The Icarus Deception summary

When a kitten is in distress, its parent comes and picks it up by the scruff of its neck and carries it to safety. A monkey, by contrast, has to actively grab its parent’s back if it wants to escape danger. In the new economy, humans need to be more like monkeys and less like kittens. We need to learn to be more proactive.

So, what defines the new economy? Well, two things stand out. It’s more connected and there are fewer gatekeepers.

There’s a Japanese word that describes what it’s like to fully commit to an activity and immerse yourself in it – kamiwaza. Literally translated, it means “like the gods.” That might sound terribly arrogant, but that’s because our own understanding of humility is flawed and in urgent need of redefinition.

Humility doesn’t mean accepting poor performance or not trying one’s best. On the contrary, there’s humility in working hard to become as good as you possibly can at something. When you fully commit to a task, you lose yourself in it and are no longer self-conscious about what you’re doing. That means you stop worrying about other people’s opinions. That’s real humility.

What is grit? Not the stuff you sometimes find between salad leaves! In fact, it’s one of the most important assets an artist can have. To put it bluntly, if you want to be an artist, you must have grit.

Art isn’t just painting pictures or composing music. It’s any activity that you pursue creatively with the aim of producing something new in the world. Maybe it’s a revolutionary customer service system, or a new form of abstract painting. Whatever it is, you’ll need grit to get it out there.

Superheroes can achieve pretty much anything, but they usually have an Achilles heel. Think of Superman and kryptonite, the alien mineral that instantly robs him of his powers. Artists have their own kryptonite to contend with, though it’s altogether less exotic than a material mined on distant planets: shame.

So what makes artists so vulnerable to shame?

The author Ray Bradbury once gave would-be creatives a bit of sound advice. The most important thing of all, he suggested, was to avoid getting stuck in one’s own mind. Being creative is about engaging with the world rather than constantly thinking about it. And if you want to engage, you have to learn to really look at the world.

So what’s the importance of this? Well, success is all about recognizing opportunities. Usually, however, we see the world through our own tunnel vision. We interpret things according to our preconceptions, which clouds our judgments.

Steve Martin is one of the most successful comedians in the world but, actually, he’s not all that funny. How can that be?  

Well, art isn’t as much about talent as it is about obsession. Martin is a classic example of this. In some ways, he’s an anti-comedian – he’s neither particularly expressive nor known for delivering laugh-out-loud punchlines. That explains why he spent so long failing at his chosen career, often traveling the country to perform shows in front of just three or four people.

Writers often talk about being “blocked.” But have you ever noticed that hardly anyone ever suffers from “speaker’s block?” Speaking just feels too natural to imagine not being able to get the words out there. After all, everyone gets up each day, sees people and talks to them. Writing, on the other hand, is an entirely different matter. Getting your thoughts onto paper is often the bottleneck in which your creativity gets trapped.

The key is to treat writing like speaking. And that means doing it every day!