Maybe the logic of appropriateness is a better guide for the creative and entrepreneurial life?
After-all, most businesses fail, and most writers and artists are wildly unsuccessful too.
Don’t get me wrong. I am a huge proponent of the logic of consequences. Far too many people do not carefully consider consequences before making a decision or taking action. This seems to be the case for teenagers, politicians, and often all the rest of us too…
The answer is something I have touched on before.
It’s figuring out: What kind of person do you want to be?
I sat down and answered this question for myself a few years ago, and honestly, it was life changing.
I decided that I wanted to live a literary life. I wanted to be someone who reads and writes. And what do writers do? The get up everyday and write. And now I do the same.
See, everyday I get to decide who I am, who I am becoming.
Understand: If you want the logic and consequence of the safe life, you should be an engineer.
When we use the logic of consequence, we can always find reasons not to take risks. The logic of appropriateness frees us up. We think less about what will guarantee the outcome we want, and act more on a visceral sense of what someone like us ought to do. And this tendency can be influenced by birth order.
-Adam Grant, Originals