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Uncommon sense

William Liao
1 min readMay 13, 2021

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“When you’re onto something great, it won’t feel like revolution. It’ll feel like uncommon sense.” — Derek Sivers in Anything You Want

An uncommonly held idea isn’t necessarily a bad idea.

Seat belts were uncommon.

Sanitizing hands before a surgical procedure was uncommon.

Even the written word was at one point was uncommon.

Not only were these things uncommon, they were also controversial — it took years in some cases for these things to become widely accepted.

When it comes to your ideas about how to make things better, it’s true that some of them may not be good ideas — we all have bad ideas sometimes.

On other hand, you may just be sitting on some uncommon sense: a novel perspective that could benefit the world with persistence & advocacy.

In truth, you can’t know which bucket your idea falls in until you try.

And if you believe strongly enough in your vision, it makes sense to put in the work to find out.

At worst, you learn something.

At best, you make things better.

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William Liao
William Liao

Written by William Liao

Taiwanese American, daily blogger of ideas about impactful work in service of others, photographer (ephemera.photography)

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