Creativity

the creative process typically involves three steps:

1. Collecting: Gathering interesting ideas


2. Connecting: Drawing connections and organizing materials


3. Creating: Producing something new

The idea is that reasoning from first principles is reasoning like a scientist. You take core facts and observations and use them to puzzle together a conclusion, kind of like a chef playing around with raw ingredients to try to make them into something good. By doing this puzzling, a chef eventually writes a new recipe. The other kind of... See more

There are two modes of information discovery: foraging and hunting. Foraging is passive. You don’t have a clear goal; you just wander and scroll until something catches your interest. Hunting is active and purposeful. You know what you’re looking for and are consciously searching for it. A good information diet needs both: Foraging helps us decide... See more

The call of any creator is to keep making things, not to make any sense of what you create. Just dive down deep into the ocean of awareness and see how long you can hold your breath. What I know is that most days I wake up with an question in my mind, some thought that begs an answer, without the slightest clue where the urge originated. On a good... See more

To do our best creative thinking, we need tools that seamlessly support both modes. We should be able to capture ideas effortlessly in the moment, then organize them with purpose when the time is right. This balance between seamless capture and intentionality is essential for supporting creativity.