Day 4: A Simple Trick for Better Ideas
1 – Show up. Many work sessions will feel unproductive which can feel frustrating, but the best creatives sit down to work even when they don't feel like it. Consistency rewards creativity.
2 – Generate a ton of ideas. Your best ideas rarely come early. So when you think you've got it, keep going.
3 – Refine the good ones. If you find
... See moreIn Bird by Bird, the novelist Anne Lamott elegantly captures this rhythm of creation. “You find yourself back at the desk, staring blankly at the pages you filled yesterday. And there on page four is a paragraph with all sorts of life in it, smells and sounds and voices and colors,” she writes. “You don’t care about those first three pages; those y
... See moreCal Newport • Slow Productivity: The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout
Persistence isn’t very glamorous. If genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration, then as a culture we tend to lionize the one percent. We love its flash and dazzle. But great power lies in the other ninety-nine percent.
Susan Cain • Quiet
“To Whom it May Inspire,” Austin wrote. “I, like many of you artists out there, constantly shift between two states. The first (and far more preferable of the two) is white-hot, ‘in the zone’ seat-of-the-pants, firing on all cylinders creative mode. This is when you lay your pen down and the ideas pour out like wine from a royal chalice! This happe
... See moreAmy Wallace • Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration
The more and better access everyone has to tools, the clearer it becomes that the bottleneck to great work is not knowledge, it's not information, it's not even intelligence. It's that intangible quality, call it taste, creativity, judgment, courage, intuition, agency. We've all heard the quote from Thomas Edison where he says, "Genius is 1% inspir... See more