Creativity

Bits and Bobs – A Live Commonplace Book

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What follows is a collection of thoughts and pieces of wisdom I have gathered so far. Some are my own words, others are quotes or ideas that have resonated with me along the way. This project is intended as a live commonplace online notebook, updated often. Some parts may seem inconsistent, even contradictory. Life itself tends to disagree with solid certainties. If you, dear reader, stumble upon an idea that feels irrelevant, wrong, or contrary to everything you’ve lived, maybe it isn’t for you. Skim …

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Cryptomnesia and Intellectual Humility

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“Has it ever occurred to you,” the old lady went on, “how much we go by what is called, I believe, the context? There is a place on Dartmoor called Grey Wethers. If you were talking to a farmer there and mentioned Grey Wethers, he would probably conclude that you were speaking of these stone circles, yet it is possible that you might be speaking of the atmosphere; and in the same way, ifyou were meaning the stone circles, an outsider, hearing a fragment …

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Lynley Dodd: Stories Hidden in Plain Sight

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The fewer the words, the harder the job. Dame Lynley Dodd Finding non-anthropomorphic children’s books about animals with exquisite rhyme and repetition is remarkably difficult. When our daughter turned two, that crucial age for language acquisition, we discovered Hairy Maclary from Donaldson’s Dairy, and we immediately fell under the magic of New Zealand author-illustrator Lynley Dodd. We devoured every book we could find, meeting the unforgettable cast of characters: Hairy Maclary himself, Schnitzel von Krumm with his very low tum, Bitzer Maloney all skinny and bony, …

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Reading for Knowledge

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Reading is integral to our daily lives, serving various purposes ranging from relaxation to in-depth learning. How we approach reading often depends on our objectives — whether we are unwinding with a novel, seeking specific information, or engaging with academic texts. Reading for Leisure Reading for leisure is an unhurried journey through stories, ideas, and emotions. It allows us to experience pleasure, relaxation, and sometimes escapism through the written or spoken word. The motivation is personal enjoyment rather than academic, professional, or life admin …

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Borges’s Approach to Overcoming Creative Barriers

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There will always be a moment when the journey from conception to creation seems to stall, and the clarity of our goals becomes obscured. Be it analysis paralysis, writer’s block, the paradox of choice, procrastination, burnout, impostor syndrome, or perfectionism, this is a shared experience among us all because virtually everyone, at some point, will face their version of a “wall.” The inertia waves surrounding us become brutal, leaving us questioning our direction and purpose. Consider Jorge Luis Borges, one of the key writers of …

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But What Use Is It – Judging the Value of New Ideas

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If you could transport yourself back to the 1840s and ask the people what might improve their lives, it’s unlikely anyone would have responded, ‘How about some blue sparks leaping between copper spheres?’ Yet, that’s what Michael Faraday presented in his experiments before a puzzled audience. When Chancellor of the Exchequer William Gladstone, having witnessed Michael Faraday’s demonstration of the newly discovered phenomenon of electromagnetic induction [a fundamental force of nature most commonly used to generate electricity], asked: ‘But what use is it? Faraday famously replied, …

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How to Maintain Our Creative Powers by Having Multiple Projects

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The MacArthur Fellows Program is a prize awarded annually to 20 – 30 citizens or residents of the United States, from any field based on their demonstrated talent, dedication and potential, and not necessarily on their past achievements. The complete list of recipients is here. If you glance through it, you will notice the winners’ occupations are remarkably diverse: spider silk biologists, farmers, atmospheric chemists, painters, sculptors, tropical foresters, rare book preservationists, computer scientists, doctors, historians, etc. As the current prize for the MacArthur Fellows is $625,000 paid …

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When Rejected Ideas Are a Gold Mine

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In her autobiography Walk through Walls, the performance artist Marina Abramović describes how she teaches her students the process of ideation: For the first three months, I place each student at a table with a thousand pieces of white paper and a trash can underneath. Every day they have to sit at the table for several hours and write ideas. They put the ideas they like on the right side of the table; the ones they don’t like, they put in the trash. But we don’t throw …

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