I said earlier that if we want to encourage creativity, we should just get out of its way. That was an ambiguous statement and I’d like to clear up some of the ambiguity. I will insist that creativity is not rare at all, which becomes clear once we identify the obstacles, organizational and personal, that get in its way.

Is creativity really scarce?... See more

The model was helpful—but only to an extent. They found that while AI improved the output of less creative writers, it made little difference to the quality of the stories produced by writers who were already creative.

one, criticizing someone is easy; two, creating something original is very hard; three, but somebody’s got to do it.

One of the most important aspects of these workbooks is the remarkable sense of process they provide—not only are the projects they’re concerned with in process, the books themselves are process, and as such unworked. This contrasts with the completed works, as well as with the name that underwrites them. In order to create something, Bergman had t... See more

Creators pay with effort. They put in the work to create a product in the hopes the audience consumes and engages with it. Audience members, on the other side of this interaction, pay for this effort with attention.

“The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity. The creative mind plays with the objects it loves.”

—Carl Jung

If you did a lot of maths at school you are used to being given problems of the first type, and when you see a problem you want to find the analytic solution. It’s a good instinct, since analytic solutions are efficient. As long as you have the right method you can quickly reach an exact answer.

Lots of being smart is working out when you’re lookin... See more

Learning how to think really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think. It means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience. Because if you cannot exercise this kind of choice in adult life, you will be totally hosed.

David Foster Wallace,

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