Albert O. Hirschmann Timeless Wisdom - Hamlet Was Wrong

This belief we have that the future is knowable is crazy. People need to have the freedom to take more chances.

- Malcolm Gladwell 

Albert O. Hirschmann is one of my heroes. Not only he has influenced me in understanding what matters in life (by zooming in and out of macro as well as micro) but also a rare human who helps me every day on how I think and frame the problems I solve at work.  

Max's 2013 holiday card  Observe, Observe Perpetually is my all-time favorite and that was the year I learned about Hirschmann (that too posthumously, what kind of a moron am I!). 

Malcolm Gladwell in this interview (thank you) talks about how Hirshmann lived his life using this simple phrase - "Prove Hamlet Wrong"

Shakespeare's Hamlet is famous for his indecisiveness and ironically, a lot of people connect with that (including thyself in my younger years). The genius of Hirschmann was that every time he countered uncertainty, he made it a habit to prove Hamlet was wrong. In other words, he refused to be paralyzed by indecisiveness and took spontaneous decisions. 

Nothing kills progress faster than indecision

This should never be confused with the bullshit of "carpet diem" nor using the phrase "gut feeling" to justify their self-centered lives.  These spontaneous decisions are based on years of honing one's intuitions based on the infinite and continuous feedback between emotions and reasons (remember Antonio Damasio's wisdom?). 

I spent my early years being Hamlet and looking back, the spontaneous decision of bringing Max home on 05/21/2006 is probably when I started following Hirschmann's mantra even before I heard of Hirschmann. To state the obvious; that decision was the best decision of my life. 

The core idea is to be an informed contrarian, not influenced by "standards" of the society plus more importantly, patience and persistence to understand and execute those decisions. 

Gladwell's original column on Hirshmann "The Gift Of Doubt" sums it beautifully in Hirshmann's own words:

Creativity always comes as a surprise to us; therefore we can never count on it and we dare not believe in it until it has happened. In other words, we would not consciously engage upon tasks whose success clearly requires that creativity be forthcoming. Hence, the only way in which we can bring our creative resources fully into play is by misjudging the nature of the task, by presenting it to ourselves as more routine, simple, undemanding of genuine creativity than it will turn out to be. 

In other words, don't get tangled in trying to be creative but instead make it a simple daily habit and way of life.