Well, the little contest over at eco-libris has ended, and someone named Brooke is the winner of a free copy of one of my books. My basis for picking her comment as the winner was that it was, from my biased perspective anyway, the most enlightening bit of information out of all the comments. And no doubt, I was most likely prejudiced by the fact that she supported my argument rather than disagreed with it.
Having said that however, I must confess to having more than a twinge of guilt for having created a "loser" experience for everyone else who posted a comment, as I really appreciated their input as well. It was all good… those who disagreed with me made me think. And even the briefest of quotes constituted a wonderful bit of recognition of my existence, and were all the more powerful, given that for every person who posted a comment, they were probably five or 10 who read it and did not post anything. As a blogger, I can tell you that feedback is a wonderful thing, because otherwise you feel like you are blogging into the wind and no one is listening.
Anyway, since several people did not win a free book in this process, I thought this was a perfect opportunity to point out one of the principles from my book Principles of Applied Stupidity, which is, principle #18: always avoid procedures, because procedures are not designed to find people, they are designed to get rid of them.
The whole trick to making it in any competitive enterprise is by distinguishing yourself from the competition. And while some may disagree, if you take a class in the "best" way to publish a book or get a job playing in a major orchestra, for all the good intentions, at the end of the day that training is going to make you look more similar to your competition, not less so.
There are people who are in love with procedure, and more power to them, as it makes my life that much easier. The more conformed my competition is, the easier it is for me to distinguish myself from that competition.
Another problem of procedures, is that it creates far more losers than winners. While this is certainly felt hardest by the losers themselves, I can tell you that, having been a direct participant in the creation of a losing experience here today, I’m not particularly happy about it or proud of it, and, I’m not sure that whatever was gained by creating one single winner is worth the harm that was done to a dozen or more sensitive souls whose hopes were raised and frustrated.
Remember, procedures are like lotteries. The majority of participants must lose. The people who run the lottery try to make you focus on the possibility of winning. But the only way the lottery works is if the majority of people lose. I hate losing. So I hate procedures. And I never follow them.
I played with the Boston Pops for 18 years, but I never auditioned. I also played with the Boston Ballet and the Boston Opera, but I never auditioned for them either. I am a successful small publisher, but I never took a class in it. There are some who think I am "cheating" for not following procedure, but to me this is sour grapes. I am merely choosing to not limit myself the way other people do.
For all of the focus on procedure, and all the people who will charge you thousands of dollars to train you in improving your procedure-passing skills, if you have anything to offer at all, there’s a backdoor entrance available to you. It’s probably not obvious, because it’s not being used by anyone else. But if the only way you can feel like a winner is if you have "beaten" a bunch of losers, then maybe you should stick with procedures. I have a different definition of victory.
I have come to truly hate the idea of artistic competitions. To me, they just breed conformity. I sell products that are unlike anything that anyone else sells, it makes me happy, it makes my customers happy, and nobody loses. My apologies for the sense of loss that I created today… this is not my style.
© Justin Locke
