How to be clever | Zapier

In the tech industry (and, I imagine, many others), we have a habit of raising up the “disruptors,” the “radical new ideas” from “once-in-a-generation” minds that no one fully understands but can universally agree: they’re clever. If that sounds like you, I’ll let you skip this whole article and leave you with these three key insights for success:

1. Stop

2. Cut it out

3. Seriously, knock it off

Cleverness is a sprint, but you’re running a marathon

As I was starting to outline this piece, Google announced that they’re shutting down their Stadia cloud gaming service, which was described by many as “too clever by half” when it first launched. Without going into too much detail, it promised to revolutionize console video gaming by removing the physical box that you plug into your TV and instead streaming games direct to your device via internet. 

Watching early demos, you’d think that it was some kind of magic, which was part of the problem: nobody really knew how it actually worked. But for a company as large as Google, that hardly seemed to matter. In an early TV commercial, Reggie Watts described it as using “electric air,” a phrase that was exciting enough to garner the interest of big-name partners like Capcom, Bungie, and Peloton.

It was going to be the next big thing—until, of course, it wasn’t. While the initial concept was still incredibly clever, it was bogged down by real-world limitations that wouldn’t have played well in the ads, like international copyright laws, or the fact that not everyone has fiber broadband. Cleverness only carried it so far. 

One of the reasons for this is that cleverness often comes hand-in-hand with hubris, or is in fact hubris itself, disguised by intelligence. Stories like Stadia’s aren’t new: take Aesop’s fable The Tortoise and the Hare, for example. It first appeared in print in the 16th century, but it tells a tale frighteningly similar to one we see every day on Twitter.

One midsummer morning, there was going to be a race. On one side was the slow but trustworthy Tortoise, beloved by the community, and on the other was the up-and-coming Hare, who I imagine is the animal world’s version of a “fin-tech bro” (complete with Patagonia vest). The Hare agreed to the race because he had a secret weapon: he was much faster than the Tortoise. Like, incredibly so. In the world of tortoise racing, the Hare was a 10X runner, easily. And he accepted the challenge in order to disrupt that world, and rise to new heights as its champion. This was him being clever: there was no way he could lose to a tortoise!

The race began, and instantly the Hare’s cleverness paid off: he pulled out ahead, to the point where it seemed impossible that the Tortoise could ever catch up. Then, somewhere around halfway, the Hare slowed down. Different writers may alter the exact reason from print to print—sometimes it was due to getting tired, other times it was due to boredom—but either way, he found a new idea in the middle of the race: take a nap. The Hare, in his cleverness, had found a way to pull so far ahead in the race that, surely, he could take a nap, resume the race well-rested, and still win. Another clever idea!

Most likely you know the ending of this story already: the Hare’s new idea didn’t pay off. While he was sleeping, the Tortoise continued on his slow-and-steady pace, eventually winning the race. The Tortoise hadn’t been clever, hadn’t used any new or innovative techniques; he just kept at it, little by little. While the Hare’s bold new vision for racing wasn’t a bad one, his mistake was focusing so much on his clever idea that he lost sight of the whole picture: it’s not about how you start the race, it’s about how far you are from the finish line. (If they need a writer for the next Fast & Furious movie, I’m available.)

Cleverness isn’t a team sport

Now, I don’t want this whole article to be anti-cleverness—it does serve a purpose. Without new ideas and innovation, we wouldn’t have a lot of the nice things that we have today (like this computer that I’m writing on, or this website you’re reading). But the thing about clever ideas is that they’re often difficult to explain to anyone who’s not inside your head. This means if you intend to rely only on your own cleverness, you’re most likely going to end up working alone.

I’ll use an example from my own life: I was lucky enough to have access to a computer from a fairly young age, and I started learning programming languages in my early teens. Because I was just making programs for myself, I would write in a way that made sense to me: I’d name functions things like “myFunction()” or “thingamabob()” and give variables single-letter names like “i” or “x.” For a time, I was obsessed with “Code Golf” and condensed my code into as few characters as possible. 

In my own head, all of this worked just fine, because I had internalized all of the context for what each thing actually meant—I could compress and convolute it all I wanted and still make it work. But when I entered the professional world, it was quickly made clear that this approach wouldn’t work out. Not because the code didn’t run correctly, but because no one else on my team could understand it. They didn’t have my internalized context for what “thingamabob()” meant, meaning if an error occurred or changes needed to be made, they would be better off rewriting all of my code, rather than wasting time translating it.

From this came the first piece of good advice I would receive from an engineering manager: it’s better to be clear than clever.

In any profession, not just programming, it’s often better to have a stupid idea that’s easy to understand than a clever idea that’s confusing. By putting the focus on the community around you (be it your coworkers, friends, neighbors, etc.), you invite others to begin adding their own skills and insights into the idea. Meanwhile, cleverness for its own sake only excludes the community, even if that wasn’t the intention.

How to be clever

Now we’re left with a conundrum: cleverness seems necessary for creating new things but is detrimental to long-term success. How can we get the best of both worlds, with none of the side effects? 

Here’s what I propose: be clever together. 

At the end of the day, cleverness isn’t a measure of your intelligence. It’s your ability to see the world in a new way, and relate that to others. So while the professional world may be focused on the first part right now, I’d challenge you to put practice into the second: take the ideas you’re proud of and explain them to the people you care about. Ask them for feedback. Find other clever people who want to do the same, and be a sounding board for them. If you don’t have a group readily available, start recording yourself. Make an “Explain It Like I’m 5” video for your idea and put it online. Read the comments (this is the only time I recommend this). 

What you’ll likely discover is that not all clever ideas will work out. Through the process of getting and giving feedback, some of your favorite ideas might turn out to be total crap, and that’s ok. They’re not going to be your last ideas. In film school, we called this “killing your darlings,” and while the process is every bit as painful as it sounds, leaving behind a failed idea is a kind of blessing. Imagine how much money Google might have saved if they’d kept Stadia in beta a bit longer, or what might have happened if the Hare had friends to help him. 

Most importantly, keep at it. It’s a marathon, and I want us all to reach the finish.