TUMBLR
A scrapbook of stuff I'm reading / looking at / listening to / thinking about...
Posts tagged "creativity"
![For a while, it seemed like I was getting sent this article, “Creative People Say No” at least twice a day. The idea is that creative geniuses say “no” to a lot of requests (like, a psychology professor researching processes of creative genius) in order to get their work done, so if you want to be a creative genius, you have to say no a lot so you can get your work done.
A bunch of people asked me what I thought about it, and I said, “It’s good advice for the rich and famous.”
Ian Bogost explains it nicely, here:
[Y]ou have to say ‘yes’ for a long while before you can earn the right to say ‘no.’ Even then, you usually can’t say ‘no’ at whim. By the time you can say ‘no’ indiscriminately, then you’re already so super-privileged that being able to say ‘no’ is not a prerequisite of success, but a result of it.
There was a little index card in the back of Steal Like An Artist that didn’t make it into the book that sums up my own point of view: “Be as generous as you can, but selfish enough to get your work done.”
(Thx @ayjay.)](http://24.media.tumblr.com/bede3407c0ca88e9d3370275d28b0f9c/tumblr_mnfa5b6vAc1qz6f4bo1_400.png)
For a while, it seemed like I was getting sent this article, “Creative People Say No” at least twice a day. The idea is that creative geniuses say “no” to a lot of requests (like, a psychology professor researching processes of creative genius) in order to get their work done, so if you want to be a creative genius, you have to say no a lot so you can get your work done.
A bunch of people asked me what I thought about it, and I said, “It’s good advice for the rich and famous.”
Ian Bogost explains it nicely, here:
[Y]ou have to say ‘yes’ for a long while before you can earn the right to say ‘no.’ Even then, you usually can’t say ‘no’ at whim. By the time you can say ‘no’ indiscriminately, then you’re already so super-privileged that being able to say ‘no’ is not a prerequisite of success, but a result of it.
There was a little index card in the back of Steal Like An Artist that didn’t make it into the book that sums up my own point of view: “Be as generous as you can, but selfish enough to get your work done.”
(Thx @ayjay.)
90 minutes
Is 90 minutes the magic amount of time you need for a productive work session? explore-blog posted this bit of Tony Schwartz’s article, “Relax! You’ll Be More Productive”:
In the 1950s, the researchers William Dement and Nathaniel Kleitman discovered that we sleep in cycles of roughly 90 minutes, moving from light to deep sleep and back out again. They named this pattern the Basic-Rest Activity Cycle or BRAC. A decade later, Professor Kleitman discovered that this cycle recapitulates itself during our waking lives.
The difference is that during the day we move from a state of alertness progressively into physiological fatigue approximately every 90 minutes. Our bodies regularly tell us to take a break, but we often override these signals and instead stoke ourselves up with caffeine, sugar and our own emergency reserves — the stress hormones adrenaline, noradrenaline and cortisol.
Working in 90-minute intervals turns out to be a prescription for maximizing productivity. Professor K. Anders Ericsson and his colleagues at Florida State University have studied elite performers, including musicians, athletes, actors and chess players. In each of these fields, Dr. Ericsson found that the best performers typically practice in uninterrupted sessions that last no more than 90 minutes. They begin in the morning, take a break between sessions, and rarely work for more than four and a half hours in any given day.
I was immediately reminded of John Cleese’s lecture on creativity:
Cleese specifically advocates taking 90 minutes to create space and time. It takes him about 30 minutes to calm down and open his mind, leaving an hour of creative time working on something.
“Talent hits a target no one else can hit; genius hits a target no one else can see.”
—Arthur Schopenhauer
“Instead of shooting arrows at someone else’s target, which I’ve never been very good at, I make my own target around wherever my arrow happens to have landed. You shoot your arrow and then you paint your bulls eye around it, and therefore you have hit the target dead centre.”
—Brian Eno
“I had a son, so I said, ‘I’m going to be a father for a while. I’m not going to rush into work. Let the work come find me.” I let the target draw the arrow, the arrows came my way.”
—Matthew McConaughey
Photographer Arno Minkkinen on how creativity is like a bus station:
There are two dozen platforms, Minkkinen explains, from each of which several different bus lines depart. Thereafter, for a kilometre or more, all the lines leaving from any one platform take the same route out of the city, making identical stops. “Each bus stop represents one year in the life of a photographer,” Minkkinen says. You pick a career direction – maybe you focus on making platinum prints of nudes – and set off. Three stops later, you’ve got a nascent body of work. “You take those three years of work on the nude to [a gallery], and the curator asks if you are familiar with the nudes of Irving Penn.” Penn’s bus, it turns out, was on the same route. Annoyed to have been following someone else’s path, “you hop off the bus, grab a cab… and head straight back to the bus station, looking for another platform”. Three years later, something similar happens. “This goes on all your creative life: always showing new work, always being compared to others.” What’s the answer? “It’s simple. Stay on the bus. Stay on the fucking bus.”
As Oliver Burkeman explains, “if you pursue originality too vigorously, you’ll never reach it. Sometimes it takes more guts to keep trudging down a pre-trodden path, to the originality beyond.”
Filed under: originality
Affordable housing. That’s not a very sexy answer, but it’s true. If we had universal healthcare and affordable housing, people could be more creative, sleep better at night, and live longer.
Dave Koen interviewed me about my gallery talk and art show in Denton, TX this Thursday. I like the way it turned out.
If you have any Denton tips or food recommendations, hit me up on twitter: @austinkleon
