What if there were no wrong answers?

 

“People are like dice.We throw ourselves in the direction of our own choosing.” 

- Jean-PaulSartre

 

I had a thought experimentrecently. Not as paradigm shifting as any of Einstein’sbut, well, food for thought – for me.I imagined myself teaching a class of children for a lesson and deciding thatwe’d do something a bit different, something that might change theirunderstanding of their potential or the nature of reality. You know, the smallstuff.

 

The ‘experiment within theexperiment’ was for each child to throw a pair of dice together and I’d writethe outcomes beside their names on a blackboard.

 

Of course, there was a rangeof outcomes from double six to double one and various permutations in between.I imagined that the boy who rolled a double six considered himself the winner(he was a boy in my imagination) and a girl who rolled a two-and-a-one (again,it’s what I saw) felt disappointed.

 

I then explained to themthat any outcomes – assuming a balanced pair of dice and similar throwingtechniques (i.e. no cheating) – had an equal probability of occurring. Anysignificance in a particular score was in the eye of the beholder, unless ruleshad been agreed beforehand (which wasn’t the case). We then, as a class, triedto work out (sometimes elaborate) rules whereby each pair of dice scores couldbe declared the winner.

 

For example, a double onewould win lowest score; a two and a one would win ‘lowest dice throwcombinations where one die score is twice that of the other’. The skill lay incoming up with a meaningful – for them – rule that celebrated their random dicethrows.

 

In my imagination each ofthe children found, or were helped to find, a rule whereby they were thewinner/s.

 

How does this relate tocreativity, writing or the freelancing business?

 

Good question.

 

Often, especially when itcomes to creativity, we do something first and then decide if it was successfulafterwards without identifying measures beforehand. Usually it’s based more onwhether we like the outcome than any other benchmark.

 

But we decide. And success or failure, however we define them, happensbecause of the confluence of a lot of factors: timing, who sees it and theextent of their influence, luck, who or what else we’re competing with, etc.

 

Attitude is a huge factor aswell because it may influence how we interpret our experience. In my thoughtexperiment I imagined each of those children feeling like a winner andrecognising, perhaps fleetingly, that they can all be winners when they seeoutcomes in a way that means something positive to them.

 

What about the world andobjective success?

 

What’s our yardstick? Ifwe’re not starving, being bombed or having our freedom of speech curtailed,that feels like a win. If we have a roof over our heads and the opportunity tobe creative or run a business, that feels like a win to me.

 

Yes, the cynics will sneer,but what about hard currency from our professions – in pounds, dollars, and euros.(Okay, for LinkedIn as well, crypto too.) You’d need to bring in other factors likeeducation, your product or service, your target audience, and yourunderstanding of – and position in – the marketplace. Plus budget, yournetwork, your ability to sell, and whether you have a convincing story.

 

But it all starts fromsomewhere and I believe it’s not the roll of the dice so much as the decision to roll those dice and what you make of the outcomes.*

 

 

* For clarity, not everybusiness will be financially sustainable, nor every work of art appreciated andsuitably rewarded. I get that. If what you’re doing isn’t working, do somethingabout it or do something else.

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