Category: Creativity
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Overdue insights on daily blogging
My friend Vin, who appears in my book Creative Doing, and I were tweeting about the possibility of writing every day. I meant to write about this over a month ago, I’m now well over 100 days of writing at this blog every day, so here goes: Here’s how I’ve made it happen so far…
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Time to ship
Time and inspiration expands ideas. Obsession takes over. Most of the time, this is a good thing for creative work itself. The problem is, it becomes very difficult to actually make. The most difficult ideas to write are the ones that have expanded too much. It’s too big to chip away in 15 minute increments;…
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Creative oscillations (the third)
Isabel writes in obligation vs compulsion: I also feel this distinct sense of compulsion to be doing this work. I’m intentionally calling it compulsion and not obligation. These are two distinctly different forces—like a push vs. a pull. Obligation requires you to push yourself to do the thing: get up from what you actually want…
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My butt’s in the seat. Now what?
I recently received a question from a reader: I was hoping if you could advise me on how to develop habits that I could incorporate into my day on how to actively do design work and just explore my creativity. I feel like a lot of the times I get in my own way. Rather…
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The Winners Effect
When I was a teenager, for reasons I will explore in a separate post, almost every week I went shopping at Canadian discount retailer, Winners. Shopping at Winners felt like playing a lottery, because the inventory changed with time, and also varied by location. Every time I walked into a store, I felt a thrill;…
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Where’s the opening?
“Low hanging fruit” has become an excuse to do boring things, so we need a new one. I liked this one I came across in therapy: “Where’s the opening?” Most action plans are set too far into the future; we must start closer to where we are right now. If you want to write a…
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Complaining vs. caring
NetNewsWire is at the top of Hacker News right now. It’s a familiar name; with a quick Google Search, I dug up an article I wrote over a decade ago for Guiding Tech that mentioned it. I didn’t have a Mac yet—I do now though, so I’m finally trying it again. It’s nice, and I’m…
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Creative Doing infographic
My publisher and I worked on three infographics based on my book Creative Doing. Each section contains a creative prompt and a very brief summary. We shipped the first one yesterday. What do you think?