Alpha waves and creativity

16 July 2015 Unknown 0 Comments

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I listened to this podcast by Kevin Kaiser and Robert Liparulo and it was great. The podcast wasn't meant to be about creativity, but they talked a lot about creativity. It was great.

They talked about how alpha waves are what your brain makes right before you have a good idea.

They talked about the decline of creativity because children watch too much media (visual media) and how school is focused too much on quantifiable results (read math and science).

They talk about quiet and solitude and deep focus and boredom being very important to creativity and art.

It's an hour commitment to listen to (less if you listen to it at higher speed) but it's really good stuff. Enjoy!

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Update on stand up

14 July 2015 Unknown 2 Comments

I just wanted to give an update about how our daily stand up meetings are going. If you don't remember this experiment my family and I are doing, you can read about our daily accountability here.

The jury is still out on this experiment. My kids really love the meeting. When I asked them if they wanted to keep doing them, the answer was a resounding yes. But there reasons for liking the meetings was something along the lines of "we like to talk about what we're doing" and "we like the clap at the end."

Seriously, they love clapping as a family at the end. It's just a single clap on the count of three, but they love it. And since I'm usually video chatting with them, my clap isn't timed well with their clap. They just roll on the floor laughing because I can't ever clap at the same time. Come on guys, it's not my fault :)

But the things we talk about are pretty rambling and there isn't really a clear direction to what they—or we—should say. I'm not sure if saying everything you plan to do today is valuable. I've tried to steer it toward us saying what we are creating for the day, but it usually turns in to a checklist for what they have to do that day.

And scheduling it is hard. Since I have so many meetings at work, it's been really hard to do it consistently. We usually do it 2 or 3 times a week at the most.

So, I'm not sure if it's helpful yet, but we're going to keep doing it, mainly because the kids love laughing at daddy I think.

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5 Steps to Tackle Your Creative Anxiety

09 July 2015 Sketchee 0 Comments



You've likely experienced anxiety and stress while trying to be creative. Anxiety is our natural fear response. You've heard of our flight or fight reaction. Flight is our instinct to avoidance, escape, and even procrastination. Fight is directly tackling a problem and anguishing over the problem until we find a direct solution. Psychologists also say we have a third fear response: freezing which is playing dead, ignoring the problem, denial. All three of our natural responses are sometimes appropriate. Why are we afraid to be creative? 

My personal experience with social anxiety disorder gives me some insight on how this panic response works and how to deal with it. Social anxiety or social phobia is the fear of judgment. It could be self judgement or judgement by others. I remember waking up late for an important meeting with my university where I had recently graduated. I was to present my portfolio as a graphic designer and share some ideas for their university magazine. I wanted to really impress them with my work and thoughts. I was so focused on what they would think if I was late. The panic attack that I felt when I realized I woke up late was this intense fear response.

My body was filled with adrenaline and other fear hormones. Attempting to make it to the meeting, I tried to get up and at first struggled to move. Once I recognized that this was a fear response, I was able to calm myself down. Making it to the meeting, I nailed it and the staff was very impressed with my insights. Still, ten years later what I mostly remember was that extreme panic attack.

From that experience, behavior therapy and research, I've learned so much about how to manage stress that I'd love to share with you:

Step 1: Identifying your bad habits


What pattern do you want to change? To understand stress, you really have to understand what thoughts specifically are you stressed about. Identify your thoughts, anxious thinking and worry. Common thinking errors include all or nothing, over generalizing, catastrophizing, exaggerating, negativity, jumping to conclusions, blame, and overly rigid rules. Do you identify with any of these? Take creative inspiration from these thoughts. Write, draw, scribble all of the thoughts that make you anxious when you're trying to create. Embrace them as a normal part of your creative process. There aren't "good" or "bad" thoughts.

Step 2: Empowerment


Identify what you can control. Accept what you can't control by identifying who or what could possibly be responsible and in control of those thoughts: leave those elements to fate, the universe, a higher power, or just to the other people who are better equipped. Whatever happens is what happens.

Identify and focus on what you can control. What you can control is putting marks on paper, the time you set aside, your own actions, and even how you respond to your own thoughts. Another chance to look to your scrap paper or sketchbook and visualize and write down these ideas. Stick figures or words or little comics.

Creativity itself has been shown to reduce stress. Part of reducing our stress reaction is confronting the feeling and then learning to identify the activity as not dangerous. The more you create, the less you'll associate your work with fear. The fear is really reaction to new or unfamiliar. Imagine a wild animal seeing a new or unfamiliar experience, it wouldn't know whether it was dangerous or not.

Step 3: Mindfulness


Mindfulness is the state of being more aware and focusing on awareness itself. Various studies have shown that mindfulness reduces anxiety and depression. Review your notes and your experience without judgement. Note that anxious behaviors aren't really good or bad/ Everyone thinks that way sometimes. By identifying our habits and being aware, we can start to change our reactions.

Mindfulness has also been shown to help directly with being more creative, generating new ideas, and with imaginative thinking.

Step 4: Goals and Next Step


Imagine how you’d want to react or think. When you jump to conclusions, for example, how would you want to respond? I’d want to laugh at my initial conclusion as a silly joke I tell myself. Then come up with a few alternate conclusions. The first few might exaggerate the idea even more absurdly. Then come up with reasonable versions. To come up with the reasonable version, ask "What is the simplest next step?"

In the answer, try the phrase "It'll help if I..." If you have a "bad drawing", the next step is to identify the part that doesn't look quite right, then make adjustments. Rather than "I never will be able to draw arms!!" The next step is: the arm isn't drawn quite right, it'll help to sketch a few quick arms with the mirror on scrap to practice, then revisit this drawing with what I learned."

Having goals about compassion and self image have been shown to reduce anxiety. The consistency of having regular goals increased the effects in the college students who were studied. Creating goals about how your actions create compassion for others and for yourself will help you be more creative and less afraid.

Step 5: Learning Experiences


Note the results of your previous negative thoughts. Maybe you planned to get more done and just ended up procrastinating and judged yourself for doing it, just creating even more anxiety when you think about trying again. Let’s take that experience as just a learning experiment. Admitting what went wrong, forgiving ourselves, deciding we can try again and that any effort is a good one.


Remember, we are at least in part creatures of instincts. Fear is a normal emotion and part of our design that allows us to learn and grow. Naturally, instincts affect our behavior. To change how these instincts identify our behavior, we first need to notice and become aware of those instincts on some level. Awareness leads to a conscious recognition of choice. Rather than instincts directing behavior, we now practice letting our fear response trigger our awareness. From that awareness, we can make choices and create and imagine that much better. Thank you for hearing my thoughts and about my story. How have you tackled your creative anxiety and stress?


Brian E. Young helps others be more imaginative as an artist and graphic designer in Baltimore, Maryland and by answering your creativity questions on the The Uncanny Creativity Podcast.

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There is only one of you

07 July 2015 Unknown 0 Comments

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I read this post by James Clear about Martha Graham and I just have to share.

Here's the quote that I absolutely loved from Martha Graham:
“There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open.”
There is only one of you and if you don't do your thing and follow your passions, those will be forever lost to the world.

We need that passion and your creations and your light. Don't snuff it out. Go create!

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What does it mean to be a good engineer?

02 July 2015 Unknown 0 Comments

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This week at work I've been thinking a lot about how to determine if someone is a good engineer and how do you put someone at a certain level of ability. Next week I have to give training about this, so I really want to have something valuable to say.

The way that many companies interview software engineers includes whiteboard problems. You're in a room with the person interviewing you and he or she asks you to write some code on the whiteboard to solve the problem that they give you.

Before this week I almost wrote off whiteboard problem interviewing completely. I had a talk with a coworker (@zachp) and he explained the importance of whiteboard problems, and the efficient way it gets at problem solving skills and a little bit of just raw technical ability.

It's not about them coming up with the best solution or if they can do that the fastest. It's not about the interviewer seeing if the candidate can come up with the "correct" solution that the interviewer was looking for.

You're looking for just a few things while whiteboarding:

  1. Can they find a solution, any solution
  2. Can they identify patterns in the problem
  3. Can they identify where their code isn't performant and edge cases it misses
  4. Can they iterate towards a better solution or the optimal solution
If the candidate can't do #1, they're not at the level of the problem. Maybe try another problem or they aren't a good fit.

Great candidates will do #2, 3, and 4.

This was really world-changing for me when he explained that. Interviewing became clear and I think I'll be able to give a halfway decent training next week.

Last of all, we talked about the need for interviewers to not just be familiar with the problems, but to know them inside and out, and to know basic solutions, mid-level solutions, and optimal solutions. Role playing and practicing with other engineers is recommended to help them get up to speed on each problem that they are going to have the candidate do.


Do you have some insight into hiring good people?

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3 great insights from Harold Shapero

30 June 2015 Unknown 0 Comments

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Harold Shapero was an American composer born in the 1920s and whose hero was Beethoven. I read some of his writing in this book that I'm reading and it just blew me away.

Here's some of the most important things I got out of the 3 pages I read of his writing (just 3 pages and yes all this).

Practice the building blocks


He talks about breaking a musical piece down into its phrases and practicing creating and rearranging phrases over and over to learn the techniques and improve your craft. More importantly, he talked about daily practice.
"The importance of daily practice also cannot be overemphasized, for without it, the bridge established between the conscious and the creative unconscious by technical exercise is soon blocked by non-musical associations. Just as the function of daily ritual and prayer, as related to the intuitive realization of deity, is that of preserving the thread of connected thoughts which lead to the intuition itself, so the function of daily technical practice as related to musical composition, is that of maintaining free the inroad to that corner of the mind from which the music comes."

Copy the masters


He goes on to say that breaking music down into phrases and practicing those, and imitating the phrases that masters have used and trying to come up with similar ones yourself, will lead to your own flavor of the art. He says this will lead to the "personal materials of your own art" and that you will find where your passions differ from the ideas of the masters and where you can bring yourself into the art.

Law of Association of Ideas


He includes a story in Beethoven's own writing about how he dreamed a song while on a carriage ride, but that afterward he could not remember the tune. Later, when he was on a carriage ride to the same place he had a "waking dream" and suddenly remembered the tune he had dreamed or invented. He said that this is because of the "laws of association of ideas." Harold Shapero's comment to that was "the use of this phrase is indeed striking.

I don't know what those laws are, but I've heard a lot about creativity being the ability to associate two ideas that have no business being together to come up with a brand new idea. This sounds like it is the same thing but almost in reverse. In order to remember the brand new idea, put yourself back in the situation where you associated the ideas in the first place. Maybe?

Bonus: Inspiration in art


Here's a little bonus for you. Shapero finished with some great ideas about inspiration in art—all forms of art, but he specifically talked about musical art.
"It is evident that inspiration is a most vital component of art. … it is possible to consider inspiration the creative absolute. … The composer can be certain that something has gone wrong with his musical thinking when he loses his inspiration. The composer to whom inspiration is granted can be assured that he is drawing on the most significant creative forces which are available to him."
And there you have it. Drink deep the words of the masters. As always, go to the source because their words are more powerful than my summary of them.

Harold Shapero died in 2013, but I want to thank him for his inspiration and his words. They have touched me deeply, all in just 3 pages.

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The Spirituality of Creativity

25 June 2015 Unknown 0 Comments



Today I'm going to mix in my moral compass a little bit with my ideas of creativity. I'm Christian and I believe that God created our world.

I want to talk about that. That act of creating the whole universe.

Imagine the sheer size of creating the universe. There are billions of galaxies. Each galaxy is billions of stars. Each star is many times larger than Earth. Earth is many times larger than me. Therefore, the universe is much much much larger than me.

Imagine the complexity of creating the universe. I'm pretty big compared to the ants I stepped on as a kid. Those ants are pretty big compared to the cells that make them up. Those cells are pretty big compared to the proteins that make them. Those proteins are pretty big compared to the atoms which make them. It just keeps going, all the way down to subatomic particles.

Long story short: the universe is huge and very complex. It's made up of tiny ity-bity pieces that make gigantic, massive things.

Artist AND Engineer


What's my point with this?

God had to understand at a very high level how big things like galaxies work, and at the same time he had to understand the most minute detail of how subatomic particles work. Creating the universe took a little bit of genius and a little bit of creativity. Okay, maybe "a little bit" is an understatement. God sounds to me like a brilliant architect, and if you look at nature's beauty, He also seems to be a very creative being, very artistic.

Creation


Though he has the ability to create the universe and we don't, we have something in common: we all have the ability to create. Creation seems to be in our nature.

We love creating. We strive all whole lives to create beautiful and meaningful things. Not everyone likes creating the same thing, but we all strive to create. Music, words, clay, business plans, buildings, families, software, chairs.

Creation is the ultimate act of creativity. Creation, and therefore creativity, is in our nature. It's who we are. The scale of creation doesn't matter, we are like God in that we create.

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Happiness: The key to unlocking Creativity

23 June 2015 Mitchell 0 Comments


Hey, my name is Mitchell Ellis. I am Freelance Illustrator currently, but I have done work for start up businesses and even animation companies like Bento Box Entertainment. Most importantly, I have done work with Cameron for his stories (I Illustrated his book cover). Cameron inquired me about my own insights on creativity and being creative. So here is my attempt at unlocking the ever elusive concept of creativity! 




How do I come up with new ideas?


I don’t think I really come up with anything truly “new” as  far as an idea goes. But I do try to take things that are familiar and make them feel new. Lets goes ahead with an example to help extrapolate this idea. Let us start with any idea of something we feel like drawing “spaceship”. Now that we have a raw start, we need to start seasoning the idea with whatever interesting flavors we can come up with! So we have a space ship, we will give the space ship some sort of a purpose. I am fan of Star Wars and many of it’s “knock off” films, so we will make it a “Star Fighter”.

Now our raw idea has been developed into something with purpose and we are actually ready to begin being creative with the idea. I personally like to try to juxtapose words or phrases that you don’t usually see beside each other. Here is an example of what I am trying to say. African Safari Star Fighter, Barnyard Chicken Star Fighter, Mystical Unicorn Star Fighter, The combinations are endless, and the more strange ideas you try and combine, generally the more creative they become. It is also important to note, that allowing humor into these brainstorming sessions allows the ideas to flow more freely. Humor is essential to unlocking the “flow state” of creativity, the mindset where your creative ideas tend to pour out abundantly.

There are times that your first idea can be a really good one, but most of the time, there are better ideas that come later down the line. It is best to avoid the “safe first” idea that comes across your mind by pure luck!



What do I do when I’m faced with a blank page and nothing’s coming?


You aren’t always going to have creativity spewing from your brain through your fingertips. There will continuously be “bad idea garbage” and residue cluttering your mental roadways, especially if you have had a particularly good session the day before. We need a way to clean these pathways out, or rather beat the “suck” out of yourself! There are a few things that I do that can be helpful.

Sometimes I listen to some music that gets me really pumped, the type of music to listen to should be from an era that resonates well with you. I personally am a big fan of the 80’s, so I tend to listen to music that resembles that time. Music tends to put me in a good mood quickly, and it also allows my other senses to relax.

Another thing I tend to do is look through the work or ideas of professionals that I look up to. Since I paint I tend to look through an “Art of (insert awesome movie or artist here)” book. Seeing the way they solve problems and iterate ideas can really inspire me most of the time, and that tends to get my work rolling. I’d be careful with doing this though, because it is very easy to just copy their work instead of build off of their work! I consider this activity research in it’s most pleasurable form.

I’d say the most effective practice for me is sitting down and actually drawing. Drawing anything, even if it isn’t relevant! Make sure to have fun with the ideas as you work on them! This a great way to get yourself into the ever coveted “flow state”. 
I am basically saying, Happiness is key to creativity!


How do I get myself in the mood every day?


To be honest, I’m not always in the mood. It can be mentally draining to feel the pressure of creating on a daily basis. Finding ways to recharge your brain either at the beginning or end of a particularly creative day can help relieve this pressure. I tend to find activities that aren’t always art related, things that involve being out in a public place around other people. Human interaction is not only encouraging, but it is also rewarding. Sometimes sitting down on a bench in the mall is a great way to see new and interesting characters that can inspire you to create.

Recharging shouldn’t take too long, but it should ultimately allow you to relax your mind.

Another thing is setting goals for yourself. When you make yourself accountable for your work, you tend to be more motivated. What if you make a goal and not live up to it? Analyze yourself and the goal and figure out what went wrong. Self analysis is really a different topic though.


How do I decide if something is good enough?


I tend to just post it on some sort of social media tool and see if it generates traffic with my peers. I am never 100% happy with what I make, but I am usually at least 65% happy with it! I never really know if something is good enough, but I do try and see if what I am producing is matching up with my peers.



What have I done in my life to stay creative?


Visit museums, read books, play an occasional video game (just don’t let it rule your life), watch a movie, listen to stories, tell stories, walk through a forest, take a different route to school/work, find love, fall in love, play an instrument, involve yourself, give yourself worth and meaning!

Ultimately, I have chosen to be happy with my choices. Like I said before, Happiness is key to creativity!


If you are interested in learning more about me, be sure to visit my website www.theoriginalmitch.com. Through this site you can find anything "Me" related! I hope to hear from you all soon! Stay awesome, stay creative!

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Creativity is excess

18 June 2015 Unknown 0 Comments

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I'm not very good at writing humor. In this next book I'm writing, I'm trying to have some humor, because let's face it Son of Shadow Hero of Light has none.

Looking back on how I wrote Son of Shadow Hero of Light, I realize that during my editing, I took out many things that initially I thought would be funny. We'll never know if they were actually funny, but I'm going to analyze why I took them out and learn something humor and relate that to creativity.

3 Reasons for removing humor


I took out funny things because upon reading them again, I felt they were too subtle and audiences wouldn't get them or appreciate them.

I took out funny things to save on word count because it wasn't moving forward the scene.

After removing some of the funny things while editing the first few chapters, I told myself that maybe this book didn't need to be funny. By the end, I had convinced myself that humor didn't fit with the tone of the story. I started hunting any remaining humor and removing it.

Why that was bad


Instead of trying to make the funny things work, I just took it out. Instead of trying to make them less subtle or testing them out on my wife or a friend to see if they were actually funny, I just resigned and removed them. I gave up and took the easy route of just not adding humor.

I changed the tone of the story or redefined it bit by bit until humor was gone. Instead of making an explicit choice about humor, I gradually edged myself out of humor and by the time I had really decided, I had removed most of the humor.

What I realized about humor and me

The second reason for removing humor that I listed above was about my own minimalistic tendencies. I'm a minimalist. I don't like waste and I don't like doing things or being part of things that don't drive toward a purpose. Just shooting the breeze or small talk or even playing pointless games are hard for me because there's just no point (except for when I'm hooked on a video game for a couple months … inconsistency in my personality much?). So if a word or sentence didn't move the scene forward, it was removed with prejudice.

Is humor possible within minimalism?

That's probably deeper than I want to go, but let's just say that because I tend toward minimalism, humor is harder for me and especially in writing.

But it made me realize that humor is excess. It takes more "unnecessary" words to make something funny. Probably not in every situation, but it feels like humor is like a layer on top of communication that just transfers information. Humor is an emotion on top of that information. Again, maybe deeper than I should go.

Innovation is excess


But it makes me think that maybe innovation is also excess. Innovating on top of just doing day-to-day stuff takes more "unnecessary" energy than just doing the day-to-day stuff.

It's kind of like education. It takes way more energy to teach the new generation than it would be to just keep that learning locked away. Education is excess, but so necessary. And so is innovation. Without innovation and without education, our lives would be no better than cavemen's. Because of expending so much extra and "unnecessary" energy, our world has improved in so many ways you can't begin to describe.

So it takes more to be funny and more to be innovative. More energy, more effort, more work, more from you. It takes more of you to be funny. It takes more of you to be innovative.

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You’re not as good a writer as you think you are

16 June 2015 Scott 0 Comments


image by writeaboutdragons.com
Scott Ashton runs a writing blog at writeaboutdragons.com where he also makes available a YouTube writing course from filming NYT bestselling author Brandon Sanderson. 

It's true. You're not as good a writer as you think you are. Most writers figure this out sooner or later and what’s interesting is that you’ll often hear the very best writers at the top of their game express as much. Some examples:

“I aspire to someday write a book half as good as any of [Guy Gavriel Kay’s]. The man's a genius."
-Brandon Sanderson

 “Wanting to write like Tolkien would have been, for me, like wanting to blossom like a cherry tree or climb a tree like a squirrel or rain like a thunderstorm [e.g. impossible].”
-Neil Gaiman 
And they’re not just being humble. Because here’s the thing: there a million different literary skills which go into being a good writer. If a book has a couple of hundred, it becomes hugely popular; a couple of thousand, a classic.  No writer on earth has all of these skills.

So what’s a writer to do? Well, pretty much exactly what Brandon Sanderson and Neil Gaiman themselves have done: get really good in a relatively small subset of that million plus universe of literary skills.

In order to aid in this process, for my blog Write About Dragons I created a rubric writers can use to evaluate their writing. Drawing upon the belief that there really are a million skills in the universe of writing skills, the rubric consists of several hundred questions focused on the science fiction and fantasy genre.

It includes stupid specific questions like:

The first several sentences of the novel clearly communicate at least one of the following: an unanswered question, a dramatic and vivid scene, an intriguing logical disconnect, a strong character voice, or a promise of interesting action to come. 

Some conflict or unanswered question is introduced and resolved within each scene, giving each scene a satisfying sense of closure.

The characters thoughts reflect their circumstances and seem appropriate given the time and place.

The dialogue reveals the character's personality without forcing the character to spell it out explicitly.
And so on. You get the point. The idea is that slowly, bit by bit a writer can progress from mediocre on only a couple dozen of these aspects to being excellent in a couple of hundred of them. And at that point although you won’t have mastered all million of the skills, you will have a couple hundred which will be enough to actually have fans and perhaps reach that elusive goal of making a living off your writing…

Good luck writing!

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A beginner's mind

11 June 2015 Unknown 0 Comments



I really love TED talks. Here's another really great one from Liz Wiseman about why we should never grow up.

Walt Disney said:
"Too many people grow up. That's the real trouble with the world, too many people grow up. They forget. They don't remember what it's like to be twelve years old."

Some great quotes:


"I just slowed down and played."

"How does what we know, get in the way of what we don't know."

"Once we know [a pattern] we can be blind to other possibilities. We stop asking 'why' and we just do ….we don't let ourselves make mistakes or fail."

"In the process of discovering, we tend to do our best thinking"

"It's not what you know, it's how fast you can learn."

The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who can't read and write. It will be those who can't learn, un-learn, and then re-learn.

Children are curious, unpretentious, playful. It's about a choice.


  1. Ask more questions
  2. Seek novelty
  3. Play more


"Perhaps the way to handle our big grown-up problems is to think more like a kid."

"Let's not grow up all the way."

So what?


This makes me think of one of the things that Creativity Inc. talks about which I think he called having a beginner's mind. I've thought for a while now that one of my greatest gifts is that I never feel like I'm good at things. Because of that, I almost always approach things with a beginner's mind.

I've often felt that experience can be hindering and maybe the best people for some jobs are people that have no experience so that they'll think about the problem differently.

As a missionary, it was always fun to work with "new recruits" because they always had so much desire and hopes that it was infectious. You wanted to tell them all the ways they were being too naive, but hopefully I didn't, because their naiveté is so important to helping everyone be better.

One of the comments by Michael Hargiss in a recent post about how my job had drained my creativity was that to recharge his creativity he does things that he enjoyed as a kid. He does things like play with Legos or read fantasy. That feeds into this discussion well. If doing child-like things replenishes your resource of creativity, does that mean that doing those things more often make you more creative over the long run?

So go be naive and playful and curious and then come back and tell me how it affects your work.

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Daily accountability

09 June 2015 Unknown 0 Comments

This week my family started doing daily standup meetings. It's a meeting we do everyday at work that lasts for 15 minutes where we all stand up and go around the circle saying what we did the day before and what we'll do today.

We're just trying it as an experiment in the family. We're going to try to find a time every day where I can take 15 minutes from work and do a video chat with them. I think it'll be great to connect with my wife and kids before I get home every day.

I've mentioned that we are homeschooling and I think adding a little accountability to learning and creativity is healthy. We'll see how it actually goes, but I'm thinking it will be positive for us.

I would also advocate doing something similar with my writing group. I think one of the main purposes of a writing group is the accountability to each other. If we were able to have a more formal and more consistent cadence of telling each other what we're up to and what we plan to do, it would help.

Hopefully hearing about my experiments doesn't bore you. I don't know if any of them are useful or will help anyone but me, but I believe strongly in experimenting and I hope this gives you a view into how you can do it in your own life. It's powerful. Do it!

How do you experiment to make your life better?

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You aren't arguing with yourself enough

04 June 2015 Unknown 0 Comments

I read some advice by Zach Holman in this AMA type github post and later on his blog about keeping a journal. The journaling idea was nothing new. But there were two things that stood out to me.

Socrates said, "The unexamined life is not worth living"


If you don't examine your life and try to improve it, it's not even worth living. That's pretty cut and dry and a little scary. Makes me want to evaluate my life …

Talk through decisions with yourself


In his second-to-last bullet point on the AMA github post he says to write for yourself a lot and a comment further down says that the act of expressing your emotions/ideas in words and writing makes you clarify them.

He says you should talk through hard decisions with yourself, even argue with yourself. It makes me think of Pixar's braintrust but all contained in your own head.

So first, convert those ideas and feelings to words by either saying them out loud or writing them down.

Next, defend your position against yourself and also attack that position.

This will uncover your assumptions, your reasoning, and maybe your true feelings, which will give you clarity into that decision or idea.

So there you go, have an argument with yourself and you'll be more creative. Who needs the braintrust when you have your own brain?

(I'm totally kidding about that. I think having a braintrust is still very valuable)

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Your job is draining your creativity

02 June 2015 Unknown 4 Comments

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So last week was a bad week at work. I had some long, stressful days most of the week because we were putting out a big fire.

We got it done in time and our team looked awesome, but I didn't get any writing done at home pretty much the whole week. I couldn't write here on the blog the whole week either. What's worse is that this week I still don't feel like being creative, nor can I come up with any ideas for blog posts. (And that's why you're getting this crappy article instead of something with more meat)

Creativity is a finite resource


But what last week and this week helped me realize is that you don't have an infinite amount of creativity. Just like they're discovering with will power, creativity is finite.

Long, stressful hours at work deplete your resources and it takes a while to recharge. Hopefully by next week I'll be back in action.

What kinds of things deplete your creativity and what do you do to recharge? (No seriously, plz help me recharge)

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The struggle

28 May 2015 Unknown 0 Comments



I just got a new manager this week at work. Nine years ago he had an accident that changed his life and landed him in wheelchair. He told us a little about how it changed his life and the most profound things are how it impacted his attitude.

He said he had to consciously choose to be happy.

He had to choose how he was going to live his life. They had to move to a house that was wheelchair accessible and I'm sure there were so many other things they had to change.

It had to be a conscious choice!


When he told us this, it made me think of some incredible people who don't have legs or arms, or have mental disabilities. These people have so much less opportunity than people without those disabilities, and they so many of them do more than most people. I've seen a legless woman do gymnastics and mentally handicapped people memorize more digits of π than I can.

Why are people with disabilities so able to do amazing things? Because they made a conscious choice. See, us normal people without extra difficulties can make it through life without really making hard choices, without struggling. But those people have to choose. They are forced to choose and that's what has made the difference. And when they choose to struggle instead of hide away in their homes and do nothing, they blossom.

The cost is struggle


The choice we have to make is between taking the easy way, and taking the hard way, struggling. And without the struggle, we'll never be amazing at anything. The cost of being amazing is a hard struggle.

My boss has had a hard nine years of struggle but because of that he's become a very happy person. He's already an inspiring person to me in just the week I've known him.

I've been inspired to make sure my creativity is a conscious choice. I've been inspired to take the hard road and be willing to struggle to become great. Creativity is not free and you don't go through the struggle without choosing it.

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Inspiration is the impulse which sets creation in movement

26 May 2015 Unknown 0 Comments

image by http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Roger_Sessions.jpg
Today's book appreciation post comes from Roger Sessions. He was an American composer and music teacher born in the 1890s. His work was considered neoclassical. He won a Pulitzer Price in 1974.

His few pages in this book that I'm slowly reading are about inspiration and how that translates to finished work of musical art.

Inspiration is the impulse which sets creation in movement

"'Inspiration' can come as a flash or slowly worked on until made great," he says and then asks essentially where is the inspiration in slowly creating something? "Yet if the word has any meaning at all, it is certainly appropriate to this movement [creation], with its irresistible and titanic energy of expression."

Speaking of the composer, he said, "He is not so much conscious of his ideas as possessed by them." We could say that about every creative field: we are possessed by our ideas. I love that.

Later Sessions talks about Aristotle's definition of art which is: "the reproduction of inner nature." But Sessions says that "art is a function, an activity of inner nature," not inner nature itself. The artist endow's the undisciplined materials that his inner nature provides him with a meaning that they do not possess—"to transcend them by giving them artistic form."

His words are almost poetry themselves. I love learning from the greats. What have you learned from Roger Sessions?

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Just say no!

21 May 2015 Unknown 0 Comments

image by asalesguy.com

Saying 'no' is so liberating!

I just had a off-site meeting yesterday where we had to prioritize and plan projects. There's been a lot of pressure on my team to do more than we are able to do. We're a small team and it's not possible to do everything that different departments were hoping we would do.

In the last few weeks and especially yesterday I got to tell people that we are not going to be doing some of those things. It felt so good. Since we've started telling people no, there's been so much less pressure, and so much more clarity and happiness.

And the first thought that came to mind after that long meeting yesterday was, "saying no feels so good." And then I realized how good it is for you, and how good for your creativity.

I was reminded of a quote by Steve Jobs:
I'm as proud of what we don't do as I am of what we do
And I found another great quote as well
And it comes from saying no to 1,000 things to make sure we don't get on the wrong track or try to do too much. We're always thinking about new markets we could enter, but it's only by saying no that you can concentrate on the things that are really important.

Say no until you've found the right thing to do, and then say no to everything else that comes along after you've started the right thing. Just keep moving forward.

When have you had to say no?

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Update on my new process

19 May 2015 Unknown 0 Comments



I'm a month and a half into my new process and I've learned some things. I finished the storyboarding phase and now I'm writing the first draft! It took 1.5 months which I feel like is a big win because the first draft last book took 4 months and I still didn't have the story nailed down until at least the second draft, maybe later.

Storyboarding

The first thing I learned was that storyboarding was a success … but not really for the reasons I expected. You can read about my goals for the process here, but basically there were three:
  • Quick iteration
  • Feeling of discovery writing
  • Something short to show to people to get feedback

Actually, on all but the second goal, it was a complete success. I was able to iterate quickly and I changed the story so many times, both little and big changes. Things changed so much I had to constantly read the current version of the story to keep it straight in my mind. I was also able to show it to three groups of people more than once and it got better every time. It took about an hour to show it each time, but that's much faster than them reading a whole book.

However, for most of the time it didn't feel like discovery writing. It felt like outlining. And at the end I realized that that's all my "storyboard" was. It was just an outline. I had hoped that by getting down into the details on the storyboard, it would feel like writing the story, but it was hard to get myself to make decisions and imagine the story without having written any of it yet. My natural tendency is to have to write the first half of the story before I get clarity into what happens in the second half, so this was hard for me.

Forcing myself to do this, however, created a much more powerful ending. I'm not sure if I'll be able to overcome the weakness that outlining has of having flat characters.

In conclusion, I wrote an outline, but in a format that is easy to show to people and I discovered that outlines help you iterate quickly. I'm still going to call it a storyboard to make myself feel better.

Test-driven Writing

I tried my idea of test-driven writing, but as I started writing tests—or goals—for each scene, it felt redundant. If the outline talks about advancing the storyline of character x, or especially if the scene is all about that, then it doesn't make sense to have a test/goal for that.

The more I followed that line of logic, the more tests dropped off my list for each scene. I ended with a small list of emotions that this scene should hit. The exercise almost felt futile at first, but then I reached a moment of clarity.

In creative writing, the real test of each scene is whether or not your writing struck a certain emotion with people. It's all about the emotions. This discovery gave me a very focused set of goals that I feel like are really going to help me write this story.

Now, this is just my feelings working with my own story. I'll still need more examples and thoughts from other people and from doing this multiple times, but for now, this is what I'm running with and I'm so excited for it.


So lastly, I've started writing the first draft. I'm giving myself four months (the time it took to write the first draft last time) and my hope is that I'll need fewer drafts before I get a killer story. We'll see if taking 1.5 months to storyboard will save me 4 months or multiple 4 months. Wish me luck and I can't wait to share more about what the story is actually about!

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From the Greats: Mozart

14 May 2015 Unknown 0 Comments

It's been a while since i've done a book appreciation post. I think when I first started this blog in November I did one, but I haven't since then. Of course, you could count the whole months of January and February as a book appreciation post about Creativity Inc.

Today I'm going back to the book The Creative Process edited by Brewster Ghiselin from the direct words of some of our worlds greatest creative geniuses.

Mozart explained his creative process and it's quite fascinating.

He explains how he hears in his mind the whole work. He doesn't hear the different instruments separately, but just all together. And he hears or imagines the whole thing from beginning to end. When he goes to write it down, it's rarely changed from exactly how it was in his head. And he says he can do it fairly quickly.

He doesn't try to make his works Mozartish. He suspects that they are that way for the same reasons that his nose is different from everyone else's or why it's Mozartish. "For I really do not study or aim at any originality."

His words are profound in their simplicity and his genius. They're inspiring.

The type of home-schooling education that me and my wife follow is called a Classical Education which involves lots of reading the classics. So, instead of reading about Mozart or Einstein, read Mozart's and Einstein's own words. I'm telling you this because I'm not doing justice to how Mozart describes his creativity, so go read it yourself to get the most out of his genius!

What makes your work yours?


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Manage for collective creativity

12 May 2015 Unknown 0 Comments

I've been on a TED talk kick lately. There are so many good ones and not enough time to watch them all. I watched one recently on managing creative people. I watched it to level-up my managing skills at work because I'm a team lead, but it just had so many good things, I needed to share here.

Normally this blog focuses more on individual creativity, so it might not help you out that much unless you manage creative people (aren't we all, though?). But it does talk about how a group can be sustainably creative and by that I mean it talks about how to manage an organization so that it can innovate time after time after time.


Below I've got some great quotes and ideas from her talk. I promise that I didn't know that she talks about Pixar before I started the video. Pixar isn't the only thing I think about, really ;)

"innovation isn't about solo genius, it's about collective genius"

She talks about everyone having their particular "slice of genius."

"unleash the talents and passions of many people and harness them"

3 characteristics of an innovative team:

  • collaborative problem solving
  • discovery driven learning
  • integrated decision making


"Hire people who argue with you"

"Sometimes it's best to be deliberately fuzzy and vague"

Creative Abrasion

marketplace of ideas through debate & discourse (heated but constructive arguments)
"innovation rarely happens unless you have diversity and conflict"

Creative Agility

quick pursuit of ideas, reflection, and adjustment
"act as opposed to plan your way to the future"
design thinking
scientific method and artistic process
experiments not pilots (pilots are about being right. When they don't work, someone is to blame)

Creative Resolution

combine ideas for a new solution
"they don't go along to get along"
"they don't compromise"

If any of those quotes sound interesting to you, go ahead and watch the video. It'll be worth your time. I think I'm going to watch it again to get everything I can out of it.

How do you manage creative people? How do you manage your own creativity to consistently innovate?


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How schools kill creativity

07 May 2015 Unknown 2 Comments

Ken Robinson gave a great TED talk about how schools kill creativity.




I don't think I can add much to this incredible speech, but here's some great quotes:

"Creativity is as important as literacy and we should treat it as such."

"If you're not prepared to be wrong, you'll never come up with anything original."

"The whole purpose of public education throughout the world is to produce university professors … but we shouldn't hold them up as the highest form of life."

"Brilliantly creative people think their not [smart]."

"Creativity is the process of having original ideas that have value."

What do you think about his take on creativity? Were you schooled out of creativity?

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Keep moving forward

05 May 2015 Unknown 1 Comments

Walt disney portrait.jpg

"Walt disney portrait" by NASA - http://grin.hq.nasa.gov/ABSTRACTS/GPN-2000-000060.html. Licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.


"Around here, however, we don't look backwards for very long. We keep moving forward, opening up new doors and doing new things, because we're curious … and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths." – Walt Disney

I love this quote. I first heard it from the Disney movie Meet the Robinsons. I still cry every time I watch that movie, but admittedly I'm a crier.

This has become my own personal mantra, "Keep moving forward." And I know my wife feels the same and it's kind of our unofficial family saying.

To me, it means push past the failures and just keep trying. In the movie it talks about how good failure is, and that's one of the things that the main character has to learn. The inventor in the movie makes several failed prototypes until he finally invented something that changed the world.  No matter how many or how horrible the failures were, he just kept going.

I also love the part in this quote about opening new doors and doing new things. Not being afraid to learn new things and explore new territories is so important to creativity. Just not being afraid in general. Not being afraid of failing, not being afraid of the new, not being afraid of a blank page, not being afraid to put yourself out there. "… curiosity keeps leading us down new paths."

What is your mantra? And how do you help yourself to keep moving forward?

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