Treating failure as an option is the key to originality. “When it comes to idea generation,” Adam Grant writes in Originals, “quantity is the most predictable path to quality.”17 Shakespeare, for example, is known for a small number of his classics, but in the span of two decades, he penned 37 plays and 154 sonnets, some of which have been “consistently slammed for unpolished prose and incomplete plot and character development.”18 Pablo Picasso produced 1,800 paintings, 1,200 sculptures, 2,800 ceramics, and 12,000 drawings—only a fraction of which are noteworthy.19 Just a handful of Einstein’s
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