Category: Creativity
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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…
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Making a movie
Let’s say you’re working a full-time job and, over the past year, have been inspired by something you learned about your family or your friends, or something that you experienced. You decide you want to make a movie. How would you approach it? Would you brave against the odds of the traditional film system, and…
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Intro to Creative Doing, at Ness Labs
Anne-Laure Le Cunff invited me to discuss Creative Doing with her community, Ness Labs. It was a really fun session: If you want to watch other sessions, check out: Creative Doing, on Infinite Loops Creative Doing, at Sharpen Your Edge Creative Doing, at Ideas Into Action Creative Doing, at Minds and Mics Creative Doing, at…
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Priority vs. energy
At his blog, Will Larson writes (emphasis added): Rigid adherence to any prioritization model, even one that’s conceptually correct like mine that prioritized the company and team first, will often lead to the right list of priorities but a team that’s got too little energy to make forward progress. It’s not only reasonable to violate…
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“Why don’t we also…?”
The extra step sounds simple enough. It’s two words. It’s high leverage. People think it’ll bring a ton more value to the process. And it will! Except, of course, if you can’t make that step happen. “Get published.” “Pitch publications.” “Meet influencers.” Even if there’s an opportunity to work together, things stall. At best, collaborations…
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Experimentation, junk, and excellence
SpaceNTime describes Creative Doing, “The book really breaks down how one can tap into their best creative self while understanding why your shitty work comes along with it.” I’ve always described this as quantity leading to quality. Nell Painter writes in Old in Art School, “One of my painting teachers said 85 percent of what…
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Stir the pot
There’s a special type of luck that emerges just from taking enough action; enough shots at bat. You gather a hundred pieces of information. You take notes on a dozen of them, and they find your way into your brain. One of those notes enables you to understand people’s problems. You talk to dozens of…
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Wrecking the forgetting curve
Over a century ago, German psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus put forward a theory on how quickly people forget information when no attempts are made to retrieve it. Here’s what the curve looks like: Notice how quickly memory for information decays; most people’s brains forget information it doesn’t think it needs. This is why I’ve made the…
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Strengthening brain connections
In The Source, Tara Swart covers the science of the law of attraction. Swart defines neuroplasticity as, “The power to create new pathways in the subconscious and conscious parts of our brain.” She writes: It’s important not to overcomplicate it. Everyday examples of neuroplasticity are all around us. When a colleague and leadership expert that…