Why you should give yourself permission to be stupid

The importance of working on the unimportant.

You’ve probably heard about Google’s 20% time; that 20% of the employees’ time should be devoted to developing new ideas. So what’s the point with spending 20% of your time on something that has nothing to do with the core business?

 

To be able to reinvent and innovate we need to dedicate time to work on things that are unapproved and maybe even thought to be stupid. We need to find time to explore those crazy ideas that might be useless, but could just as well turn out to be the ones changing the game. We need to understand the importance of working on the unimportant.

 

In today’s work-life we focus so much on getting things done. Efficiency is our goal. We strive to find the perfect solution. Perfection is thought to be the ultimate destination. But efficiency and perfection might just not be the fastest way to innovation. As Ludwig Wittgenstein put it:

 

“If people did not sometimes do silly things, then nothing intelligent would ever get done.” Ludwig Wittgenstein

 

We need to be stupid to be intelligent. We need to focus on the unimportant to get something really important done.

 

Therefore I suggest you give yourself permission to be stupid and dedicate some time in your calendar for working on unimportant stuff.

 

Wanna learn more about creativity and fun at work, read this blog post by Samuel West.