Category: Creativity
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Grass is greener syndrome
I originally heard the phrase, “Grass is greener syndrome,” from my friend Peter Kang, when I talked to him about this tweet: It’s easy to want to pick something new to do—a different ladder to climb, a different game, a new project or venture—because it seems easier. Better. More rewarding. Smarter. That’s why we want…
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Cultivating honesty
One nice thing about posting every day is there’s no time to be dishonest or inauthentic. If you have fewer than 15 minutes, you can’t dawdle. You can’t tinker around, or worry about your legacy, or how you’ll come off to your reader. Every minute you spend not writing is a chance you risk not…
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Recent discussions of my work
It’s been a busy time here, I’m sifting through a lot of comments and ideas from one recent discussion of my work, and a research question I asked: Don’t think to write, write to think at Hacker News “Has a corporate engineering blog made you want to join the company?” at r/experienceddevs It’s been exciting—starting…
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Awesome ASCII art
I submitted my post to discussion board Hacker News, and it got a lot of people talking. It was great seeing the work resonate. I particularly liked this great post of ASCII Art by justinlloyd. See more ASCII art inspired by Dr. Seuss.
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Flexible habits are stickier habits
If you want to do something every day, you’ll need to be flexible about it. If you want to work out every day, do it all times of day—and in all time slots of the day. Have a workout plan for when you have just a few minutes, or even one minute. That’s not to…
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Don’t think to write, write to think
This is one of the lessons that every writer comes to appreciate: writing is thinking. Writing is not the artifact of thinking, it’s the actual thinking process. There’s no shortage of great quotes on this topic, the implications are less clear: Writing is the planning process and the final product: You don’t design a final…
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Confusion as a starting point
“I don’t even know where to begin,” is a place to begin. Just start there! Write, “I don’t know where to begin, because I’m concerned about how it’ll turn out. Because…” Or, “I don’t know where to begin, and I feel…” Or, “Today, I started writing and then I stopped. I stopped because…” Remember, you…
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Creative oscillations (on discipline vs. play)
Irina Dumitrescu recently wrote a fascinating piece making the case against discipline, in favor of play. She asks, “What if, what if, what if it’s not just some vague nameless Resistance that keeps us from doing what feels right, but the very fact that we’ve attached discipline to those activities?” Her question definitely resonates, and…
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Insights from the idiot
A few days ago, I wrote about the four inner beings of a writer. Susan Sontag called these the nut (i.e., the obsédé), the moron, the stylist, and the critic. Professor Betty Flowers called these the madman, the architect, the carpenter, and the judge. I started this blog with the intention that it served as…