Category: Creativity
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Creative Doing, at Figma
During Config, I visited the Figma office in San Francisco. My book was on the book wall! Please give me a shout if you want a few copies for your office.
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Quantity and the long tail
A small amount of what you do is like to deliver most of the returns. When visualized in a graph, this phenomenon is known as the power law or the long tail. The problem is, you don’t know which amount it is; it’s impossible to predict, because the world is so complicated. Instead, the better…
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A quick spine prompt
A few weeks ago, I wrote about how you can stay focused on a creative project with a spine. 50 Cent writes a good example in his book, Hustle Harder, Hustle Smarter: Whenever I’m about to hit the studio, I try to think about all the great musical moments I’ve experienced from different artists. I…
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On writing a newsletter about books
Every month, I recommend 3 books to nearly 2,000 people. This has been an extremely rewarding experience. I’ve met some really great people through this newsletter. Some of these friends even kindly tell me to pick a new topic. I’m aware that books are not the most catchy hook, and that I could probably grow…
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Put it out there
It’s good to shake things up and put your work on a public surface. Otherwise, it’s easy to forget that other people are experiencing your work too. It’s also good to ask questions early on if you’re stuck, and to let people know you need help with your work. The alternative—not asking—may feel better, and…
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Vision, practice, and spine
At his Substack, Austin Kleon suggests an alternative to having a creative vision: And this all sounds very inspiring — it really does pump you up! — but for much of my life, [having a vision] would have been almost useless advice, because I didn’t really see any of my career coming. There was no…
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Doing meta-creativity well
Whisper of the Heart is all about a protagonist chasing her dream of being a writer, with her love interest becoming a violinist. Hacks is all about a protagonist early into her writing career, who gets cancelled for a distasteful joke. Girls5eva is a comedy show about a retired band going viral and getting a…
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A creator’s perspective
From the point of view of one who creates, everything is a gamble, a leap into the unknown. Yayoi Kusama, Infinity Net
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Medium Day topics
Medium recently announced a call for Medium Day, which takes place August 12. When I wrote my first post for Medium, over a decade ago, I was in between graduating college and my first job at Pivotal Labs (and even tried to make Medium a part of its content strategy). I received an invitation to…
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On first principles
In Trying Not to Try, Edward Slingerland writes: René Descartes, in his Meditations (1641), famously declared that you can’t accept as reliable knowledge what you’ve been taught in school. The only way to obtain true knowledge, he argued, is to acquire it yourself, building up logically from first principles. This is a seductive idea, and…