Water has always been conducive to thinking. Most people find they have some of their best ideas when they are relaxing. To fully relax, you need to work on your body as well as your mind. By lying in a hot bath, closing your eyes and chilling out, your whole state becomes receptive to creative ideas. The most famous example of water-induced inspiration comes from the Greek mathematician Archimedes.
One day Archimedes was asked by the king to discover whether his crown was pure gold, or gold mixed with silver. This problem was a particularly difficult one, as many of the techniques of scientific analysis that are available today were then unknown. He remained stumped on this problem for days. As he was taking a bath, Archimedes suddenly came up with a solution: the density of metal can be determined from its weight loss when placed in water. Archimedes was so overjoyed at this discovery that he jumped up from his bath and ran through the streets naked shouting “Eureka!” (meaning “I have found it!)
One of the best water-based inspirations is rain. It has properties that create a fresh start for ideas. Heavy rain drowns out the noisy distractions around you, allowing you to concentrate. The water falling over the city creates new patterns and perceptions of things that you see everyday. Having rain drops cascade over you makes you feel alive and cleansed. So take advantage of next downpour to generate some new ideas!
This weekend I read Watchmen, a graphic novel by Alan Moore. I would normally say comic book, but the story is so compelling and complex piece of fiction that it is definitely a novel. Alan Moore, who wanted to transcend the perceptions of the comic book medium as something juvenile, created Watchmen as an attempt to make “a superhero Moby Dick; something that had that sort of weight, that sort of density.”
It worked. And it’s a great piece of story-telling. It’s odd. It’s honest. It’s frightening. Watchmen is set in an alternate 1985 America in which costumed superheroes are part of the fabric of everyday society, and the Doomsday Clock (which charts the USA’s tension with the Soviet Union) is ticking closer to nuclear war.
When one of his former colleagues is murdered, the washed up but determined masked vigilante Rorschach sets out to uncover a plot to kill and discredit all past and present superheroes. As he reconnects with his former crime-fighting legion – a ragtag group of retired superheroes – Rorschach glimpses a wide-ranging and disturbing conspiracy with links to their shared past and catastrophic consequences for the future. Their mission is to watch over humanity… but who is watching the Watchmen?
Watchmen has turned out to be the most popular graphic novel of all time for good reason. Plus, it’s going to be an awesome movie:
So much of marketing and business is based on being able to tell compelling stories. If you’re in need of inspiration in that realm, I highly recommend you read “Watchmen”. Trust me, it’s not a juvenile Archie comic.
I’ve written an article before on information design. Basically, it is the art of of preparing information so that it can be used by human beings with efficiency and effectiveness. Chris Jordan is an artist who uses this in his art. In fact, his art is dedicated to representing shocking statistics in forms that we can understand.
When people hear statistics that are in the millions and billions, the numbers are so vast that we can’t process the information. How can we possible visualize how much space 40 million paper cups take up? It tough, so we don’t bother. We ignore the information. But 40 million paper cups is how many cups get used in America every day, mostly for coffee. And they get shipped to landfills.
But how would this motivate us to change if we can’t even comprehend the information? Chris’s solution was to display the statistics in a way that we can digest. That we can gauge our impact.
This is a shot by Chris Jordan of the 40 million paper cups. It equals the volume of a 40 story building. The Statue of Liberty is thrown in to give a size reference. Wow. With cigarettes, he constructed a piece that made up of 65,000 cigarette packs. Because that’s how many teenagers start smoking every month in the US. Hard statistics presented in a way that we can comprehend.
I highly recommend that you take 15 minutes and check out his talk at the 2008 TED Conference:
Amateur theatre is campy. It tells the story in an awkward fashion that leaves you with the core ideas. Good professional theatre is inspiring. It draws you into the drama. It invokes emotions. You leave the playhouse elated. The same happens with pitches. Too often, people pitch in campy fashion hoping that the ideas themselves will inspire. But that is not the case. The ideas need to be supported by a good story and an excellent delivery.
All pitches have one thing in common. You are trying to get someone else to do what you want them to do – to hire you, to sleep with you, to invest a million dollars in your idea. People always assume that the key to these moments of persuasion is to present the information which should make people change their minds. These encounters actually depend much more on emotion than logical information.
When someone is asked to invest a million dollars in an idea, they are really asking one question: will this be profitable? This isn’t a logical question, because it’s asking to know the future. There is no logic that describes what is going to happen a few years from now. You can pour over the information, put it into forecasting models and graphs, but what you are really doing is guessing the future.
An investor doesn’t’ know whether your idea will be a billion dollar hit; a date doesn’t know whether what lies ahead is three hours of boredom or thirty years of partnership. So, when you’re pitching to someone, you’re asking them to judge the future. Since knowing the future is beyond logic, their judgment won’t be based on logical factors but on emotional factors: trust, confidence, hope, ambition and desire. These factors aren’t rational, they are instinctive. They are not of the head, they are of the heart.
Of course, logical arguments play an important part in a successful pitch. This is because they underpin emotional instinct with reassurance. But logic in a pitch is never an end in itself. it’s only a means to an end. So to pitch successfully, you have to understand that it’s not about widening someone’s knowledge base, it’s about giving them a jolting emotional surge.
A pitch does not take place in the library of the mind, it takes place in the theatre of the heart.
Water has always been conducive to thinking. Most people find they have some of their best ideas when they are relaxing. To fully relax, you need to work on your body as well as your mind. By lying in a hot bath, closing your eyes and chilling out, your whole state becomes receptive to creative ideas. The most famous example of water-induced inspiration comes from the Greek mathematician Archimedes.
