Somewhere along the way, we decided creativity should be efficient.
We gave it a workflow. A checklist. A deadline.
And that’s when it started to die.
The problem is not process. It is how we use it. We turned creativity into something that fits cleanly inside... See more
By handing the reins of discovery to the wisdom of instinct and following the path of maximal interestingness, we can find the kinds of unexpected discoveries that yield compression progress. This, though is the paradox of creativity: your work is done when it looks so simple that the consumer thinks they could’ve done it, which means they won’t appreciate how hard you worked.
The Poetry and Music of Science: Comparing Creativity in Science and Art
one of the latest big theories in neuroscience says that humans are fundamentally creatures of prediction, and not only is creativity not at odds with that, but it actually goes hand in hand with improving our predictive power. Life itself, in this view, is one big process of creatively optimizing prediction as a survival strategy in a universe... See more
Inspiration is absolutely unnecessary and somehow deceptive. You feel like you need this great idea before you can get down to work, and I find that’s almost never the case.”