Category: Creativity
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Delusions and evolutionary fitness
Shankar Vedantam and Bill Mesler write in Useful Delusions: In recent years, psychologists and neuroscientists have shown that the human brain is designed to make a number of errors in perception and judgment. These “bugs”—distortions, shortcuts and other cognitive cross-wiring—produce slanted pictures of reality. They exist for a reason: Evolution found that, on average, the…
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Entrepreneurship isn’t a job title, it’s a mindset
Some words from Satish Kanwar came to mind today, which is a lesson he learned after selling his business: The truth is, it took me longer than I care to admit to realize that I had been thinking about my identity the completely wrong way. Being an entrepreneur wasn’t attached to this business. It was…
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Preparation enables presence
Whether you’re playing in a competitive sport, appearing as a speaker, or attending an important meeting, showing up prepared will set you up to be more present.
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Change the metaphor
You and I constantly tell ourselves stories about our work, and these stories affect how we treat the work and treat the people we work with. The most important thing to remember is you always have a choice to flip the metaphor or introduce a new one. That’s a starting point for you to see…
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The case of the stolen smell
I recently saw James Blake tweet, “The brainwashing worked and now people think music is free.” Then, a couple of days later, I read this story: In the days of old Yedo, as Tokyo was once called, storytellers told wonderful tales. Many of the stories were about the wit and wisdom of Ooka Tadasuke. Ooka…
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David Chang on the long, hard, stupid way
I recently came across a great quote from David Chang, “Just because we’re a casual restaurant, doesn’t mean we don’t hold ourselves to fine dining standards. We try to do things the right way. That usually means doing things the long, hard, stupid way.” David has elaborated on this quote: When your back is turned…
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Expensive and cheap information
Stewart Brand has said, “On the one hand information wants to be expensive, because it’s so valuable. The right information in the right place just changes your life. On the other hand, information wants to be free, because the cost of getting it out is getting lower and lower all the time. So you have…
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Dreams vs. delusions
A dream coming true is a delusion that becomes reality. A delusion is a dream that didn’t become a physical reality. (Yet!) If your delusion or dream comes true, you’ll look like a genius. Until it does though, you will experience a degree of loneliness. In other words, you can and should expect to be…
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“Producing is about discouraging creativity”
That’s a lesson Tina Fey learned from Lorne Michaels, which she describes in Bossypants: You would think that as a producer, your job would be to churn up creativity, but mostly your job is to police enthusiasm. Editors also need to do this, and frankly it’s probably one of the least fun aspects of the…
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Do you want to be known for that?
Sarah Cooper gained a lot of momentum through her Trump lip synchs, and made the decision to stop them. She says, “I feel like I kind of have to use it as a propellant, but I also have to escape it in a way. Like, I don’t want to be known as the ‘lip-synching girl.’”…