The one skill that separates genius from everyone else
How to see what others miss and create original work
You have no idea what you’re capable of.
Most people spend their lives trapped.
Dreaming of purpose but never finding it.
They end up a slave to the program.
Achieving the goals set out for them by their:
Parents
Friends
Teachers
Culture
Boss
They become copies of everyone and everything that came before them.
Never having an original thought or creating anything meaningful.
Because they never learned to see.
How to see what’s actually happening.
To question their reality.
To think beyond the defaults handed to them.
But there are a select few that do.
And the ones who do it at the highest level?
We call them genius.
It’s not about talent or intelligence.
It’s about originality.
They dare to do something original by stepping outside of expectations.
Radically unafraid to create their own way and reject the defaults most people cling to for safety.
I’ve always been the type of person who valued creativity over most things.
I wanted to make something truly unique and valuable to the world.
I’ve performed, made music, art, and design.
But it wasn’t until life forced me to take a step back from that creativity and channel it elsewhere into thinking, building frameworks, solving problems, creating ideas, that I learned how to actually think for myself.
That’s when I saw what I was really capable of.
In the last letter ‘How to learn anything 10x faster (Strategic Obsession)’ I showed you how to learn any skillset in strategic bursts of obsessive focus.
This week I want to show you why your top priority should be leveraging those skills to create a original meaningful work.
Then I’ll give you a system to do that.
But first why should you care about being original at all?
Meaning is made not discovered
I’ve been seeing a lot people writing about purpose lately.
There’s so much “how to discover your purpose” content out there.
Yet this still seems to be a major issue for most people.
There’s a reason for that.
Because purpose isn’t something waiting to be found.
It’s waiting to be created.
“Our world is built on fictions. They’re all around us: nations, corporations and religion were invented in the human imagination”
— Yuval Noah Harari ‘Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind’
In the letter ‘How to get what you want out of life.’ I mentioned the book Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind.
But I want to talk about it again because it’s a foundational concept that affects your whole life.
Yuval talks about how homo sapiens became the dominant species and out-survived other human species like Neanderthals because we’re capable of imagination.
We can create things in our minds that don’t actually exist in physical reality.
Like countries, laws, societies.
Those things are ideas we create.
We imagine them, agree they exist, and then play along with those imaginary rules.
These ideas are so deeply embedded in us that it’s strange think of them this way.
They feel like real forces that have an effect on us.
They dictate how we live our lives.
They create purpose.
They create meaning.
Meaning we follow and live out on a daily basis.
You spend your twenties anxious because you think you need to make $100k by 30 or you’re a failure.
That’s a fiction.
An arbitrary number based on expectations that are themselves made up.
Yet you’ll sacrifice your health, relationships, and sanity chasing it.
When you don’t question the fictions handed to you as a kid you end up living a default life.
A character in a video game.
Imagine a game where you play the whole thing without ever improving your base skills or weapons.
If you ever get to the end the final boss will be impossible to defeat.
That’s what happens to most people.
They accept their default life and never move past level 1 thinking.
They learn but they never discover how to apply what they learn in their own way.
They hit 18 become “adults” and struggle to find meaning.
They keep repeating the same concepts, values, and stories that everyone around them has and wonder why their life never improves.
This is why originality is crucial.
You can’t live a meaningful life until you create your own original meaning.
The same goes for meaningful creative work.
But how do you create original meaning?
How do you think for yourself when you’ve spent your whole life absorbing everyone else’s ideas?
It’s not what you know. It’s what you think about it.
Everyone you consider a genius has one thing in common and it’s not intelligence.
It’s that they could see what others couldn’t.
Einstein didn’t have access to information that no one else had.
He was able to connect the dots in ways that others weren’t able to.
Tarantino wrote scripts with the same words and inspiration available to everyone else.
But the way he connected those words and inspiration was what created something no one else could.
What sets you apart is never what you know.
It’s what you see.
We live in an age where all information is readily available to everyone.
That means the highest leverage skill is no longer intelligence, it’s become:
Knowing what to know
Perspective
Creating across disciplines and domains
Synthesizing skills and knowledge in new ways
That’s why learning alone is never enough.
It’s about how you apply that knowledge over time that matters.
Take Dan Harmon for example.
He created the show Community and co-created the cartoon Rick and Morty.
He’s considered a creative genius for his meta-commentary, character depth, and innovative narrative structures.
Harmon doesn’t just tell stories.
He uses story as a vehicle for philosophy, psychology, synthesizing genres, science, and commentary on the craft of storytelling itself.
Community is a show about a study group at Greendale Community College.
A seemingly basic and boring premise that he turns it into a deeply entertaining and complex narrative, blending genres and seemingly unrelated concepts.
In one episode the study group turns the school cafeteria into a Scorsese style mafia plot.
In another an innocent dinner party turns into a reality bending lesson in quantum physics and the multiverse theory.
Even one where a school wide paintball game transforms into a sci-fi, spaghetti western, 80’s action, crossover trilogy.
Harmon uses systems like his famous Story Circle Framework to synthesize his various influences and inspirations into original creations.
Meticulously designing characters, narratives and world building.
He doesn’t just follow templates he creates his own meaning by taking existing templates and combining, remixing, and reimagining them.
Harmon is just one example.
Virgil Abloh did this with fashion and architecture.
Naval does it with technology and philosophy.
You see this across every domain.
The ones considered genius don’t just break rules, they redefine them by seeing beyond them.
Genius then isn’t some talent exclusive to the chosen few.
It’s a skill you develop.
Here’s how to develop it.
Design Mindset
All problems are design problems.
Everything you do is design.
Writers design content using words.
Musicians design songs using sounds.
Teachers design understanding using questions.
Design is the process of selecting and arranging elements to achieve a goal.
That can describe almost everything you do in life.
When you make breakfast you design it.
You design relationships by deciding what and when you’ll share parts of your life with someone else.
Design is so deeply ingrained in your life you don’t even know you’re doing it.
Mostly because the domain of design is very exclusive.
It’s treated as sacred and rare.
A skill that’s supposed to take years to even understand.
That’s a lie.
You are a designer.
Understanding this is how you start to see the world is ways that others can’t.
You start to see the templates of reality for what they are and shape it in ways you never knew possible.
Here’s how it works.
1. Goals
Everything you do is based is some sort of goal.
If you’re writing a newsletter, the goal isn’t writing, it’s creating a newsletter.
Writing is just an element of the design.
If you’re building a brand, the goal isn’t content, it’s a clear reputation and identity over time.
Content is just an element of the design.
The point is your goal requires certain elements and skills to achieve it.
Once you set a goal you set in motion a process.
The process of achieving that goal.
That process is design.
You start to think of:
Actions to take
Skills you need
Materials and tools required
Time and effort needed
People to collaborate with
These are all design elements.
They are things you combine to execute your design and achieve your goal.
2. Drop your assumptions
Assume you know nothing about how to achieve your goal.
Most people do things without ever questioning the purpose behind them.
That’s why they live overwhelmed and anxious lives.
They do things because they assume they’re supposed to.
Never questioning if there are other possibilities for their life.
Other ways to achieve their goals that they never even considered.
Here’s what separates genius from everyone else.
There’s no rules.
There’s no one way to achieve any goal.
And originality is impossible until you embrace this fact.
Your assumptions about how things are supposed to be is what’s blocking you from getting what you want out of life.
You assume in order to make money you need to work hard.
Hard work then becomes an element of your design.
It’s no longer optional.
Now no matter how you go about making money it will always require hard work.
You’re closed off to all the design possibilities that don’t require hard work.
There are ways to make money that are easy.
Dropping your assumptions opens your mind to possibilities.
When you stop assuming that shoes are made for feet you start thinking about what else they could be.
Could they be a door stop, a decoration, a glove, a vase?
That’s why geniuses are constantly thinking across domains.
Because the most original solutions are counterintuitive.
Einstein didn’t solve physics problems with physics solutions.
He solved physics problems with philosophy.
Virgil Abloh didn’t innovate the world of fashion by being the best fashion designer.
He did it by applying the rules of architecture to fashion and streetwear to luxury.
The same things true for everything you know about your life.
The most original solution will come from seeing how one domain applies to every other domain.
3. Return to Zero
Design is about achieving a result and serving a function or purpose in the most effective way possible.
Every element of your design should be serving a purpose.
The reason you do something should be obvious.
If it isn’t you need to stop and figure out why you’re doing it.
If it’s not helping it’s hurting.
That means:
Your goal needs to be clear because your goal determines your design
You need to start with zero assumptions about how your goal can be achieved
You need to think about how every element effects the whole design
All your actions have a result.
And most of your problems come from not knowing why you do what you do.
Returning to zero means you stop and you question your actions.
You think about how every element of your design is effecting your results.
Think about:
The actions you’re taking
The skills you’re using
People you’re working with
Your strategy, materials, and tools
You strip everything away mid process and you consider if each element is still serving your goal.
You may have started making content because it was an opportunity to make a living expressing yourself.
But now you spend every day stressed and anxious about what to post, whether your being authentic, and if people will like what you have to share.
That’s the opposite of the goal you were hoping to achieve.
What elements aren’t serving the goal?
Are you posting too often and it’s causing overwhelm, damaging the quality of your content?
Not talking about your genuine interests leading you to feel inauthentic and lacking ideas?
Measuring views more than genuine engagement or growth so you chase trends and abandon your own voice?
You need to think in systems because everything connects.
When you change one element, the entire design shifts.
If you post less you won’t be overwhelmed.
You’ll increase your content quality.
You measure engagement instead of just views.
You’ll see people resonating with your interests and you’ll feel more authentic.
You feel less anxious and trust your voice instead of just chasing trends.
Original work comes when you see how everything connects.
How one piece of your design effects the entire outcome of your goal.
The Takeaway
Genius isn’t about knowing more it’s about seeing more.
It’s not intelligence.
It’s originality.
What you know doesn’t matter if you can’t use it to get what you want out of life.
And you can only do that if you use your knowledge in original ways because your life is unique.
Your goals are unique and you don’t achieve them by accident.
You achieve them by design.
This framework changed how I see everything.
If it shifts something for you DM me or leave a comment.
Let’s talk.
‘Til next time.
Don’t betray yourself.
You won’t get what you want by mistake.
You’ll get it by design.
— Edamame Dufflebag