“It’s a form of meditation because you are engaged to such an extent with the world, with the environment, you have to pay such attention to every little unevenness in the rock, that your inner voice—this constant critic that’s always in your head—is completely silent.”

Painting also had some of the qualities that made military and political life so appealing. “In all battles two things are usually required of the Commander-in-Chief: to make a good plan for his army and, secondly, to keep a strong reserve. Both these are also obligatory upon the painter.” Painting “is like fighting a battle,” he wrote, or “unfoldi

“Whatever the worries of the hour or the threats of the future, once the picture has begun to flow along, there is no room for them.” It offered an inexhaustible supply of new subjects, new skills to master, and a lifetime of challenges. “Every step may be fruitful. Yet there will stretch out before you an ever-lengthening, ever-ascending, ever-imp

In creative lives, activities become deep play when they have at least one of four features. First, deep play is mentally absorbing. It offers the player challenges to face and problems to solve. Like all recovery experiences, that engagement doesn’t require effort; the player falls into the game easily. It may give the player the chance to learn n

Creative people don’t get up early to work, labor steadily rather than spasmodically, and follow a strict schedule so they can take it easy the rest of the day. They think about their work constantly, but by organizing their days around early starts and regular hours, they don’t have to rely on their conscious minds. For them, early mornings and ro

employees who exhibited more creativity had jobs with a higher proportion of routine, but they also had more control over their work. Their daily work consisted of tasks they could learn to do automatically, but because they could choose how to organize their work, they became more reflective about how things worked, better able to notice how they

They found that employees whose work had a large measure of routine were more likely to submit ideas. By this measure, they were more creative.

The reason it’s necessary to start writing, and to keep writing, is that creativity doesn’t drive the work; the work drives creativity.

William Osler advised students that “four or five hours daily it is not much to ask” to devote to their studies, “but one day must tell another, one week certify another, one month bear witness to another of the same story.” A few hours haphazardly spent and giant bursts of effort were both equally fruitless; it was necessary to combine focus and r