Best practices kill originality
Every best practice was once a weird, risky idea that got copied. Calvin Ross Carl on why, once everyone uses it, it can’t produce originality anymore.
Summary
Calvin Ross Carl traces the life cycle of a best practice. It starts as an innovation so good that everyone copies it. He remembers the early days of the web, when something new would appear and spread everywhere within a week. Best practices were once crazy ideas that felt risky, weird, and wrong until enough people copied them. But once everyone uses them, they can’t produce originality, because everyone is capable of producing the same thing.
Highlights
- Best practices began as innovations good enough to copy.
- Every best practice once felt risky, weird, and wrong.
- Once everyone uses one, it can’t create originality.
Key insights
Copying is how ideas become standards
A breakthrough turns into a best practice the moment enough people adopt it.
Shared tools make shared results
When everyone works from the same playbook, everyone ends up with the same output.
Detailed analysis
Calvin’s early-web example shows how fast the cycle can move. A new idea goes from strange to standard in days, and its power to stand out disappears just as quickly. The lesson for brands is that a best practice can make you competent, but it can’t make you distinct.
Conclusion
Today’s best practice was yesterday’s risk. Originality means taking the next one.
I think we also forget that best practices are just yesterday’s innovations, and they were so good everyone started copying them. You especially saw this—I mean, it’s still happening—but I remember in the early days of the web there were new, fast-paced innovations nonstop, and they would really quickly get adopted. You’d basically see it in the span of a week, where all of a sudden somebody would create something new and it would start getting pushed out through everything. It was really cool.
So that’s the reminder: best practices were once crazy ideas. It just became so popular people started copying it, and then it became the best practice. And since everyone starts using it, best practices can’t inherently produce originality anymore, because everyone is capable of producing that same thing now. But it is worth remembering that every best practice was once risky. It was weird. It felt wrong until enough people copied it. That’s it. All it takes is one of those things breaking through, and then enough people start copying it.