Todd Rose > Quotes

“The hardest part of learning something new is not embracing new ideas, but letting go of old ones.”
― Todd Rose, The End of Average: How We Succeed in a World That Values Sameness

“It is not that the average is never useful. Averages have their place. If you’re comparing two different groups of people, like comparing the performance of Chilean pilots with French pilots—as opposed to comparing two individuals from each of those groups—then the average can be useful. But the moment you need a pilot, or a plumber, or a doctor, the moment you need to teach this child or decide whether to hire that employee—the moment you need to make a decision about any individual—the average is useless. Worse than useless, in fact, because it creates the illusion of knowledge, when in fact the average disguises what is most important about an individual.”
― Todd Rose, The End of Average: How We Succeed in a World That Values Sameness

“From the cradle to the grave, you are measured against the ever-present yardstick of the average, judged according to how closely you approximate it or how far you are able to exceed it.”
― Todd Rose, The End of Average: How We Succeed in a World That Values Sameness

“Most of us know intuitively that a score on a personality test, a rank on a standardized assessment, a grade point average, or a rating on a performance review doesn’t reflect your, or your child’s, or your students’, or your employees’ abilities. Yet the concept of average as a yardstick for measuring individuals has been so thoroughly ingrained in our minds that we rarely question it seriously.”
― Todd Rose, The End of Average: How We Succeed in a World That Values Sameness

“Out of 4,063 pilots, not a single airman fit within the average range on all ten dimensions.”
― Todd Rose, The End of Average: How We Succeed in a World That Values Sameness

“In other words, groups use ostracism as a tool to discipline and minimize deviance. Not surprisingly, being at odds with their in-group is something most people would rather avoid altogether.”
― Todd Rose, Collective Illusions: Conformity, Complicity, and the Science of Why We Make Bad Decisions

“Our modern conception of the average person is not a mathematical truth but a human invention, created a century and a half ago by two European scientists to solve the social problems of their era.”
― Todd Rose, The End of Average: How We Succeed in a World That Values Sameness

“We live in challenging times: there is enormous pressure to go along to get along, to stay silent, or to lie about our private beliefs in order to belong. But blind conformity is never good for anyone—it robs us of happiness and keeps us from fulfilling our potential, individually and collectively.”
― Todd Rose, Collective Illusions: Conformity, Complicity, and the Science of Why We Make Bad Decisions

“Of all the ways that the covenant can make you underestimate your own potential, perhaps the most deflating is when an institution insists that you adopt a strategy that does not suit you - and then reprimands you when you struggle, condescendingly attributing your failure to a lack of talent”
― Todd Rose, Dark Horse: Achieving Success Through the Pursuit of Fulfillment

“In addition to the psychological costs, there is another reason to fear ostracism. Groups will use it without compunction to assert their will and achieve their ends.”
― Todd Rose, Collective Illusions: Conformity, Complicity, and the Science of Why We Make Bad Decisions

“Diagnoses—labels—also help connect people with resources that may often be useful. My caveats are reserved for those all-too-common situations in which parents, teachers, and medical professionals are quick to label someone as “disordered” (whatever that means) when the real problem is a mismatch between a child and a given environment.”
― Todd Rose, Square Peg: My Story and What It Means for Raising Innovators, Visionaries, and Out-Of-The-Box Thinkers

“We frequently fall in line behind people who we assume know more than we do.”
― Todd Rose, Collective Illusions: Conformity, Complicity, and the Science of Why We Make Bad Decisions

“Get better at the things you care about most. This is the dark horse prescription for personalized success. It elegantly summarizes all four elements of the dark horse mindset.”
― Todd Rose, Dark Horse: Achieving Success Through the Pursuit of Fulfillment

“Failing well—that is, staying calm through adversity and recognizing what can be learned from mistakes—is a foundation of success in a variety of fields.”
― Todd Rose, Square Peg: My Story and What It Means for Raising Innovators, Visionaries, and Out-Of-The-Box Thinkers

“I care a lot about people finding their own path, and I think the world’s a better place if we let people figure out their passions and what they’re good at and give them the knowledge and skills to do that, but our education system isn’t designed to do that — it rounds you out and makes you interchangeable with everyone else.”
― Todd Rose

“To put a finer point on the Mario Kart Theory of Talent: every vehicle has a chance of winning the race, as long as you operate the vehicle according to its jagged profile.”
― Todd Rose, Dark Horse: Achieving Success Through the Pursuit of Fulfillment

“the purpose of schools was not to educate all students to the same level, but to sort them,”
― Todd Rose, The End of Average: How We Succeed in a World That Values Sameness

“I’ve had many occasions since that time to appreciate this timely advice. For me, the hardest part of learning always boils down to figuring out why I should care. Other people’s expectations matter to me, but they rarely clinch the deal. I need to build up my own reasons to engage. But once I jump over that hurdle, I’m good to go. I”
― Todd Rose, Square Peg: My Story and What It Means for Raising Innovators, Visionaries, and Out-Of-The-Box Thinkers

“We now speak, instead, of being “authentic,” a less moralistic term that refers to being real as opposed to false. Authenticity sounds good, but it isn’t necessarily a call to ethical action. An authentic leader—a creature much praised in business literature—is meant to be genuine, self-disciplined, self-aware, and values driven.53 Yet authenticity has nothing to do with virtue; one can be authentic and have good or bad values, just as one can be authentically good or bad. Until his conversion following the visitation of the three spirits, Scrooge was true to his own vision of himself as a “tight-fisted hand at the grindstone… hard and sharp as flint.” As Charles Dickens made clear, this total and utterly unapologetic allegiance to money was authentic, because it reflected his reality.54 But it didn’t make him a good person.”
― Todd Rose, Collective Illusions: Conformity, Complicity, and the Science of Why We Make Bad Decisions

“A better system will not automatically ensure a better life,' Havel wrote. 'In fact, the opposite is true: only by creating a better life can a better system be developed.' The smallest choices you and I make, every single day, can change the world for better or worse. The simple act of refusing to live a lie has the power to transform who we are and what we are capable of, both as individuals and as a society. In other words, trying our best to live a congruent life is one of the most important things we can do for ourselves and each other.”
― Todd Rose, Collective Illusions: Conformity, Complicity, and the Science of Why We Make Bad Decisions

“I made my decision as an informed adult—so deliberately informed that I ended up taking a whole course in pharmacology at Harvard, where I wrote my term paper on the neural mechanisms of stimulants and their impact on cognition and behavior (and, incidentally, it’s so boring you would need stimulants to read it).”
― Todd Rose, Square Peg: My Story and What It Means for Raising Innovators, Visionaries, and Out-Of-The-Box Thinkers

“In the 1960s and 1970s, a professor of sociology at Wesleyan named Hubert O’Gorman found that those who advocated for segregation were the most likely to believe that those around them also supported segregation. On the other hand, those advocating change from the status quo were much more likely to think that they were alone, even though they were not. “The closer whites came to endorsing the value of strict racial segregation,” O’Gorman observed, “the more apt they were to assume that the majority of whites in their areas agreed with them.”53 By misreading others and keeping quiet about their true views, people thus damaged their own integrity and the greater cause they privately hoped would advance.54”
― Todd Rose, Collective Illusions: Conformity, Complicity, and the Science of Why We Make Bad Decisions

“Compromising your personal integrity for the sake of belonging quietly wears away at your self-esteem and has been shown to negatively affect personal health in both the short and the long”
― Todd Rose, Collective Illusions: Conformity, Complicity, and the Science of Why We Make Bad Decisions

“The real question is whether the brighter future is really always so distant. What if, on the contrary, it has been here for a long time already, and only our own blindness and weakness has prevented us from seeing it around us and within us, and kept us from developing it? —VÁCLAV HAVEL”
― Todd Rose, Collective Illusions: Conformity, Complicity, and the Science of Why We Make Bad Decisions

“如果你只在一帆風順時才重視個體性，就不要奢望時時看見員工的投入、生產量的提升和創新力爆發。”
― 陶德．羅斯 (Todd Rose), 終結平庸: 哈佛最具衝擊性的潛能開發課，創造不被平均值綁架的人生

“Like a glitch in our biological software, repetition has no logical connection to truth. Yet it has somehow become a trap door to our beliefs. Sadly, governments, bullies, and leaders have used this trap for generations.”
― Todd Rose, Collective Illusions: Conformity, Complicity, and the Science of Why We Make Bad Decisions

“One of their most insidious skills was to pile support behind a few human outliers. This way the extreme sentiment comes from a real American, while the bots are agreeable but just polarizing enough to tip the scales.”
― Todd Rose, Collective Illusions: Conformity, Complicity, and the Science of Why We Make Bad Decisions

“We might presume that a social contract should be a lengthy legal document with many provisions and clauses. But the real authority of a social contract does not derive from a piece of parchment, but from a few simple truths that we all abide by, truths that implicitly structure the relationship between individuals and the institutions we create to serve us. At its heart, a social contract defines what we owe one another.

Recall the terms of the Standardization Covenant:
Society is obligated to reward you with opportunity if and only if you abandon the pursuit of personal fulfillment for the pursuit of standardized excellence.
If we want a democratic meritocracy for ourselves and our children, then we must each choose to ratify a new social contract:
Society is obligated to provide you with the opportunity to pursue fulfillment, and you are accountable for your own fulfillment.
The supreme institutional obligation under the Dark Horse Covenant is to provide Equal Fit. The supreme individual obligation under the Dark Horse Covenant is Personal Accountability.”
― Todd Rose, Dark Horse: Achieving Success Through the Pursuit of Fulfillment

“I’d “own” my screw-ups and crimes, for the simple reason that other people’s annoyance and even contempt was much better than their pity and rejection. Playing the outlaw at least made me feel I had some control.”
― Todd Rose, Square Peg: My Story and What It Means for Raising Innovators, Visionaries, and Out-Of-The-Box Thinkers

“There is a term for those who triumph against the odds—for winners nobody saw coming. They are called dark horses.

The expression 'dark horse' first entered common parlance after the publication of The Young Duke in 1831. In this British novel, the title character bets on a horse race and loses big after the race is won by an unknown “dark horse, which had never been thought of.” The phrase quickly caught on. “Dark horse” came to denote an unexpected victor who had been overlooked because she did not fit the standard notion of a champion.

Ever since the term was coined, society has enjoyed a peculiar relationship with dark horses. By definition, we ignore them until they attain their success, at which point we are entertained and inspired by tales of their unconventional ascent. Even so, we rarely feel there is much to learn from them that we might profitably apply to our own lives, since their achievements often seem to rely upon haphazard spurts of luck.

We applaud the tenacity and pluck of a dark horse like Jennie or Alan, but the very improbability of their transformation—from fast-food server to planet-hunting astronomer, from blue-collar barkeep to upscale couturier— makes their journeys seem too exceptional to emulate. Instead, when we seek a dependable formula for success, we turn to the Mozarts, Warren Buffetts, and Tiger Woodses of the world. The ones everybody saw coming.”
― Todd Rose, Dark Horse: Achieving Success Through the Pursuit of Fulfillment