Random

This experience is common in the childhoods of people who go on to do great work, as I have written elsewhere. Nearly everyone who does great work has some episode of early solitary work. As the philosopher Bertrand Russell remarked, the development of gifted and creative individuals, such as Newton or Whitehead, seems to require a period in which... See more

He writes that the workbook needs to be “so unpresumptuous and undemanding and is intended to sustain like the mellowest woman almost any number of my peculiarities.”

The idea of needing to "linger in confusion" reminded me of a passage I like from Freud's 'The Interpretation of Dreams', where he's introducing the idea of free association and quotes some remarks by Schiller: "At a point in his correspondence ... Schiller answers a friend who complains of his lack of creativeness in the following words: “The... See more

It often takes considerable work to keep the creative state from collapsing, especially as your work becomes successful and the social expectations mount. When I listen to interviews with creative people or read their workbooks, there are endless examples of them lamenting how hard it is. They keep coming up with techniques, rituals, and narratives... See more

Time for tinkering, following my curiosity, and reading about things that interest me can feel like “wasting” time but these periods tend to lead to interesting opportunities. This is because it's a way of getting in the flow with my nature and optimizing for energy first. This ends up being a great hack for avoiding starting things you’ll want to... See more

Grothendieck knew what he found interesting and productively confusing because he had spent three years observing his thought and tracing where it wanted to go. He was not at the mercy of the social world he entered; rather, he “used” it to “further his aims.” (I put things in quotation marks here because what he’s doing isn’t exactly this... See more