Julie Silver MD
Greg Bledsoe MD
Steven Knope MD
Gary Taff MD
Ashley Wendel
Franz WiesBauer
Setu Mazumdar MD
Arlen Meyers MD
Ken Cohn MD
Mike Woo-Ming MD
Jeff Barson
Joe Halcomb MD
Fred Tobis MD
Maria Simbra MD
Lisa Tener
Mark Kroll PhD
Gautam Gulati MD
Barry Silbaugh MD
Craig Koniver, MD
Michelle Mudge-Riley DO
Zubin Damania MD
Michael VanRooyen MD
Bob Uslander MD
Pamela Wible MD
Ryan Flesher MD
Hatem Abou-Sayed
2 CommentsI Don’t Want to Eat Your Vomit
Are you just regurgitating what everyone else is saying?
Regurgitating the same old wisdom is a problem for a lot of advice blogs (and podcasts), whether the topic is marketing, fiction writing, motorcycle safety or parenting.
“Build your business through relationships.” “Show, don’t tell.” “Point your chin in the direction you want the motorcycle to go.” “Don’t allow your toddlers to play with live hand grenades.”
It’s so easy to write a post on a topic that has been done to death. And I am guilty of this, too, at times. Let me tell you, regurgitating the same old wisdom we’ve heard multiple times from other sources is no way to market. It doesn’t encourage readers to stick around.
So how do you break out of this trap? How do you come up with original ideas that are genuinely helpful?
Well, I’m not going to tell you. Because then I would just be regurgitating someone else’s wisdom. And I know you don’t want to eat my vomit.
So where can you turn to get some origionality back?
Most of what keeps us uninteresting boils down to conformity, consistency, shared values, and yes, thinking about things the same way everyone else does. There’s nothing wrong with that necessarily, but if you can mentally accept that it’s actually nothing more than groupthink that helps a society function, you can then give yourself permission to turn everything that’s accepted upside down and shake out the illusions.
One way to view creative thinking is to look at it as a destructive force. You’re tearing away the often arbitrary rules that others have set for you, and asking either “why” or “why not” whenever confronted with the way “everyone” does things.
This is easier said than done, since people will often defend the rules they follow even in the face of evidence that the rule doesn’t work. People love to celebrate rebels like Richard Branson, but few seem brave enough to emulate him. Quit worshipping rule breakers and start breaking some rules.
If you'd like to learn from some rule breakers, here will be plenty at the Medical Fusion Conference
Reader Comments (2)
Greg was complaining to me that I'd posted this under his account. Not so... That's my pic up there.
I think it was under my name originally. However, I've noted the change and called off my legal team... :) . Great article, though, I must say.