the art of iteration

Creativity is scarce because of censorship. Not in the usual sense of that word—the cops closing down a strip show, or some government official collecting and burning politically offensive books—but rather in the sense of “discouragement,” of telling those who have creative ideas that the ideas aren’t really interesting, that they aren’t sensible, ... See more

Synthesis as art:

“First of all, synthesizing involves artistry . To create a work or treatment of significant size and to convey it effectively to others requires a sense of form, of arrangement of parts, of the attention and predilection of audiences, of launching, development, and closure . All of these skills are identified particularly with th

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George Leonard on how mastery is nothing but a series of plateaus with brief spurts of progress:

“The most important lessons here — especially for young people — is that even if you’re shooting for the stars, you’re going to spend most of your time on a plateau. That’s where the deepest, most lasting learning takes place, so you might as well enjoy... See more

Information is little pieces of idea that you have. Your speed lists will probably consist mostly of information.

After you collect a bunch of information, you'll detect patterns and relationships. As you integrate ideas together, it becomes far greater than the sum of the individual pieces- it becomes knowledge .

What is Wisdom? I define it as kno... See more

Creativity has two parts:- Creative discovery mode: shuffling things around, exploring. Playful.- Implementation mode: creating something robust and concrete.- Revisit the work the next day in an alert state and assess whether it is ready for linear implementation.

A tradeoff occurs every time you get feedback. You become slightly more mainstream, slightly more aligned with the zeitgeist. You become marginally more of an exploiter than an explorer , standing on the shoulders of the giants who conceived the paradigm you’re striving to build upon. This is very effective when you want to align your work with oth... See more

the idea that creativity is combinatorial, that nothing is entirely original, that everything builds on what came before, and that we create by taking existing pieces of inspiration, knowledge, skill and insight that we gather over the course of our lives and recombining them into incredible new creations.

Creativity requires connecting the dots, and connecting the dots requires allowing time for my subconscious to consolidate my ideas and make associations. This means that, from time to time, I need to just stare out the window and do nothing.

This doesn’t feel productive, even though it is.