Who is a Geek? An oddball, probably anti-social, obsessively
interested in narrow subjects, passionate about numbers, patterns or machine,
repetitious, lacking social cues…
People labeled dyslexic or having ADD also seem to have the
same attributes; and paradoxically these aptitudes have been found to be an
entrepreneur friendly affliction. As an example, people who cannot focus on one
thing for a long time can be disastrous employees but fonts of new ideas.
Some of the famous dyslexics we know are the founders of
Ford, Ikea, IBM, Richard Branson, Steve Jobs and the list is long. All these
people have gravitated early in their lives towards activities that do not
require formal reading , writing skills and naturally move towards thinking
“out of the box” which has been found to be the skill of the entrepreneur and
those that end up running their own businesses.
The ADD brain naturally searches for better ways of doing
things. Along with all the obvious dis-organisation and inability to focus
comes the ability to take risks and immense creativity. The founder of Kinkos,
Paul Orfalea says, “I get bored easily; that is a great motivator!”
The truth is that we are all dyslexic in some area of our
function; the only difference is that some are aware of it, accept it and most
spend their lives running away and hiding behind it… compensating for what they
believe is a malfunction or a fault.
Except for accidents and birth defects, ‘Dyslexia’s are
learned reactions and believed to be problematic. When they are seen as
limitation, they can be re-programmed with Bio-feedback from the body and used
to one’s advantage.
To accept that one is differently wired__ not wrongly
programmed is what is necessary so we can allow creativity to prosper without
restrictive judgements.
As an associate of mine put it_ “It’s actually cool to be
geek !”
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