idea generation
Inclining the Mind Toward “Sudden Illumination”: French Polymath Henri Poincaré on How Creativity Works
Maria Popovathemarginalian.org
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
David Epstein • Pour Out Lesser Ideas to Get to Great Ones
If you want to increase the quality of your work – your output – you must increase the level of your inputs. Your input is knowledge.
If you want great ideas, you must remove all the bad ingredients. Outrage, information you don’t care about or can’t act on, trivia, fluff. Obviously, you should keep some fun in your life.
Nat Eliason • The Art of Fermenting Great Ideas The Art of Fermenting Great Ideas
What humans do best is see information in our environment, synthesize it, and connect it with related ideas in novel ways. But it’s much harder for us to come up with something out of nothing. It helps a lot to have something to react to.