Book review: Originals
Don't read the book, just read my review!
I scream,
You scream,
We all scream for pop-psy-cream
Let’s spend a chapter ruminating on that “surprising” study that’s already been cited by fourteen-thousand other self-help books since 2006.
Didja know that <html>insert_useless_fact_here</hmtl>, isn’t that amazing!
I hope you like the phrase: “Here’s why everyone is doing it wrong.”
Don’t forget to read the foreword by <html>insert_c_suite_tech_exec_here</html>
My book was endorsed by a more prominent pop psychology author than your book!
Haha ok, I’m being mean. Whatever. I guess pop psychology just brings out my goofy side. And to be fair, this book wasn’t even half bad. I learned a few things. It’s just that, like many other texts, Originals by Adam Grant could have sufficiently expressed itself as a long newsletter instead of a short book.
But hey, uncalled for verbosity gives me a chance to earn my keep. I’ll now share with you everything worth knowing from “Originals” so that you can marginally increase your understanding of the world without getting your hands inky. Let’s do this thing!
“Shapers” are independent thinkers: curious, non-conforming, and rebellious. They practice brutal, nonhierarchical honesty. And they act in the face of risk, because their fear of not succeeding exceeds their fear of failing.
That’s familiar, therefore I love it!
The more familiar something is, the more prone we are to like it. I know, I know, we’re all familiar with this familiar finding, but this rehashing of a worn concept got me thinking about it from two different angles.
The mere exposure effect has been replicated many times—the more familiar a face, letter, number, sound, flavor, brand, or Chinese character becomes, the more we like it. It’s true across different cultures and species; even baby chickens prefer the familiar.
One - I regularly interact with someone on the social media platform formerly known as Twitter. She’s not particularly insightful, and I wouldn’t say we’re close, but after talking for so long I have a certain fondness for her. I would be more likely to help her in a time of need than someone who I might find to be a more compelling person, but whom I’ve not spoken to very much. Familiarity matters!
I also think about the mere exposure effect in terms of growing this Substack. Some people subscribe after reading a single article, but others might need time to warm up to the discombobulated tangle that is the outcome of me gnashing at a keyboard with eighty percent accuracy. Get the word out over and over again, and trust that repeated exposure is the key to winning people over. Applicable to any newsletter or business, no doubt.
Two - Familiarity breeds comfort, and that made me think about the little town I grew up in. By the time I was a freshman in high school I was already counting down the days till I could leave. But the same couldn’t be said for my friends. They freaking loved that little podunk village! Most of them are still there to this day!
Reading about the exposure effect got me to think about it from my friends perspective. Whereas I saw the same shit every day and grew to dislike it*, for them the familiarity must have inculcated comfort, a warm duvet that they couldn’t unshackle themselves from.
*This reminds me a story of my uncle who lives in Manhattan. The story goes that one day he went into a diner he’d been favoring lately and the waitress greeted him by name and asked if he’d like the usual. He said yes, ate his dinner, then never went back to that damn place again.
The first mover disadvantage
Maybe being the first mover isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be…
Surprisingly, the downsides of being the first mover are frequently bigger than the upsides. On balance, studies suggest that pioneers may sometimes capture greater market share, but end up not only with lower chances of survival but lower profits as well. As marketing research Lisa Bolton summarizes, “Although first movers face some advantages in particular industries, the academic research remains mixed and does not support an overall first-mover advantage.”
Honestly, that’s about all you need to know. The book provides many examples to support its case, but the idea is simple. First movers fail a lot more than is commonly acknowledged, and for several good reasons.
First movers can find it difficult to get consumers to try something new. I.e. buy something online for the first time.
First movers cannot learn from other company’s mistakes.
First movers may encounter increased logistical problems. I.e. when Apple built the first iPhone they had trouble creating glass for the screen that wouldn’t crack. A few years later and that problem had already been solved.
Movements devour themselves
In one study, vegans and vegetarians evaluated members of their own groups and one another’s groups, relative to members of the general public. Vegans showed nearly three times as much prejudice toward vegetarians as vegetarians did toward vegans. In the eyes of the more extreme vegans, the mainstream vegetarians were wannabes: if they really cared about the cause, they wouldn’t eat animal products like eggs. - The more strongly you identify with an extreme group, the harder you seek to differentiate yourself from more moderate groups that threaten your values.
Here’s a non-rhetorical question: why do people with excessively strong beliefs tend to persecute those with slightly weaker beliefs, as opposed to members of the general public with no beliefs at all?
I reread this section of the book four or five times but I still don’t get it. I’ve heard that the social justice warriors reserve the vilest treatment for lapsed members of the faith, as opposed to people who have never stepped foot into the church of the woke. Why is that?
I guess with the SJW example you could say that it’s the tribe trying to dissuade others from leaving. But from the vegan example, presumably most of the vegetarians were not lapsed vegans but just regular ol’ carrot munchers to begin with. So why the vitriol? If we assume that any group’s primary goal is expansion, wouldn’t it make sense to court people who are ideologically similar?
If you can explain any of this to me I’d love to hear your interpretation, I can’t make sense of it.
How to encourage people to do better
IMO this was the book’s best lesson. Pop psychology at its best; simple and (hopefully) effective. While this excerpt concerns children, this concept can be applied to humans of all ages.
Children who received character praise were subsequently more generous. Of the children who were complimented for being helpful people, 45 percent gave craft materials to cheer up kids at a hospital two weeks later, compared with only 10 percent of the children who were commended for engaging in helpful behavior. When our character is praised, we internalize it as part of our identities. Instead of seeing ourselves as engaging in isolated moral acts, we start to develop a more unified self-concept as a moral person.
If we want to encourage a person to continue engaging in a certain behavior we should praise them for being that type of person, rather than praise the act itself.
No - “That was very generous!”
Yes - “You are so generous!”
A decidedly simple tweak yet one that I have little trouble believing is effective. Candidly, I get a bigger boost from someone saying that I’m a good writer, as opposed to hearing that someone has enjoyed a particular piece of writing. And I can imagine that most people would rather hear that “you are good” rather than “you’ve done good.”
Also, I realized that this is a valuable lesson in self-talk. We would be better served to describe ourselves as “talented” or “intelligent,” rather than praising a specific action we’ve done.
How to not be nervous before a presentation
You’re giving a presentation in six minutes and you’re so damn nervous, what do you do? The trouble with telling yourself to relax is that if you’re all amped up on anxiety hormones and you probably can’t just make yourself chill out at will. Another option is to lie, to tell yourself you’re calm even if you’re not. But this creates a disconnect that is hard to reconcile.
Originals recommends a third approach: tell yourself that you’re excited. Being excited is only a step or two away from being nervous, and it’s more logically coherent to reframe your nerves as excitement rather than trying to force a state of zen calm.
How to topple a totalitarian government
Another great lesson from Originals: the first step in defeating a totalitarian government is to get all of the citizens to realize they’re on the same page. For example, a librarian might feel that her country’s government is completely corrupt and ought to be replaced, but since she rarely hears anyone else voice a similar opinion she may believe that her view is in the minority.
Originals explained a few of the methods that intelligent anti-authoritarian groups have used to get everyone to see how much everyone else hates the government too.
Instead of taking the risk of going on strike, they [the miners] issued a nationwide call for citizens to demonstrate their resistance by turning their lights on and off. People weren’t afraid to do that, and soon they saw that their neighbors weren’t, either. The miners also invited people to start driving slowly. Taxi drivers slowed down; so did bus drivers. Soon, pedestrians were walking in slow motion down the streets and driving their cars and trucks at a glacial pace. In his inspiring book Blueprint for Revolution, Popovic explains that prior to these activities:
“People were afraid to talk openly about despising Pinochet, so if you hated the dictator, you might have imagined that you were the only one. Tactics like these, Chileans used to say, made people realize that ‘we are the many, and they are the few.’”
Surely something similar is happening today. Many of us have opinions about what’s happening in mainstream society but we’re unwilling to voice our views for fear of cancellation or worse. The trick will be getting everyone to speak up at the same time, they can’t cancel all of us!
Conclusions
Originals gallops about like a three-legged horse trying to knock a rabid raccoon off its back. The marketing material would lead you to believe that it’s a book about original thinkers, but I didn’t uncover anything astonishing in these 200+ pages.
There was an entire chapter about Ray Dalio’s Bridgewater that I can’t imagine very many readers will benefit from, and by the end the book seemed to have lost any pretense of a plot. I also found the structure frustrating. There were moments of impending insight and just when the important revelation was due, Originals would cut away to an unrelated topic. Cliffhangers are an essential part of a good novel, but I don’t find them attractive in non-fiction.
If you’re headed to the beach, and want a half pound of non-fiction to keep your mind well-fed, you could definitely do worse. But you could do better too! So why don’t you just not read this book and say you did, and then go out get yourself some grade A material instead. I recommend While Time Remains or The Expectation Effect. Treat yourself to the best, you’ve earned it!
Originals cost ~$7 to buy, which is coincidentally the same price as a monthly subscription to this Substack. If you enjoyed this review and want to support my unchecked addiction to non-fiction, you can support this book junkie by upgrading your subscription to paid (check out all the benefits of doing so). Have you seen an avid reader go through literary withdrawals? It’s not a pretty sight ☠️
we are living in strange times getting useful idiots to sterilize and mutilate themselves on a voluntary basis some genius figured how to cut the population using no force , genius . plus these people will be tied to the pharma hospital complex for life . income stream for life why would they not push the agenda ? Cancel me , my life is more or less over