t exactly rocket science, even in the 1600s.

Newton, however, is special because he recognized the apple’s fall as a vehicle for something greater. His good friend and assistant John Conduitt wrote, “Whilst he was pensively meandering in a garden it came into his thought that the power of gravity (which brought an apple from a tree to the ground) was not limited to a certain distance from earth, but that this power must extend much further than was usually thought. Why not as high as the Moon said he to himself & if so, that must influence her motion & perhaps retain her in her orbit, whereupon he fell a calculating what would be the effect of that supposition.”

The story thus seems a little more realistic. A very educated man working on a theory of gravity is scratching his head for what must be years until he sees an apple fall and thinks, what if the moon is just a big apple really far from the earth? What if it curved to the center of the earth, instead of falling straight down? Still impressive, but entirely more plausible than the Genius Gods smacking Newton with the forbidden fruit.

Why, then, the awe and subsequent denial of inspiration? First, people think of inspiration as being the moment that sparks a project or discovery. The 1% always comes first, and then the 99% comes as support. This is rarely true. What happens more often is that a person grapples with a hard problem. Newton’s 99% perspiration started long before the 1% came along. He had already been thinking about gravity, and the apple merely acted as a catalyst to a new direction.

Second, inspiration is often the result of obsession. A person ripe for inspiration is so immersed in his or her work that everything relates to it. Think of that annoying teenage friend you had. You’d be out to lunch talking about how Batman is Awesome, and he would sigh, “Amy loves Batman. She’s so dreamy…” If we take the example of Newton, it was only natural that he took the apple and related it to his work. It could have been a ball, a potato, or a very round cat, and he likely still would have made the connection.

Thirdly, inspiration being holy is both a barrier and an excuse. It keeps creatives smug as the keepers of an uncommon clairvoyance and gives the uncreative license to be so. If you aren’t touched by the Genius Gods, it wasn’t meant to be, sorry. No need to try!

Even worse are the creatives who are advocating the 99% as the only thing necessary. With 99%, you could be missing 2 chain links on your bike, or a handlebar. With 99%, Newton had a bunch of writing in a notebook. I’m most definitely not knocking on the 99%. You’ve got to walk the walk. However, that 1% is the spark, it’s what ties the 99% together and imbues meaning to it.

So what can you do to make inspiration in your life? Seek out interesting problems and then immerse yourself. Jump in with no fear and start cranking away. Eat knowledge and the universe for breakfast, as any mundane detail or fact might be the 1% to your 99%. As a living individual, you see the world completely differently from any other human being. Take advantage of the fact and get inspired!