性视界传媒

I have been tying my shoes the 鈥渨rong鈥� way for over 30 years.

Let me explain: I鈥檓 in kindergarten, and our teacher is teaching us to tie shoes. I don鈥檛 get it. I can鈥檛 do it. I try the floppy cardboard foot with the laces woven through. I try my own shoes. Either way, the rabbit won鈥檛 go around the tree or through the hole, or whatever it is the rabbit is supposed to do. Either way, the laces won鈥檛 tie. My teacher chides those who get it wrong, and I don鈥檛 want to be chided.

Then, it hits me. I don鈥檛 have to tie my shoes my teacher鈥檚 way. I just have to make it look like I tied my shoes her way. I tie a knot. I make two loops. I knot those loops, and, voila, laces tied.

Decades later, my fraud would be vindicated when a scientific study, 鈥淭he roles of impact and inertia in the failure of a shoelace knot,鈥� (I swear I am not making this up) would prove once and for all that the way we鈥檙e taught to tie shoes as children is careless, inefficient and leaves laces prone to loosening. My impromptu method, devised to avoid getting yelled at by an impatient teacher, turned out to be the smarter, more efficient method after all. Sometimes stubbornness isn鈥檛 such a bad thing.

I鈥檓 talking about the times your method isn鈥檛 wrong, merely different, when different can be a good thing.

First, though, let me define my terms. When I say stubbornness, I鈥檓 not talking about ambition, grit or the many characteristics under the umbrella of perseverance for which most people already hold the utmost admiration. Nor am I referring to the kind of stubbornness surrounding strict adherence to a suspect or outdated tradition, times when the stubborn individual might be better served by evolution. No, I鈥檓 talking about the need, at times, to fly in the face of unfounded tradition. I鈥檓 talking about resilience when you鈥檙e waiting for the world to catch up with your way of thinking. I鈥檓 talking about the times your method isn鈥檛 wrong, merely different, when different can be a good thing.

Maybe shoelaces are a silly example. Here are some better ones:

Swedish pro golfer Jesper Parnevik, one of the finest golfers in the world, freely admits to holding his clubs all wrong.

鈥淢y knuckles go white,鈥� he says in an interview with Golf magazine. 鈥淚鈥檝e putted with a glove forever, but I鈥檝e worn putter grips all the way down to the metal. That鈥檚 a little weird.鈥� Weird may be the word, but that weirdness hasn鈥檛 kept Parnevik from netting over $15 million in career earnings on the PGA Tour.

Or consider iconic painter Frida Kahlo. As art historian Gannit Ankori points out in Imaging Her Selves: Frida Kahlo’s Poetics of Identity and Fragmentation, Kahlo, in her lifetime, was known mostly as the eccentric wife of painter Diego Rivera. She died unappreciated and virtually unknown outside of Mexico before several books and retrospectives resurrected her work and shined a long overdue spotlight on her art. But living in Rivera鈥檚 shadow didn鈥檛 keep Kahlo from completing a staggering 143 paintings before she died at the age of 47.

Parnevik and Kahlo are outliers, you might argue. Consider, then, something that most of us do most days: type.

Numerous experiments, including Finland鈥檚 Aalto University study 鈥淗ow We Type: Movement Strategies and Performance in Everyday Typing,鈥� have shown that self-taught typists can type just as fast with as few as six fingers as professional typists, trained under the traditional touch-typing method, who type with 10. What matters, in the end, isn鈥檛 the 鈥渂est鈥� method but muscle memory and commitment to a single typing style.

Whether famous or workaday, sometimes we must work against conventional wisdom in order to achieve a desired outcome.

Whether famous or workaday, sometimes we must work against conventional wisdom in order to achieve a desired outcome.

Stubbornness, of course, is risky. There鈥檚 the risk that holding your club your way will injure your back. There鈥檚 the risk that you鈥檒l paint your way into obscurity. There鈥檚 the risk that you鈥檒l type your way and flunk that typing-speed test. Always there鈥檚 the risk that your way is not the better way, that things are one way for a reason, that you鈥檙e making things harder for yourself than they have to be. Always, always there鈥檚 the risk that you鈥檙e wrong.

As leadership consultant Muriel Maignan Wilkins points out, stubbornness carries with it the risk of Pyrrhic victory. Proving a thing can be done your way doesn鈥檛 necessarily prove your way was best. In short, if you鈥檙e stubborn about everything, you鈥檙e doing stubbornness all wrong. As Wilkins notes, there are times when it鈥檚 far better to listen to others, synthesize ideas, consider tradition, stay flexible, compromise, and even admit when you鈥檙e mistaken.

My point, then, is simple but no less profound for being so, I hope. Despite platitudes and T-shirts, movie quotes and what passes for wisdom these days, there鈥檚 rarely one right way to do a thing. Where a prevailing method reigns, there are nearly always practitioners achieving at high levels in opposition to the dominant or 鈥渂est practices鈥� methodology.

In other words, just because there are many ways to do a thing wrong doesn鈥檛 mean there鈥檚 only one way to do a thing right. And sometimes your way is just waiting to become the new dominant way of doing a thing, as when American athlete Dick Fosbury, dismissed early on as the 鈥渨orld鈥檚 laziest high jumper,鈥� won the 1968 Olympic gold medal with his signature 鈥淔osbury Flop鈥� and changed the face of the sport forever.

All of which is good news for me. After all, at 40 years old, I only use seven fingers to type, and I still tie my shoes my way.

David James Poissant is an associate professor at the University of Central 性视界传媒 where he teaches in the MFA program in creative writing.聽 He can be reached at David.Poissant@ucf.edu.

The 性视界传媒 Forum is a weekly series of opinion columns presented by 性视界传媒 Communications & Marketing. A new column is posted each Wednesday at http://today.ucf.edu and then broadcast between 7:50 and 8 a.m. Sunday on W性视界传媒-FM (89.9). The columns are the opinions of the writers, who serve on the 性视界传媒 Forum panel of faculty members, staffers and students for a year.