26th Feb 2007
Doing the Opposite
Remember how George Costanza had amazing success the time he did the opposite?
Elaine : Ah, George, you know, that woman just looked at you.
George : So what? What am I supposed to do?
Elaine : Go talk to her.
George : Elaine, bald men, with no jobs, and no money, who live with their parents, don’t approach strange women.
Jerry : Well here’s your chance to try the opposite. Instead of tuna salad and being intimidated by women, chicken salad and going right up to them.
George : Yeah, I should do the opposite, I should.
Jerry : If every instinct you have is wrong, then the opposite would have to be
right.
George : Yes, I will do the opposite. I used to sit here and do nothing, and regret it for the rest of the day, so now I will do the opposite, and I will do something!
I think that’s my all time favorite episode.
I’m noticing how much of what I do is the same all the time: computer time, email time, writing time, consulting time. It’s all variations of the same sort of linear thinking that moves work forward, but always in the same ways.
And then I tried Nanowrimo in November to get out of the rut of structured writing. And what I wrote was actually pretty good. Because I did the opposite! It was unstructured, loose, sloppy, and somehow that’s exactly what I needed. My free writing time at Desert Nights had similar results. I really liked my poems and writing and it all came from behaving in completely the opposite of my normal behavior. I didn’t self-edit, I didn’t really edit at all, and what came out was more free.
Then I realized that I’m always trying to counter what I do with an opposite effect. For example, fill out a technical chart is balanced by shopping for cosmetics on drugstore.com.
I’m wondering how else to apply this principal. Perhaps rather than yoga class, I should take hip hop. It’s an entirely religious shift to turn everything on its head. That’s actually what Jesus was doing most of the time.
