Book Summary: “Hidden Genius”

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Book: Hidden Genius by Polina Marinova Pompliano
Reviewer: Bobby Powers

My 3 Biggest Takeaways

1️⃣ Creativity comes from hard work, not The Muse

"People like to think the creative process is romantic...The truth, for me at least, is that creativity is primarily the result of hard work and study." -Grant Achatz
"Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn't really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That's because they were able to connect experiences they've had and synthesize new things." -Steve Jobs

2️⃣ Big breakthroughs are the result of many small experiments

"If your experiment works perfectly, then you've learned nothing." -College professor, to astronaut Franklin Chang Diaz
"Take small risks frequently rather than huge risks seldom." -Franklin Chang Diaz

3️⃣ Rather than minimizing others with a label, seek to truly understand them

"Every time you slap a label on someone and put them in a box, you filter what you see. You make your world smaller, simpler, and less reflective of reality." -Polina Pompliano
"The definitions belong to the definers, not the defined." -Toni Morrison

"No one is inherently boring. They're only boring because you haven't asked the right questions." -Polina Pompliano's journalism professor

Selected Quotes & Ideas from the Book

"Stories trigger emotion, and emotion triggers memory."
"This was the worst pain I had been in in my entire life. But at mile 81, something clicked. My mind knew I wasn't fucking around anymore. It knew it wasn't going to quit. It was me against me." -David Goggins
- Note: Goggins said this re: Running his first 100-mile race, during which he "peed blood, nearly passed out, broke the bones in his feet, and endured stress fractures—but he finished the race."
"'Small things often' is so much more important than 'big things occasionally.'" -John Gottman, about acts of love for a partner
"Great stories happen to those that can tell them." -Ira Glass
Great storytelling comes back to Intention and Obstacle:
- "Somebody wants something, and something's standing in their way of getting it. It doesn't matter what they want—they want the money, they want the girl, they want to get to Philadelphia. Doesn't matter. But they've got to want it bad. If they can need it, that's even better." -Aaron Sorkin
- "The only writable things are intention and obstacle." -Aaron Sorkin
- 3 Questions Vince Gilligan frequently asked his team of writers on Breaking Bad:
  - What does the character want right now?
  - What are they afraid of?
  - What stands between them and their goal?
3 Great questions to ask when interviewing people (from Brandon Stanton)
- What's your biggest struggle?
- How has your life turned out differently than you expected it to?
- What do you feel most guilty about?
"Bring the audience into a subject's dilemmas, and they'll empathize with them—even if they don't want to."
"There is someone somewhere who is looking at you and learning from you. You can be extraordinary in the most normal occasions and settings." -Kyle Carpenter (Medal of Honor recipient)
"You should invert the pyramid and envision yourself as the guy at the bottom. You are there to enable all the work being done. That's my mental image of what I'm here to do at Spotify." -Daniel Ek
"Fear is just a symptom of lack of preparation. The best antidote for fear is competence." -Astronaut Chris Hadfield
"Make reversible decisions quickly and irreversible ones deliberately." -Toni Schneider
"If I can work this hard for someone else, then why can't I do it for myself?" -Stacy Madison, re: starting her company Stacy's Pita Chips
"The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance—it is the illusion of knowledge." -Daniel Boorstin
"To really know pain in other people is to know yourself in them." -Brandon Stanton
"What you eat is who you are, and what you read is who you become."
"Sometimes, to jump farther, you have to step back." -French proverb
"I know that if I fail, I can start over and over and over and over. I have that skill, and you can take everything from me, but you cannot take that." -Francis Ngannou, UFC Heavyweight Champion
"I don't like to gamble, but if there is one thing I'm willing to bet on, it's myself." -Beyoncé
"Chang Diaz recommends emphasizing that seemingly paradoxical qualitiies and personality traits can be complementary. When you bet on yourself, you fundamentally understand that you can be more than on thing in life."
"I am successful on my own terms. Because if your success is not on your own terms, if it looks good to the world but does not feel good in your heart, it is not success at all." -Anna Quindlen