CreativeNotes
To and Fro
Most of the time when we feel stuck, it’s not because we don’t have ideas.
It’s because our ideas aren’t moving.
Today I looked up the word circulation, and one part of the definition grabbed me by the collar:
“Movement to and fro or around something.”
To and fro.
It feels like the rhythm of thinking itself.
Ideas come to you — in the shower,
... See moreCharles Darwin, at work on the theory of evolution in his study at Down House, toiled for two 90-minute periods and one one-hour period per day; the mathematical genius Henri Poincaré worked for two hours in the morning and two in the afternoon. Thomas Jefferson, Charles Dickens, Virginia Woolf, Ingmar Bergman and many more all basically followed
... See moreOliver Burkeman • The three-or-four-hours rule for getting creative work done
Writing a diary made me happier; keeping things-to-do lists made me more reliable (which, in turn, made those around me happier), and I learned never to go to a doctor’s appointment, or a meeting of any kind, without taking notes of what I heard. But there appeared to be creative benefits too. Every artist I met seemed to have a sketchbook to hand,... See more
Roland Allen • Moleskine Mania: How a Notebook Conquered the Digital Era
“The goal is not to take notes — the goal is to think effectively,” Matuschak writes. “Better questions are “what practices can help me reliably develop insights over time?” [and] “how can I shepherd my attention effectively?”
What is creativity, really?
Too many artists, scientists, and writers talk about their creative process as a blackbox—an ephemeral spark that’s difficult to explain and impossible to predict. But it’s not. Boden is one of the most influential cognitive scientists to think about creativity through a computational lens. Her work is rooted in the... See more
Too many artists, scientists, and writers talk about their creative process as a blackbox—an ephemeral spark that’s difficult to explain and impossible to predict. But it’s not. Boden is one of the most influential cognitive scientists to think about creativity through a computational lens. Her work is rooted in the... See more
Rhea Purohit • A Science-based Guide to Thinking Creatively—With LLMs
Notes and Thinking and Context of Use - Taniyn Quest
taniyn.questThe friction with paper is that it is slow and laborious compared to digital. The friction with digital is that it is so fast it generates unbelievable clutter and cruft.
Reader Question 10: Personal Productivity Analysis Paralysis
Analog Office
Digital isn't the culprit. Our culture of nonstop browsing is the clutter. We quietly traded depth for dopamine.
This is also the blueprint for a happy co-existence with the machines. The machines handle the optimization, we take care of the meaning. They execute, we dream. They calculate, and we create. This beautiful symbiosis will be the seed of everything because when humans live from their creative nature, we build societies that breathe. When we stay... See more
The era of the artist
We think of it as three pillars: AI, human, and brand. AI brings power and speed, the human brings taste, intuition, and problem-solving, and the brand provides the framework that keeps everything on-point and relevant. Without that balance, you either get work that’s technically impressive but soulless, or work that’s imaginative but not aligned... See more