Originality is an interesting thing. The word itself is highly favorable and when confronted with the word alone most people have a favorable impression of it.

Originality is an interesting thing. The word itself is highly favorable and when confronted with the word alone most people have a favorable impression of it. In practice most people absolutely despise originality. It isn't that something original is merely disinterested or disagreeable. It is a thing of emotional revulsion that frequently brings forth hostility. Ray Dalio, as I discovered when I interviewed at BridgeWater in 2014, had figured out how to test for originality as a psychological personality characteristic and comparatively measure people using a standard metric. Strangely enough if you score high enough on such a metric people will be interested in you for interesting reasons such that they might be able to identify or measure the concept and yet not have any idea how to explorer it or exploit it. What I have learned most from originality is rejecting feedback and scoring ideas not in what people say but what they do next or whether they come back. I have also learned that originality appeals highly to a very specific class of people eager to explore new things. These rare people are precious to early stage ideas of any kind. Identify them and go out of your way to appreciate their time even when they disagree with you.