notes on the creative process

Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they

did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it,

they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while.

—Steve Jobs

Once the search is in progress, something will be found . It’s a strategy for finishing, a strategy for trusting in my ability to complete a work.

Most of the time, “What should I do with my life?” is a terrible question. “What should I do with this tennis serve?” “What should I do with this line at Starbucks?” “What should I do with this traffic jam?” “How should I respond to the anger I feel welling up in my chest?” These are better questions. Excellence is the next five minutes, improvemen

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Things follow their natural course. They grow, they ripen. I must graft. I must water, as with lettuce. Ripening goes on in my mind. So I’m always working at a great many things at the same time.

You should be far more concerned with your current trajectory than with your current results...Your outcomes are a lagging measure of your habits.3

You're going to get depressed because your sense of self-competence is overly reliant on FAST RESULTS.

In 1817, the poet John Keats wrote a letter to his brothers to share this exciting realization. “At once it struck me,” Keats wrote, “what quality went to form a Man of Achievement … Negative Capability.” Keats explains that “Negative Capability” is “when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching ... See more