Creativity

Creativity is the world’s greatest recycling program. I like how Nike designer Tinker Hatfield framed it, via @bpoppenheimer newsletter: “When you sit down to create something...what you create is a culmination of everything you’ve seen and done previous to that point.” https://t.co/OOvK9fSPdZ

Can artificial intelligence help us to be creative? That’s the important question, and it’s a question about user interfaces, not about who has the biggest model.

Let go of self-delusion, which is maybe the hardest thing of all to let go of. Shape the thing you’re making into a pure expression of the thing you’re making: “Cut away, strip away the unnecessary, and strip away what people expect.”

There is nothing weaker than a painting that tries too hard. Do what comes easily. When it stops being fun, you’re doomed. If a painting sucks, I quit.

I put everything down and I go take a walk, or go eat at a diner, or meet up with friends, or go to a movie or the Met—whatever. And I’ll know when it's time to go back to work. It will make itself... See more

Start somewhere bad to get somewhere good. A few weeks ago, I interviewed psychologist Adam Alter about his book Anatomy of a Breakthrough . In it, he writes about the “creative cliff illusion,” the notion that good creative ideas will either come quickly or not at all. Unfortunately, our intuition has that one approximately backward. In studies of... See more