Even if you know what it feels like to be completely open to where your curiosity wants you to go, like Grothendieck, it is a fragile state. It often takes considerable work to keep the creative state from collapsing, especially as your work becomes successful and the social expectations mount. When I listen to interviews with creative people or

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So let’s start with ingredients. How do we cultivate the right ingredients for great idea fermenting?

III: Ingredients

There are two levels of thinking going on in our heads at any time. There’s the more active and conscious part of your brain that’s reading this article and which you think of as doing the “thinking.” Then a subconscious,... See more

This is an insight that has been repeated by artists, too. Pablo Picasso: “Without great solitude, no serious work is possible.” James Baldwin: “Perhaps the primary distinction of the artist is that he must actively cultivate that state which most men, necessarily, must avoid: the state of being alone.” Bob Dylan: “To be creative you’ve got to be... See more