Breaking the Rules
By Peter LloydIn one of my favorite hole-in-the-wall restaurants, there's a sign in the restroom that begins, "Please leave light on..."
I'm concerned enough about our environment to immediately question the need to leave a light on in a room that no one occupies. In fact, before I finished reading the sign posted at the light switch, I was making up my mind not to comply. At least, I would ask the manager why the light must stay on. But I changed my mind as I read the rest of the sign, "…for ventilation."
My tendency to question everything has served me well in my creative pursuits. It's also gotten me into a mess of trouble from time to time. My defiant attitude with regard to public signage was stoked by "Candid Camera," the long-running television series in which Allen Funt captured on film unsuspecting individuals dealing with unusual situations.
In one episode, a sign in a store with checkerboard floor tiles read, "Walk Only on Black Squares Today." To my utter astonishment many customers walked in, read the sign, and complied. Okay, maybe they thought the owners had applied some special cleaner or polish to only the white tiles. But the next prank--no excuses. A sandwich-board sign on a city sidewalk read, "Backwards Walking Zone." A number of people approached the sign, turned around, and literally walked in reverse!
I can still hear my dad exclaiming, "We've become a nation of sheep!"
Inventions arise from necessity, greed, laziness, or any number of less-than-noble human drives. Pride drives the rebellious innovator. The ever-present dissatisfaction with what is and the desire to make it better has given us most of our creature comforts, tools, vehicles, toys, clothing--name it. Everything from rockets to recipes have behind them an inventor fired with the conviction, "I can do it better!"
New nations emerge from the passion of people no longer satisfied with the way they've been ruled. Chances are, your religion is a reformation of one that preceded it.
Creative people automatically question authority, convention, and the way things are customarily done. At the risk of sounding as silly as one of my favorite Marx Brothers songs, I start from the premise, "Whatever it is, I'm against it!"
A caveat: Before giving free rein to your spirit of rebellion, it's a good idea to read the entire sign. That is, consider all the reasons that things are the way they are. Or as the Davy Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier, advises, "Make sure you're right, then go ahead."
Peter Lloyd is co-creator with Stephen Grossman of Animal Crackers, the breakthrough problem-solving tool designed to crack your toughest problems.