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I Took a Week Off. Three Years Later, I Sold to Google.
How the “week of want” brings you explosive ideas
Subject: “IMMEDIATE Action Reqeusted [sic]”
They misspelled “requested,” which had the unintended effect of highlighting that this email was urgent.
There were some documents attached to the email. They wanted me to review the documents and sign them. Then, I would get a wire of money to my bank account — from Google, Inc.
I had no idea this email was coming. It was a nice surprise, since it was my birthday. It was all thanks to a decision I made three years prior.
Three years prior, I cleared my schedule and declared what I call a “Week of Want.” I gave myself an entire week to work on whatever I wanted. I had no plan at the time — that was the point of my Week of Want. Three years later, here I was getting a surprise paycheck, thanks to that Week of Want.
Creative work happens in “Extremistan”
What was happening was a Black Swan. A rare and unpredictable event — in this case, a positive one. If you made several copies of the universe, and repeated my decision from three years prior, in most of those parallel universes, I probably wouldn’t end up getting money wired to my bank account from Google.
That’s because creative work happens in Extremistan. Nassim Taleb introduced Extremistan in his book, The Black Swan. Extremistan is a world of Black Swans — rare and unpredictable events.
Creative work does not happen in “Mediocristan”
Other kinds of work happens in the opposite of Extremistan — what Taleb calls Mediocristan. Mediocristan is a world that’s stable and predictable.
Serving coffee is a good example of work that happens Mediocristan. There’s a steady supply of coffee, and a steady demand for coffee. If you get a job at Starbucks, they can more or less predict that supply and demand, as well as their overhead costs. So, they can pay you by the hour.
When your line of work is thinking of ideas and bringing those ideas into the world, you can’t get paid by the hour. Beyoncé does not get paid by the hour to make…
