Be Unconventional

I’ve grown to hate conventional thinking. Not because I want to be different but because conventional thinking gives you conventional results. I don’t like that. And if you liked conventional results, you wouldn’t be reading this book.

Let’s examine decision making for a second. The most conventional method for decision making is to create a pros and cons list. Benjamin Franklin is the first who documented this method. He wrote about it to his friend, Joseph Priestley, in a letter to him in 1772. And today, we create these lists all the time.

What are the pros and cons of…

“Quitting my job”

“Breaking up with my boyfriend”

“Taking this job offer”

“Buying a new car”

“Starting a business”

And then, we take a sheet of paper, draw a line in the middle of it, and start listing the pros on the left, and the cons on the right (or vice versa). Even though I like the simplicity of this method, I stopped using it after one of my friends recommended me to create one of these lists when my first relationship hit a rough patch.

I actually made a pros and cons list for breaking up with my then-girlfriend! When I think about it now, I’m ashamed. And it didn’t even make any sense because there are always factors that, by themselves, outweigh all of the other factors. Nearly all pros and cons lists for relationships are the same. Pros of staying in a relationship Having someone to share everything with, you can have sex, go on holidays, etc.

Cons of staying in a relationship Less free time for myself, getting in fights, going to in-laws, etc. It’s always the same. And it’s not useful. The same is true for quitting a job you hate. The pro is that you’re free from a bad job. The con is that there’s a lot of uncertainty. It’s time to break free from this conventional thinking.

Instead of binary thinking, start thinking more abundantly. It’s not this or that in life. You can have this and that. I always thought I had to either quit my business or take a job. Also, many of my friends think you should quit your job to start a business.

Who ever said these things When my business wasn’t growing a few years ago, I just took a job at a large IT research firm. I did both things. I ran my business in the evenings and weekends (and sometimes during the day), and the rest of my time, I did my work for the firm. Also, you can start a business while you still have a job. That’s what I mean when I talk about thinking outside of the box.

We always limit ourselves by narrow and conventional thinking. We always want to stay within a box. That’s because we never take a step back to look at the larger picture.

Take a look at the drawings below;

If you’re standing inside the maze, you’ll probably start walking towards the middle, right? That’s what you should do when you’re in a maze. However, this maze is different. The prize is not in the middle, it’s outside the maze. But you can only see the goal if you take a helicopter view. It’s impossible to see the goal from within the maze. And yet, that’s how most of us live.

We do things conventionally because that’s “how it’s done.” When you stop doing things the way they’re done, you’ll start doing things how you get it done.