Ep 329 | Genius is Persistence in Disguise

Thank you for joining me today. It's Brian Gubernick, and welcome to the No Days Off podcast, where we believe that every single day brings a new opportunity to get better. Thomas Edison. Thomas Edison is a prime example of persistence. He was relentless. Relentless determination, incredibly resilient, had repeated failure, repeated setback throughout his career, yet it made no difference to the guy. He persevered. We all know Thomas Edison invented the light bulb. Probably have heard before that he tried 10,000 different ways to make it happen. And he said he had never failed, he just found 10,000 ways that that light bulb wouldn't work. He had 1,000+ patents for all of his inventions. That sheer volume indicates a level of perseverance most of us could not even comprehend. This continuous effort to innovate and improve. He overcame challenge after challenge throughout his life. He had financial difficulties. He had competition from other inventors. He had all sorts of challenges. And despite these obstacles, he pushed forward. And he eventually succeeded in bringing so many of his inventions to market. He had a crazy work ethic. He was known for his work ethic. Long hours in his lab. He's got a famous quote, "Genius is 1% Inspiration and 99% perspiration. Just really kind of showcases his belief in hard work and determination as key drivers for success. And then, as I mentioned, his failures, his setbacks, he saw them as opportunities. He really did. I know we hear that sort of thing all the time, like, you're not really failing, you know, they're just opportunities to learn and improve. This guy really believed in that. He had an ability to persist through setbacks and had this positive attitude. And it's why I think he's probably known for his persistence. Now, let's dig a little bit further into some of his failures, right? So with respect to the light bulb, he tested thousands of materials for the filament portion of the electric light bulb before he found the one that worked. As a matter of fact, I heard a story the other day that he, no joke, tried the hair of one of his friend's beards, no joke, as a filament for a light bulb. Most tests that he ran were complete failures, but he saw it as one step closer to finding that solution for the light bulb. So 1,000 failures before, 10,000 failures before he found that one. What you may not know is that in the early 20th century, Thomas Edison attempted to create a line of concrete furniture. The idea was that concrete could be molded into different shapes and would be pretty durable. But as you can imagine, the furniture was pretty heavy, it was pretty expensive, and the public did not receive it. Did not receive it. So it was, it was a failure. It failed. Edison invested in iron ore milling in the late 1880s. He had this process to extract iron from low-grade ore, and he would use magnets. He'd use like magnetic separation. However, it just wasn't commercially viable, and he lost a boatload of money on it. Another failure. He created a talking doll in the 1890s. It had this miniature phonograph that played recordings, and the dolls were just way too expensive to produce. And even the ones he sold, like most of them, I— it's my understanding were returned because there was mechanical failure and poor sound quality. So that was another failure. The electric pen, the electric car battery. He actually created a car battery in the early 20th century that was a nickel-iron battery that had some advantages over the existing lead-acid batteries, but it was too heavy, it was too expensive. And gasoline-powered cars— remember the timing, right? Early 20th century— gasoline-powered cars soon overshadowed his efforts in this electric car battery realm. And that was a failure. Mining ventures failed there. Home phonograph market— you know, he did some cool things with the phonograph, and he was successful in some markets, but when he tried to bring it to the home, Too much competition. He wanted to use cylinder records. I think he was eventually outpaced by disc records, and he failed in that area too. Now, despite these and so many other failures, he had this positive attitude, and he kept innovating. And his ability to learn from his mistakes and persist in this face of adversity is again a testament to his incredible, I I would say remarkable resilience and determination. Now, that gets to the point today, right? What does this all mean to you? You've heard of Thomas Edison. You know he's one of the greatest inventors, if not the greatest inventor of all time. You've probably heard about his failures. You know he was persistent. My takeaway here is that genius is actually persistence in disguise. Genius is persistence in disguise. If you study most of the geniuses that we've probably come to know, people that you would consider genius, right? You, you think about like, if I work from today backwards, you know, we think about Elon. Many people think about him as a genius. You think about a Warren Buffett, you know, if we go, we think about it, Gates. These are genius-level individuals. If we keep working our way back, you know, go way back, we think about Benjamin Franklin, or we think about Thomas Edison, you know, we think about some of these individuals that we, we would call genius. Steve Jobs, genius. But if you really study these individuals, what you find is while they were incredibly intelligent, they also outworked everybody around them. They had greater persistence than most anybody around them. They refused to accept failure as an end, right? They actually, in many cases, saw it as a jump-off point for bigger and better things. The genius really is just persistence in disguise. If you think about, you know, let's talk about your kids or, you know, your kids in school or, you Maybe when you were in school, you know, there was always a kid or two in your class or your classes, you would say, "Oh, that kid's a genius, that kid's brilliant." And yeah, maybe that kid, or maybe your kid even, is wired a certain way that gives them some brilliant, you know, a brilliant approach or a genius mindset. But the reality is, if you study a lot of those individuals, They're also putting in incredible work. Genius is persistence in disguise. So what's the takeaway for you today? Here's where my head goes, right? If you believe in what I'm saying, if you believe in Thomas Edison and what he said around genius and it being about persistence and perspiration, then instead of trying to necessarily educate yourself or up your environment, which we, which is mandatory. We should be doing that. I'm not trying to say you shouldn't, but instead of thinking that's going to build your genius, recognize that your persistence, you doing it again and again and again and forming habits and getting up after failure, doing that over time is what is more likely to develop that genius than anything else. There's just so many points throughout history and in studying people where we see this. So the focusing question for you today Where would you like to have a genius-level understanding? And in looking in that respective area, what would persistence look like in comparison to what you're doing today? If you were to say, hey, I'm going to up my degree of persistence, I'm going to up my degree of commitment, what action steps would that entail? Genius is persistence in disguise. That's all I have for you today, the No Days Off Podcast. Thank you so much for listening, and remember, every single day brings a new opportunity to get better. So let's get after it.