creativity

In other words, the hard part isn’t writing, or coding, or speaking.

It’s determining what to write, what to code, and what to say.

But busyness has a way of stealing creativity from you. Generative work, like art and writing, requires long periods of nothingness: it’s only in that wide empty space that ideas emerge. Long runs, hot showers, commutes that don’t involve harried Slack messages and listening to podcasts at 2x speed. Sitting at the edge of a dock, listening to the... See more

To make something good, just do it. To make something great, just redo it, redo it, redo it. The secret to making fine things is in remaking them.

But the only way we can create something out of thin air is because we've built our own system (even if it's just in our minds) that allows us to capture material and references over a lifetime. We then connect these fragments and "milk" them for unexpected connections, which ultimately leads us to truly original ideas.

May we all aspire to be as observant and confident to notice root stairs and call them root stairs, so others could then use the phrase “root stairs.”

Attention + Novelty + Creative Exposition = Insight

In other words, to produce work and build an audience in the digital context is a dynamic choreography, and to succeed depends on the degree to which your mindset is emergent: Adaptable, responsive, and always in the process of becoming something new.

Another good read: Ted Chiang on why Ai isn’t going to make great art, for The New Yorker . I rather liked this analogy:

As the linguist Emily M. Bender has noted, teachers don’t ask students to write essays because the world needs more student essays. The point of writing essays is to strengthen students’ critical-thinking skills; in the same way

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I think we adults have a similar innate drive to create, and that drive can be supported or stifled by the environment. And, I think that instead of creating environments where we are creative by default , we live in a world where we are distracted by default .

Attention is the currency of achievement. Before you can create something worthy of other people’s attention, you have to learn to manage yours. Good art comes from deep focus and deep work. Your ability to become prolific, create art that resonates, touches people’s hearts, and hits people in the face with a crowbar depends on your ability to... See more