✨ Where great ideas come from
Talking or writing about the things you're interested in is a good way to generate new ideas. When you try to put ideas into words, a missing idea creates a sort of vacuum that draws it out of you. Indeed, there's a kind of thinking that can only be done by writing.
How to Do Great Work
Aristocratic tutoring was not focused on measurables. Historically, it usually involved a paid adult tutor, who was an expert in the field, spending significant time with a young child or teenager, instructing them but also engaging them in discussions, often in a live-in capacity, fostering both knowledge but also engagement with intellectual subj... See more
Childhoods of Exceptional People
Exceptional people were heavily tutored 1-on-1 (Not just regular tutoring). Helping another person grow rapidly requires a deep and delicate bond.
“Everything I do is just personal taste and it’s what [my book The Creative Act] is about. Really, for [people and artists] to trust in themselves. Make something that speaks to themselves. And hopefully someone else will like it. But you can’t second-guess your own taste for what someone else is going to like. It won’t be good. We’re not smart eno... See more
Write For Yourself
Trust your taste. Do what’s personal to you, take it as far you can go.
Abloh’s approach was often to make a small “3% “change to the original form. He wasn’t changing something by 3% just to change it by 3%, though. He was adding his personal 3% touch (in a world of generative AI, I really want to emphasize the personal touch aspecthere).
My favourite example of Abloh's approach was a collaboration with Nike on “The T... See more
My favourite example of Abloh's approach was a collaboration with Nike on “The T... See more
Trung Phan • 9 Creative Lessons From Virgil Abloh
What is a good way to riff on existing work? Small 3% changes.
Previous eras of creativity have mostly looked a bit like sculpting. A sculptor takes a block of material and carves it, slowly but surely, into shape. Nothing happens without her hand. Even when an assistant is involved, the sculptor pores over the project, because their human input is important at every point of the process. So too with writing, ... See more
Capability Blindness and the Future of Creativity
The age of AI: We used to be sculptors. We're all about to be gardeners.
one of my favorite parts about living in the heart of nyc is the ability to walk literally everywhere.
i usually walk ~25k steps every single day—it is one of the best methods for thinking & re-thinking (along with long showers).
most ppl do not acknowledge this huge upside of nyc living enough.
Walking your brain
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 more
A qualified guess is that they spent between one and four hours daily in... See more
Childhoods of Exceptional People
Exception people in their childhood had time to roam about and relied heavily on self-directed learning
5 lessons from one of the best books I’ve ever read
youtube.comPlay is unlocked when we lower the stakes. (Relax for the same results)
When I have a piece of writing in mind, what I have, in fact, is a mental bucket: an attractor for and generator of thought. It’s like a thematic gravity well, a magnet for what would otherwise be a mess of iron filings. I’ll read books differently and listen differently in conversations. In particular I’ll remember everything better; everything wi... See more
James Somers • More People Should Write
The mind is an auto-sorting machine. It subconsciously organizes better when it knows what you’re looking for