Category: Creativity
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Luxury and imperfection
“If you were to buy some of the famous brands of a luxury watch, you would probably be warned that it loses two minutes every year. The flaw is not only known, it is assumed – one could say that that is both its charm and its guarantee of authenticity. It is the specific and…
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Finding passion, decision making, and shiny object syndrome
When I was growing up, my parents would describe me as a “generalist.” They didn’t mean it in a bad way—they were too!—though it also meant it wasn’t so obvious where my career would go, or what my skills were. I could develop my skills at most things I tried to do, especially with practice. …
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Time is not fungible
When you feel inspired, sometimes it’s actually really worth clearing your schedule out for the day. It’s time you won’t get back. Sometimes, the ideas will just pour out. Ideally, you can scribble them somewhere. On the flip side, those moments are not reliable and don’t come often for many of us; it’s also important…
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Don’t let Twitter teach you how to write
Social media platforms like Twitter are businesses, and their business models usually do not have your education in mind. Their business models usually involve getting the most reach for their platform and selling advertising. It’s agnostic to what content that is, even if it’s inflammatory, inaccurate, or miseducation. Professor Algorithm really isn’t a professor at…
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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…