In 2009, Lin-Manuel Miranda was invited to perform at the White House. His musical “In The Heights” had just won a Grammy & 4 Tony Awards. So the White House was expecting him to perform something from Heights. Instead, he debuted a song from a rap album he’d been working on: Miranda explained that he'd been working on this "concept album about the life of someone I think embodies hip-hop...Treasury Secretary, Alexander Hamilton." The crowd laughed. "You laugh, but it's true!" Miranda replied. "He was born a penniless orphan in St. Croix of illegitimate birth, became George Washington's right-hand man, became Treasury Secretary, caught beef with every other Founding Father. And all on the strength of his writing. I think he embodies the word's ability to make a difference." Takeaway 1: Lin-Manuel Miranda said he initially picked up Ron Chernow's biography of Alexander Hamilton, "thinking maybe I’ll get a funny song out of it—some jokey-rap thing about the Hamilton/Burr duel." Then, as he read it, "I thought I would write a bunch of songs that tell the greatest hits of Hamilton’s life." Then, as he wrote the songs, he realized it could be a musical. Most things of magnitude start small. Talking about working with Nobel Prize winners, interviewing the great minds of his time, and studying the greats of all time—Richard Hamming famously said, to do great work, you have to: "Plant the little acorns from which the mighty oak trees grow." Takeaway 2: When Lin-Manuel Miranda told people he was working on a hip-hop album about a founding father, people laughed. He worked on the concept for 8 years—so, Miranda said, “I had a lot of people look at me like I was crazy for a very long time.” Speaking to entrepreneurs at the startup incubator Y Combinator, the billionaire Peter Thiel drew a Venn diagram on a whiteboard. In one of the overlapping circles, he wrote, “seems like a bad idea,” and in the other, “is a good idea.” The intersection is the sweet spot for doing great work, Thiel said. Everyone knows that to do great work you need natural ability and you need to work hard. But there’s a third ingredient that doesn’t get talked about or written about as often: the ability to work on what "seems like a bad idea." - - - As he was working on what he thought was going to be a hip-hop album, Miranda met his hero, the composer Stephen Sondheim. Sondheim asked him what he was working on. "And I told him, 'I’m working on this hip-hop album, like a ‘Jesus Christ Superstar’ concept album about Alexander Hamilton.' And he threw back his head and guffawed, and he said, 'No one will expect that from you. That’s amazing. Keep writing that…Keep surprising us.'" Follow @bpoppenheimer for more content like this!

What is your brain doing when you are doing absolutely nothing? A neuroscientist wanted an answer to that question. So she conducted the first brain-imaging study of brain activity when the brain is in a "resting state"—free of inputs/free to wander. The results are interesting... The neuroscientist Dr. Nancy Andreasen used a positron emission tomography (PET) scan to study brain activity when the brain is at "wakeful rest" When you are doing absolutely nothing: "We found activations in multiple regions of the association cortex," Dr. Andreasen wrote. "We were not [seeing] a passive silent brain during the ‘resting state,’ but rather a brain that was actively connecting thoughts and experiences.” Essentially, Dr. Andreasen demonstrated that the brain defaults to creativity. When you are doing absolutely nothing, the brain engages in what the researchers termed "random episodic silent thought" or REST. And during REST, the brain "uses its most human & complex parts." Takeaway 1: Doing nothing promotes creativity. Raymond Chandler, Neil Gaiman, Dr. Suess, George Lucas, and many other writers all have/had a similar habit. They gave themselves two options: a) You don’t have to write. b) You can’t do anything else. @neilhimself explains: "I go down to my lovely little gazebo at the bottom of the garden, sit down, and I’m absolutely allowed not to do anything...I'm not allowed to do a crossword, read a book, phone a friend...all I’m allowed to do is absolutely nothing, or write. But writing is actually more interesting than doing nothing after a while." Takeaway 2: REST Resting, Dr. Andreasen wrote, “allows the association cortices of the brain to converse in a free & uncensored manner.” This is why ideas come to us in the shower, on walks, and when daydreaming. A favorite example of this: @Lin_Manuel had the idea for “Hamilton” on vacation: "I was on a pool float with a margarita in my hand and had a moment when my brain could unplug. [It was his first vacation in 7 years]. The moment my brain got a moment's rest, the best idea I've ever had in my life walked into it." --- “If a plant only gets sunlight, it’s very harmful. It needs darkness too…In the darkness, it converts oxygen into carbon dioxide. We are like that too. We need periods of doing & periods of non-doing.” — Robert Pirsig Follow me @bpoppenheimer for more content like this!