• Absentminded i.e. quite capable of driving to the grocery store and coming home empty handed
  • Spent a fair portion of each day lost in own thoughts, tumbling down mental worm holes
  • Often didn’t hear what wife said and if he did, couldn’t remember it several minutes later
  • When stressed, wore rubber bands like bracelets and snapped against his wrist
  • When really stressed, had a habit of wrapping his arms around his torso and hugging himself even in business meetings
  • Misplaced everything, especially keys and wallets
  • Lousy driver: forever bumping into trees and poles and other people’s fenders

Quite the List! There are some who would think that the above personality traits would disqualify anyone for all but the most menial job, much less a position of leadership, certainly not the qualities of a winner, far from a success type. Yet I’ve just described Phil Knight (or rather a portion of him), the co-founder of Nike with a net worth of $28 billion per Wikipedia. Obviously, Phil had other capabilities that more than compensated! (Source: ‘Shoedog’ by Phil Knight)

Closing Quotes:

“The amount of eccentricity in a society has generally been proportional to the amount of genius, mental vigor, and moral courage which it contained. That so few now dare to be eccentric, marks the chief danger of the time.” – John Stuart Mill, On Liberty and Other Essays 

“Human salvation lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted.” – Martin Luther King 

“Blessed are the weird people – poets, misfits, writers, mystics, painters and troubadours – for they teach us to see the world through different eyes.” – Jacob Nordby  

As always, I share what I most want and need to learn – Nathan S. Collier