✨ Where great ideas come from
by Tejas Gawande · updated 1d ago
✨ Where great ideas come from
- Developing taste is an exercise in vulnerability: it requires you to trust your instincts and preferences, even when they don’t align with current trends or the tastes of your peers. Because while having taste is cool, taste itself reflects a certain type of uncool earnestness – a commitment to one’s own obsessions and quirks.
from Elizabeth Goodspeed on the Importance of Taste – And How to Acquire It
Tejas Gawande added 3mo ago
- Writing increases your rate of revelation. This is true irrespective of the subject because writing is a process of reflection, assertion, and iteration.
Writing clarifies your own ideas. Writing begets new ideas too. Writing lets you explore ideas in depth even if you won’t have time to act on them all. Writing shows people how you think and lets ... See morefrom Writer-Builders by Anu
Tejas Gawande added 5mo ago
- A lot of care went into curating the environment around the children—fascinating guests were invited, libraries were built, machines were brought home and disassembled—but the children were left with a lot of time to freely explore the interests that arose within these milieus.
A qualified guess is that they spent between one and four hours daily in... See morefrom Childhoods of Exceptional People
Tejas Gawande added 4mo ago
Exception people in their childhood had time to roam about and relied heavily on self-directed learning
- At some point in their teenage years—and sometimes earlier—the future geniuses would apprentice themselves intellectually to someone with exceptional capacity in their field.
from Childhoods of Exceptional People
Tejas Gawande added 4mo ago
Exception people did some kind of cognitive apprenticeships in their teenage.
“Yego’s rise was enabled by YouTube. Yet since its founding, popular consensus has been that the video service is making people dumber. Indeed, modern video media may shorten attention spans and distract from longer-form means of communication, such as written articles or books. But critically overlooked is its unlocking a form of mass-scale tacit
... See morefrom YouTube: The Learning Machine
Tejas Gawande added 5mo ago
- Exceptional people grow up in exceptional milieus
This seems to be true for >95 percent of the people I looked at.
These naked apes, the humans, are intensely social animals. They obsessively internalize values, ideas, skills, and desires from the people who surround them. It is therefore not surprising that those who grow up to be exception... See morefrom Childhoods of Exceptional People
Tejas Gawande added 4mo ago
The adults had high expectations of the children; they assumed they had the capacity to understand complex topics, and therefore invited them into serious conversations and meaningful work, believing them capable of growing competent rapidly.
- If I look at things that have turned out well in my life (my marriage, some of my essays, my current career) the “design process” has been the same in each case. It has been what Christopher Alexander called an unfolding .1 Put simply:
... See more- I paid attention to things I liked to do, and found ways to do more of that. I made it easy for interesting people
from Everything That Turned Out Well in My Life Followed the Same Design Process by Henrik Karlsson
Tejas Gawande added 1mo ago
Recipe for doing the work you like
- If I look at things that have turned out well in my life (my marriage, some of my essays, my current career) the “design process” has been the same in each case. It has been what Christopher Alexander called an unfolding .1 Put simply:
- “Strategy salons” or “nerd clubs” can be powerful tools for generating ideas and fostering innovation. Use your nerd club as a safe space to explore half-formed ideas. Limit it to a few engaged individuals who genuinely want to participate. Set ground rules for discussions, like using “yes, and” to build on ideas and leaving negative feedback aside... See more
from Alex Komoroske by Lenny Rachitsky
Tejas Gawande added 1d ago
Nerd club as a safe space to explore half-formed ideas
- Read, but don’t just read. Read the best book you can find.
Write, but don’t just write. Write the best idea you can conceive.from 3-2-1: On the power of going for it, the value of sharing what you know, and how to figure out what you really want by James Clear
Tejas Gawande added 2d ago
Commitment to the best.