“Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That’s because they were able to connect experiences they’ve had and synthesize new things. And the reason they were able to do that was that they’ve had more experiences or they have thought more about their experiences than other people.” — Steve Jobs
“The dangerous man is the one who has only one idea, because then he’ll fight and die for it. The way real science goes is that you come up with lots of ideas, and most of them will be wrong.” — Francis Crick
“If a plant only gets sunlight, it’s very harmful. It needs darkness too…In the darkness, it converts oxygen into carbon dioxide. We are like that too. We need periods of doing & periods of non-doing.” — Robert Pirsig
- Creativity is the focused combination of unlikely things. If you wish to be more creative, look for the connections between two previously unconnected things.
- Creative Thinking is not about generating something new from a blank slate, but rather about taking what is already present and combining those bits and pieces in a way that has not been done previously.
- Being creative isn’t about being the first (or only) person to think of a new idea. More often, creativity is about connecting ideas, i.e., finding a new link/relation between two old ideas.
Doing absolutely nothing promotes creativity
The 3B’s of Creativity
- Bus (movement)
- Bath (leisure)
- Bed (sleep)
Create an Evil Twin
- Imagine there’s an evil identical twin of you whose sole job is to out-think you.
- What are they thinking?
- This thought experiment allows the mind to explore creative ideas because you can blame it on the twin.
Be like Japan
- Japan practiced an isolationist policy called Sakoku (鎖國政策) for 265 years. They cut off the outside world, resulting in their unique culture
- Once per quarter, practice Sakoku for a weekend or a week
- Sakoku is intermittent fasting for the mimetic mind
The Creative Process
- Discover - Read a lot. Observe the world. Notice.
- Collect - Immediately record anything that strikes you.
- Generate - Build on your notes to brainstorm lots of ideas.
- Combine - Connect previously unconnected ideas.
- Refine - Edit, edit, edit. Select the best.
The Creativity Faucet by Julian Sharpiro
- Visualize your creativity as a backed-up pipe of water.
- The first mile is wastewater that needs to be emptied.
- The clear water arrives after emptying the bad ideas, you begin to spot patterns as to why they are bad. 1 2
Let’s apply this to creativity: At the beginning of a creative session, see through every bad idea that comes to mind. Instead of being self-critical and resisting bad ideas, recognize that you must see them to completion. Bad ideas, by the way, are often the clichés your brain has been overexposed to. Once bad ideas are emptied, a surprising thing happens: better ideas begin to arrive.
Here’s my guess as to why: Once you’ve generated enough bad output, your mind reflexively identifies which elements caused the badness. Then it becomes better at avoiding them. You start pattern-matching interesting ideas with greater intuition.
This works because it is easier to look at something bad and intuit how to make it better than to make something good from scratch. The human brain isn’t wired for spontaneous ingenuity, but it is wired to detect what’s wrong with the world.
Here’s a video of John Mayer showing off the Creativity Faucet in real-time.
Remarks
- You need 1000 bad ideas to get to 1 good idea.
- Rule of Thumb: 70% of your work will be mediocre. 20% will suck. 10% will be amazing.
- You have to wade through some sewage before you can swim in clear water.
- See also: Gall’s Law
The Creative Cliff Illusion [@lucasCreativeCliffIllusion2020]
- Creativity actually increased during the course of the brainstorming/ideation session, leveling off in the latest periods after rising steadily in the earlier periods.
Balaji’s Transformer
- If struggling to understand or think creatively about a subject, transform it to another format. For example:
- If you have a written idea, try to draw it.
- If you have a visual idea, try to write it.
- If you have a numerical idea, try to explain it out loud.
- Talking gets the mind thinking. It’s helpful to externalize and articulate the unspoken.
- 交談有助於思考 — 與人交談是件很重要的事，但不是閒聊或是客套話，而是認真地就某件事情對話、交換意見。藉由這樣的談話，能讓你清楚了解自己的想法，或是缺少了什麼，也能讓你看清問題的根源所在。如此一來，你腦中的想法才能具體成形。若只是一個人苦思，拚命鑽牛角尖，不僅毫無效率可言，也得不到任何具體的結果。因此，與人交談有助於彼此的思考更具體，更有效率。
- The process of transforming the idea from one format to another exposes the gaps that exist in your logic and thinking, and you begin to spot creative connections among them.
- Writing/Drawing is the ultimate tool to sharpen thinking—use it as a “knife block” for life.
Scenius = A whole scene of people supporting each other, looking at each other’s work, copying from each other, stealing ideas, and contributing ideas.
See also: