It’s a bit annoying how much faster other people are growing.
Looking at you,
and .Before I blink, these guys have attracted thousands of e-mail subscribers and thousands of followers. They’ve created new products and challenges, they’ve interviewed more interesting people, and they’ve made a lot of money. Seriously, you want fast results online, you go follow them right now.
And me? Well, I’m doing okay. I show up, and I do my best, and I know I’m successful in many ways — but also, I know I could be more successful. I know I could be growing faster.
The feeling that you could be doing better, but you’re not, is enough to make you wanna pour vodka in your morning coffee. A few years ago, that thought alone would’ve been enough for me to give up. It would’ve slowed me down even more, it would’ve convinced me that I’m not good enough.
Now, I know I’m good enough. I’m just moving at my own pace, and doing things my way. That’s the whole point of being a solopreneur, right? You can be yourself, fully. You can take whichever path you want, and grow however you want.
Online business isn’t a zero-sum game. Meaning, you don’t have to lose for me to win. We’re all just a different type of genius.
This newsletter issue is inspired by David Kadavy’s interview with the author of Old Masters and Young Geniuses, David Galenson.
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Secret to Success: Embrace your type of genius.
In this newsletter:
The two types of creative genius.
Picasso, the conceptual genius.
Cezanne, the experimenting genius.
What kind of genius are you?
The two types of creative genius.
David Galenson is a Professor in Economics at the University of Chicago who — unlike most economics professors — is interested in creativity and art.
The inspiration behind his book, Old Masters and Young Geniuses, came after David tried to answer a simple question: how does the age of an artist affect the prices of their paintings?
I must admit it’s an interesting way to examine the young vs old conundrum, especially in the age of 20-something tech millionaires.
To do this, he isolated the ages of artists from other factors that affect price, such as canvas size, sale date, and support type (whether it’s on canvas, paper, or other).
He expected to find a neat correlation that answered his question in simple terms: paintings from younger or older artists sold more, for example.
However, he discovered two clear trends. Some artists’ “younger” paintings were their most expensive. For other artists, it was their “older” paintings.
David then found this same pattern in the historical significance of artists’ work: The rate at which paintings were included in art history books or retrospective exhibitions — both indicators of significance — peaked at the same ages as the values of paintings.
He went deeper into his research and discovered that the artists who peaked early took a conceptual approach, while those who peaked late took an experimental approach.
The perfect examples of contrasting experimental and conceptual painters are Paul Cézanne and Pablo Picasso. Paintings from Cézanne’s final year of life, when he was sixty-seven, are his most valuable. Paintings from early in Picasso’s career, when he was twenty-six, are his most valuable.
A painting done when Picasso was twenty-six is worth four times as much as one done when he was sixty-seven (he lived to be ninety-one, and his biographer and friend called the dearth of his influential work later in life “a sad end”). A painting done when Cézanne was sixty-seven — the year he died — is worth fifteen times as much as one done when he was twenty-six.
Picasso, the young conceptual genius.
Picasso was an impatient, brave creator who wanted to try it all. He executed one concept after another: Blue period, Rose period, Cubism.
Picasso was meticulous about planning and executing each painting. For his most famous work, Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, he did over four hundred sketches before diving into the final piece.
One model described how he simply stared at her for an hour, apparently planning a series of paintings in his head, which he began painting the next day, without her assistance.
While Cézanne struggled to paint what he saw, Picasso said, “I paint objects as I think them, not as I see them.”
Conceptual genius is practical genius. It’s about having a strategy, about seeing the big picture and executing to perfection to achieve a certain result. Here are a few more conceptual-type geniuses, according to David Galenson.
Georges Seurat: He had his pointillism method down to a science. He could paint tiny dots on a giant canvas without stepping back to see how it looked.
Andy Warhol: Used assistants heavily, saying, “I think somebody should be able to do all my paintings for me,” and “Why do people think artists are special? It’s just another job.”
Raphael: He had a huge workshop of as many as fifty assistants, innovated by allowing a printmaker to make and sell copies of his work, and synthesized the hard-won methods of Leonardo and Michelangelo.
Cezanne, the not-so-young experimenting genius.
Cézanne was constantly experimenting with his painting techniques, which is why it took a while for his career to peak.
When he was in his thirties, he left the successful “conceptual” crowd of Paris painters and moved to the south of France, where he spent three decades struggling to paint what he truly saw.
He felt limited by the fact that, as he was looking at a canvas, he could only paint the memory of what he had just seen.
He did some preparatory sketches as a young painter but grew to paint straight from nature.
He viewed his paintings as works in progress and often disregarded them once completed. He only signed about 10%, and at times, he casually left them in the fields.
Perfectionists by nature, experimenting geniuses aren’t so focused on results as they are keen to give the world the best version of what they can create. If they feel a project is “off” or the initial spark has “left the building”, they often leave their works unfinished.
For better or worse, they avoid self-promotion and prefer to let their work speak for themselves. Eventually, their struggle and experimentation lead them to the pinnacle of their creative careers — but it takes a while.
Some other experimental artists:
Georgia O’Keeffe: She painted pictures of a door of her house in New Mexico more than twenty times.
Jackson Pollock: He said he needed to drip paint on a canvas from all four sides, what he called a “‘get acquainted’ period,” before he knew what he was painting.
Leonardo da Vinci: He was constantly jumping from project to project, rarely finishing. He incorporated his slowly-accrued knowledge of anatomy, optics, and geology into his paintings.
What kind of genius are you?
In his book, Galenson emphasizes that no one is either an experimental or conceptual creator — it’s a spectrum, not two different categories.
However, where you are on the spectrum isn’t really up to you, at least according to the author. If you, for example, want to make yourself a conceptual creator to succeed faster, you can’t.
You might switch from a conceptual to an experimental approach, and find it works better for you, as did Cézanne, or you might try to go from experimental to conceptual and find it doesn’t, as did Pissarro. But you can’t change the way you think.
Here are some qualities that differ between experimental and conceptual creativity. Which ones resonate more with you?
Conceptual creatives:
Work deductively. They begin with the end in mind. For example, a conceptual novelist knows the end of the novel before they begin.
Have specific goals. They already have an idea in their head they’re trying to execute. For example, an online writer who knows exactly what’s the lesson of their story before they start writing it.
Are confident. They know what they’re after, so once they’ve achieved it, they’re done, and can move on to the next thing.
Change quickly. They’ll move from subject to subject, style to style, concept to concept. They want to execute as much as possible and achieve different results.
Delegate. They just need their concept executed, so someone else can often do the work.
Steal. More than experimental artists, they take what others have developed and make it their own.
Experimental creatives:
Work inductively. Through the process of creation, they arrive at their solution. I often start articles and have no idea what the reader would get out of them.
Have vague goals. They’re not quite sure what they’re seeking. They find it during the process.
Are full of doubt. Since they don’t already have the solution, and aren’t sure what they’re looking for, they rarely feel they’ve succeeded.
Repeat themselves. They might paint the same subject over and over, tweaking their approach.
Do it themselves. They’re discovering throughout the process, so they rarely use assistants.
Discover. Over the years, they build up knowledge in a field, to invent new approaches.
If one approach sounds closer to you than the other, now you know who you are — but it doesn’t mean you can’t test the opposite approach and see how that fits. We learn all our lives, don’t we?
Either way, embrace who you are. There are a whole lot of geniuses in the world — but there’s only one of you.