Category: Creativity
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Creative Doing, at Pitch’s Presentation Gallery
When I was making a presentation for Ness Labs, I wanted to really step up the visual component, so I used Pitch. Some of the people who joined actually commented on how great the presentation looked during the Q&A. (Here’s how the team makes them… I love behind the scenes.) Pitch recently featured an abbreviated…
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Too big, too fast
I’ve got a draft of a post with a working title, “Better than SEO.” It involves what a venture capitalist named the “reversal of funnel” trend, where people start searching at platforms outside of Google. It started happening a few years ago with Amazon, and now it’s happening at TikTok and YouTube, and in groups…
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On the go
Discipline, routine, and stability are critical to creative work. The philosophical opposite—the ability to work quickly, on the go, and with whatever is in front of you—is just as valuable. Hugh MacLeod illustrates on small business cards for this reason; he can carry them anywhere, quickly whip them out when he gets an idea, and…
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Side projects open doors
When I was a student, I had no idea how I was going to get a job. In order to get a job, I needed to have experience; in order to get experience, I needed to have a job. Any internship worth getting also seemed to require working experience. Or so I thought. One of…
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Work isn’t meant to be escaped
Entrepreneur Curtis Jackson, also known as recording artist 50 Cent, writes in Hustle Harder, Hustle Smarter: One of the most important realizations I came to early in my business career is that I’m running through an endless tunnel. What I mean by that is I came to understand that there’s no “happily ever after.” No…
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Katsushika Hokusai, drawing on the floor
Yesterday, I visited the Sumida Hokusai Museum. One thing that stood out to me was his rather modest studio; there was a replica in the museum. Hokusai drew on the ground! Creativity is not about the tools, it’s not about breaking through constraints; it’s about working with what you’ve got. I didn’t take a photo…
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It’s never too late
Ke Huy Quan, on restarting his acting career at 49: “For the longest time, I believed that I didn’t like acting anymore, until I started seeing my fellow Asian actors succeeding. I go: ‘Wow, time has changed. We are getting not just very stereotypical roles but meaningful roles, meaty roles.’ It wasn’t until then that…
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Printing lottery tickets
Here’s something that’s difficult to be honest about: Positive outcomes can’t be entirely designed or engineered. Sometimes they need exploration, discovery, and curiosity. These projects probably won’t have clear payoffs or immediate expected value; in fact, most of the time, they won’t. But with each project and insight, you’re also opening up new possible futures…
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While you can afford to be bad at it…
Practice it while the stakes are low. Practice it when you don’t need to. Practice it poorly, clumsily, in a messy way, until you learn how to practice it better. You’ll thank yourself.
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Unblocking creativity with motivation and incentives
When I write every day at my blog, I only write things I’d write for free, which means it’s for fun. When I tried to write every day at Medium, I was writing each article as an instrument to make money. Even though the end result might sound the same—I’m writing every day—the experience is…