2. Victory for the Aimless

Sometimes things work out the way we intended. Sometimes you study accounting and become an accountant. Or maybe you play basketball as a kid and make it onto the varsity team. But the great successes, the ones that come crashing out of nowhere and shake up the system, they don’t usually follow this kind of script. You don’t enroll in Superstar 101 to become a superstar. There’s no magic formula for changing the world. In other words, the greatest victories are not written into the initial plans. They happen despite the plans.

Take career choice for example. There’s no shortage of resources to help you choose your target career. You can read Richard Bolles’ What Color Is Your Parachute? to find out how to choose and secure the job that’s right for you [7]. Or you could take the Career Key test to discover what you really should be doing with your life [8]. The list is endless. There’s the Campbell Interest and Skill Survey [9], personality tests like the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator [10] and Keirsey Temperament Sorter [11], skillset assessments, work values tests, and so on. Amazon.com shows over 97,000 books on careers. If you can’t find your way, there’s always a guru eager to guide you.

But while a little guidance may be good for some, others don’t follow the script. Some people set objectives and completely miss them—all for the better. Why is this kind of story so common for the most successful? Why don’t they need to stop in at a career counselor? At heart, it’s not such a mystery. It’s just that anticipating what might lead to the most fulfilling outcomes is difficult. As with all open-ended problems in life, the stepping stones are unknown. So when you go out into the uncertain world sometimes it may be wise to hitch a ride with serendipity. Being open and flexible to opportunity is sometimes more important than knowing what you’re trying to do. After all, any path might lead to happiness, even the most unexpected. Some people seem to have an uncanny knack for spotting such opportunities, even if they conflict outright with their original aims.

In an interesting experiment by Richard Wiseman [12], subjects were asked to count the number of photographs in a newspaper. It turns out that those who focused on the goal of counting the photographs took significantly longer to complete the task than those who were less focused on the objective. Why? The more open-minded participants noticed that on the inside of page two Wiseman had written, “Stop counting: There are 43 photographs in this newspaper.” While some might say that noticing the answer on page two is only luck, the deeper lesson is that focusing too much on your goal can actually prevent you from making useful unexpected discoveries.

Some might also say Johnny Depp was just lucky. Who would have guessed that being in a mildly successful band would somehow lead to an incredibly successful career in acting? Wouldn’t it be smarter to fill your schedule with hours of acting classes? But starting a band was the right stepping stone for Johnny Depp, though not so much because it was logical or planned. It was simply that Depp wanted to make music and was open to opportunities when they came. In fact, even his high school principal once told him to pursue his dream of musical stardom instead of finishing high school. While his music career never blossomed, it turns out that joining a band had some unexpected benefits. Not only did Depp marry the bass player’s sister, but she ultimately introduced him to acting through her job as a makeup artist [13]. If Johnny Depp had not wanted to become a musician, he may never have become an actor.

For the very successful, these kinds of stories are surprisingly common. Before he wrote books, the bestselling novelist John Grisham first trained and practiced as a criminal defense attorney for ten years. The trigger for his career change was particular testimony that he overheard one day from a young rape victim. Somehow that testimony made him realize that he should and could write, and he began waking early in the morning before work to gradually complete his first novel, A Time to Kill [14]. His next book, The Firm, would spend 47 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. Most aspiring writers would not choose law school to develop their craft. Reading endless case studies in a dusty library seems like poor preparation compared to practicing creative writing. But maybe that’s why it worked for John Grisham. He wasn’t following a plan.

In fact, that seems to be a pretty good strategy if you want to be a writer. Before Harry Potter sold millions of copies, J.K. Rowling was a bilingual secretary for Amnesty International and then taught English to students learning it as a second language in Portugal [15]. Haruki Murakami, the Japanese writer behind such award-winning reveries as The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle and Kafka on the Shore, first ran a combination coffee house and jazz bar. Murakami himself is convinced that without running the bar he never would have become a writer because it gave him the time to observe and brood. Many of his characters later shared his fondness for jazz. Interestingly, it didn’t occur to Murakami that he could write novels until he was 29 [16].

And the examples keep coming. The founder of American hard-boiled detective fiction, Raymond Chandler, didn’t write until he was fired from his job as an oil company executive at age 45 [17]. And as late-blooming philosopher Mary Midgley said, “I wrote no books until I was a good 50, and I’m jolly glad because I didn’t know what I thought before then [18].” So if you want to be a top writer, perhaps you shouldn’t try to be a writer.

Of course there are always the guardians of objective thinking who want to thwart our deeper desires. They’ll tell us to be practical and set more realistic objectives. For some reason, musicians seem to confront this problem a lot. John Lennon’s mother provided this bit of wisdom: “The guitar’s all very well, John, but you’ll never make a living out of it [19].” Elton John faced similar advice from his father, who wanted to talk him out of his “implausible wish to become a ‘star’ [20].” The pressure to choose realistic objectives is familiar to all of us. Just think of the common saying, “Get your head out of the clouds.” While the pressure to be practical clearly affects musicians, their stories reflect a wider cultural assumption: Following a path for its raw attraction is sillier than following it for its practicality.

In some cases, the seed of greatness is planted long before it blossoms. Harland David “Colonel” Sanders cooked for his family as a six-year old after his father’s death, but would not make a living out of it until he was 40. In between, he tried his luck at piloting a steamboat, selling insurance, and even farming. But the opportunity for success didn’t arrive until he owned a gas station, where he began cooking chicken for his customers [21]. No one could have predicted that such a winding road of careers would eventually lead to Kentucky Fried Chicken, but one thing is clear: Harland Sanders had no problem catching the winds of serendipity—he exhibited a willingness to switch his direction throughout his early life—and it paid off.

You might think these kinds of stories only apply to the luckiest of the lucky. But serendipity isn’t actually so picky. A peer-reviewed study found that nearly two thirds of adults attribute some aspect of their career choice to serendipity [22]. As one participant put it, “I happened to visit an animal hospital and became interested in veterinary medicine.” You never know what hidden passion you might unexpectedly discover.

Some career experts are beginning to take this trend seriously. As one large survey revealed, “actions such as volunteering, joining clubs and generally making contact with other people and groups are likely to increase a client’s chances of an unplanned experience [23].” Note the emphasis on unplanned experience. This isn’t the usual attempt to figure out the best job and pursue it as an objective. It isn’t an impersonal test designed to categorize you into a particular box from a few multiple choice questions. Instead it suggests that you should embark on a search for possible stepping stones without any particular destination.

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Who would have thought that so many disparate scenarios would follow this strange yet fundamental principle? The key is to be open to change, to a shifting landscape where appearances can be deceiving yet liberating at the same time. The great achievers are willing to abandon their original objectives and spring for opportunity when it arises. What is important in these scenarios is to avoid locking into rigid commitment to the original ambitious objective, and instead remaining mindful and open to where the present stepping stone might lead. Sometimes all it takes is sensing potential—whether it be in becoming a musician or finding a new way to cook—even if the true nature of that potential is still unknown.

While the idea that not looking can be the best way to find is strange and perhaps a bit zen, it does lurk already in some corners of our culture. As Loretta Young said, “Love isn’t something you find. Love is something that finds you.” As one of those great elusive objectives that almost all of us seek, it’s easy to relate to the deceptive search for love. But the funny thing is that almost any ambitious objective could be substituted for the word “love” in the wisest statements uttered on the topic. We just seem to have carved out this small niche, the search for love, where we acknowledge the paradox of ambitious objectives. As D.H. Lawrence put it, “Those that go searching for love, only manifest their own lovelessness. And the loveless never find love, only the loving find love. And they never have to seek for it [24].”

Many people sooner or later realize that preconceived notions about the ideal partner often end up surprisingly unsatisfying [25]. But what is this realization really about in the bigger picture? The deeper issue, which affects all kinds of objectives beyond just love, is that the true nature of the greatest discoveries is often far different from how we imagined. That’s why the stepping stones are so deceptive—we’re comparing them to the wrong ideal.

With love we are all too familiar with this kind of problem. Perhaps that’s why love stories are so often surprising and entertaining. They demonstrate that the best results don’t need to come from trying to achieve anything, which is fun because such light-hearted whimsy so sharply contrasts with how we’re taught to pursue our dreams. For example, one day Grace Goodhue was watering flowers only to look up and see Calvin Coolidge in the window shaving with nothing on but underwear and a hat. Luckily for him, she laughed, catching his attention [26]. It’s unlikely that the future Ms. Coolidge ever targeted men who shave in their underwear, or that future President Coolidge ever thought his best moment would involve being caught almost naked. But then again, the unplanned is often the best plan of all. At least in the domain of romance, we all have some experience with the paradox of ambitious objectives. After all, what could be more ambitious than seeking lifelong happiness?

Just as that lesson is familiar for love, it’s also sometimes present in other spheres, like our recreations. For example, unlike with careers we often choose hobbies not because of some long-term grandiose plan, but just because we like them. So again having no objective leads at least to some personal satisfaction. The Internet has made it easier now to share and discover odd hobbies like “snail racing,” “underwater hockey,” “limbo skating,” “extreme unicycling,” and even “extreme ironing” (all of which you can find on Wikipedia). Some hobbies do even become stepping stones to something bigger—Nathan Sawaya was a corporate attorney who had so much fun building artistic models out of Lego blocks that he quit his job to do it full time [27]. But despite the risks of deviating from his original plan, following his heart in this case led again to something better and now his unique pieces sell well enough to make a good living.

Or maybe you’ve heard of Joseph Herscher, who spends much of his time building intricate Rube Goldberg machines with no real necessity other than being fun to watch [28]. In one contraption, a ball rolls down a ramp and falls onto a lever that lights a fuse, burning away a string that releases another ball and so on, all ultimately accomplishing nothing but opening his newspaper. It might sound pointless (a popular word for having no clear objective) but as usual there are considerable benefits: His work has been viewed by millions, leading to numerous television and radio appearances. Indeed, psychologists have noted that children need time to explore without specific tasks or objectives set for them by adults [29, 30]. Sometimes the term unstructured play is used to describe this kind of activity. Maybe adults need it too.

Of course, when you hear about people spending their adult lives playing with Legos or building Rube Goldberg machines, it’s easy to dismiss their passions as frivolous. But there’s a deeper value to such endeavors than just the endeavors themselves: They reflect that we don’t know which stepping stones might lead to something interesting. These are people who are willing to commit their lives to stepping stones that most of us would entirely ignore, which is good for all of us. Because no one knows the stepping stones that lead to the greatest discoveries, the last thing we want to do is stop people from exploring stepping stones that we ourselves choose to ignore—who knows what they will find? It’s not that we are all one day going to wake up desperately seeking Rube Goldberg machines. But what if Joseph Herscher one day wakes and realizes that one of his Rube Goldberg machines solves an unexpected problem?

A historical example of just this kind is given by the unexpected discovery of ancient cave paintings by a non-scientist, Marcelino de Sautuola, near the hill of Altamira in Spain in 1879 [31]. Before this discovery, people had no idea of how sophisticated prehistoric paintings could be. Importantly, Marcelino held a wide variety of unique hobbies, including caving and learning about ancient artifacts. By lucky coincidence these hobbies coincided when he explored a cave discovered by a hunter, and his daughter noticed paintings of bison on the ceiling of the cave. He realized their significance and alerted a professor friend. Without the hobbies that he pursued mainly for fun, those paintings might never have been found. Unexpectedly, these hobbies became stepping stones to great discoveries.

When his daughter first peered at those paintings, Marcelino realized suddenly that fun wasn’t the only benefit of his recreational activities. Interestingly, this kind of pivot is fairly common behind the scenes of many success stories, such as in today’s Internet businesses. Oftentimes a website created for one purpose only turned a profit after being taken in a new direction outside of the original plans. For example, YouTube was first envisioned as a video dating site [32]. But when was the last time you found a date through YouTube? Its founders pivoted to video sharing, and the results speak for themselves. And speaking of sharing, the photo sharing service Flickr was originally a smaller feature of a bigger social online game (that itself was inspired by playing an unrelated game about virtual pets) [33]. It turned out that the photo-sharing feature outshined the social game it was part of. Of course, pivoting companies aren’t unique to the Internet age. For example, the (now) video-game company Nintendo also took a winding path to its success. Founded in 1889, for years Nintendo made a modest profit selling traditional Japanese playing cards. Later in the 1960s, as the playing card market collapsed, the company nearly went bankrupt trying out new business ventures like running a taxi service, building short-stay “love hotels,” manufacturing instant rice, and selling toys. The manager of the new toys and games division, Hiroshi Imanishi, hired a group of amateur weekend tinkerers to brainstorm products. When one of the tinkerers created an extendable mechanical toy hand, Hiroshi was impressed and released it as the “Ultra Hand.” The product’s huge commercial success prompted the company to abandon its non-toy ventures. Later Nintendo began to explore electronic toys, eventually leading it to become the iconic video game company behind “Super Mario Brothers [34].”

Whether you’re looking for a career, for love, or trying to start companies, there is ample evidence that sticking to objectives just isn’t part of the story in many of the biggest successes. Instead, in those successes there is a willingness to serve serendipity and to follow passions or whims to their logical conclusions. But is there any proof beyond just a set of inspiring anecdotes? In fact, it turns out that we stumbled upon this principle originally through a scientific experiment, as the next chapter reveals, involving hundreds of users on the internet breeding pictures.