Entries Tagged 'Creativity' ↓

I’ve been reading and talking about education a lot lately. The Next Great Generation, a site which I’m an editor for, is having a whole week about the topic, so for some in depth thoughts on it from some bright young minds, I think you should take a look. I also have a long-winded piece coming up on that site about the topic, but I wanted to give a quick look into how western education systems affect creativity.

I went through a very normal public school education. I feel like I have a good picture of what a decent public school education looks like, and all I can say is that as far as fostering creativity goes, it sucks. How do I know this? Because I was great at school. Seriously, I was really, really good at school. I was the kid you hate because he doesn’t even try and still gets A’s. Where’d it get me? Into an academic advisor’s office that kept pushing me to do pre-med even though I hated all physical sciences. Once I finally decided to ignore that advice, where did my good grades get me? Law school. Fat lot of good that did me.

Do you see the problem here? Our best students are getting pushed towards careers that are completely empirical, and leave no room for creativity. We don’t need more lawyers and accountants. Yes, we need more doctors, but maybe if there were people coming up with creative solutions to the underlying causes of illness, we wouldn’t.

I’m not suggesting that our society will improve dramatically if we have more dance instructors or sculptors. I’m suggesting that every single function in society could be well-served with an injection of creativity. Let’s stop teaching people how to do things, and let’s encourage them to figure out their own way of doing things.

And one last thing, a $40,000+ piece of paper doesn’t prove anything other than that you can memorize information and regurgitate it onto a page. So, I beg you, if you’re one of those people who tries to impress others with his degrees, stop. Just stop. Please.

The word genius gets thrown around way too often these days. Genius is a word that should be reserved for the truly exceptional, the rarest of works or thoughts.

And yet, a couple of weeks ago I finished reading a book, that without a doubt in my mind, was a masterpiece, penned by a genius. That book was Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace (Amazon affiliate link). I’ll admit to never having read anything by Wallace before, and to really not knowing anything about him other than maybe his name. As such, perhaps tackling a 1000 page book, with 100 pages of end notes (that yes, you MUST read) was not the ideal introduction to his work. This, especially when you consider that I’m not a huge fan ofne of my favourite novels, and it obsessed me during the time that I read it in a way that was unl long novels, and I’m a sucker for the brevity of Hemingway. Nonetheless, this has become oike any other novel.

This isn’t a book review, so why am I telling you this? Because I’m not interested so much in the book itself, but in the way people respond to genius. At various times, to various works, I’ve responded to genius in one of two ways.

The first was to be inspired. This is generally what happens to me when I witness something that I consider genius in a field other than writing. It inspires me to head to my desk and start playing with words and crafting stories. It’s an emotional response to the positive feeling I get from observing the work.

The second way I’ve responded to genius, and this, generally, is for pieces of writing, is to get mildly depressed. Unlike the first response, where the positive feeling I got inspired me, this appreciation of the greatness of a piece of writing makes me feel inadequate in comparison. “I’ll never be able to write like that.” This is a childish response, but again, it is emotional and not rational. Nonetheless, it leads to a dent in confidence, and a writer with no confidence will have a hard time putting words to a page.

So, in order to avoid these two extremes, I’m searching for a 3rd alternative, and I may have accidentally stumbled upon it while reading Infinite Jest. You can either accept that genius is innate, or you can believe that it can be achieved through hard work. I choose to believe the latter because it means there’s hope that one day I might produce something that might be considered genius. When faced with two options, might as well go with the one that gives you hope.

This means that the logical response to a great work is actually to study it to find out what makes it so great so that you can learn from it. Unlike, the two previous responses, this isn’t emotional; it’s a rational response. Also, it doesn’t necessarily preclude the first two responses. Nonetheless, if faced with the option of being in awe of something and then being entirely incapable of producing my own work, or taking some kind of action that might allow me to benefit from that awe, I think I’ll go with option B.

Normally, I don’t re-read books. My general feeling towards re-reading is, “There’s too many other great ones out there to re-read the ones I already know.” However,t at some point soon, I’m going to be re-reading Infinite Jest, this time as a student. David Foster Wallace may have left us, but he did leave great material for us to learn from, and I intend to do so.

How do you respond to works of genius? Do they inspire? Depress? Neither? Drop a note in the comments, and let’s talk about it.

“What’s the point of making resolutions if you know you’re just going to break them anyway?” – Everyone and their dog

I closed out 2009 with a post about my various failures and successes for the year that just ended. You can only succeed or fail at something if you deliberately undertook doing it. No one can ever accuse me of failing to swim across the Atlantic because I never said I would attempt it (and because there are sharks). Similarly, if I one day break the world record for pacing, I will not have succeeded at anything because I never undertook the challenge of breaking a world record for pacing (I just pace a lot).

To succeed or fail, a person needs goals. If you never set yourself goals, you will never fail, but you will also never succeed. I like setting goals even if it means I fail sometimes. There are a lot of arguments for why people should have goals, but for my purposes, I’ll simply say that I need them, otherwise I’m unhappy. As a result, I’m constantly setting goals for myself. Short-term, mid-term, long-term, etc. It’s borderline obsessive behaviour.

My habit of creating goals is the reason why I haven’t had an official New Year’s resolution for a couple of years. A New Year’s resolution is just a name for a goal that you set for yourself for a given year on January 1st of that year. By that token, you could say that writing 52 short stories in a single year was my New Year’s resolution for 2009. I didn’t think of it that way, but it fits.

Around now, there are a lot of numbers being crunched about how many people make resolutions, and how many stick to them. The numbers aren’t pretty. But, the biggest reason that more people don’t stick to their resolutions is because they’re not used to goal setting. Goal setting’s been distilled to a science by some, but it’s at the very least an art, with those who practice it most getting better at it than those who don’t.

Today I asked a handful of people if they made New Year’s resolutions, all of them told me they don’t make resolutions anymore because they never stick to them anyway. I really don’t think a history of failing to meet goals means that you should stop setting them. Instead, I think it’s an excellent opportunity to set goals differently. General goals are important, but they should be refined with smaller milestones, that can be measured, and that have shorter deadlines.

If your goal for 2010 is to exercise more, that’s great, but break it down. By the end of March, maybe you want to be averaging 2 hours of exercise a week. By the end of June, maybe you want that up to 4 hours a week. By the end of September, you’re up to 8. By the end of the year, you’re averaging 12 hours a week of exercise. Now you’ve got milestones. If three month chunks are still too big to swallow, you can break it down to monthly or weekly. This is how I’m breaking down my goals for 2010.

Another thing that I can’t really understand is why people seem to think that they have to have their goals laid out by January 1. If you’re not sure what your goal is, don’t arbitrarily rush it just to say that you have a resolution.

Flexibility is underrated in goal setting. My writing goals for 2010 are mapped out, and I know what I want to accomplish, but I also have about 4 or 5 non-writing goals for 2010. Rather than take them all on and fail at all of them, I’d rather focus on 1 or 2, and actually stand a chance at success. Unfortunately, I can’t decide what to cut, so I’m going to give myself some extra time to decide what’s most important.

That being said, this is my writing blog, so here are my 2010 writing goals:

• 30 short stories
• 20 blog posts on 52SS
• 45 blog posts on AdamDiStefano.com
• 12 articles for TheNextGreatGeneration.com
• 20 articles for sites that I don’t currently write for
• 2 Top Secret projects (both of which are writing intensive)

You’ll notice that whereas last year I tried to focus my goal on a single area of writing (short fiction), this year I’m branching out significantly. The reason for this is that it’s the more organic way for me to work. I can’t write fiction non-stop for a whole year. For my own sanity, I need diversity.

The other notable difference between this year and last is that I’m planning to do a lot more outside work. Last year, just about all my writing was done for myself and for my blogs. This year, I’ll be writing for others, and collaborating with others. This is something that I did more of in years past, and came to realize over the course of the past year that I missed it, so I will be doing more of it.

And what about you? What are your goals for 2010, or even just for this month? Writing or otherwise? What do you do to make sure you stick to your goals?

It’s the end of December, and the internet is flush with year-in-review blog posts. As much as I despise being a conformist, this blog WAS a one-year experiment that started a year ago. As such, a review of the past year, and an evaluation of how the experiment went is required.

Barefoot Running: After several years of trying to become a serious runner, but consistently being held up by minor injuries, I made a purchase this year that changed how I run, changed how much I run, and definitely changed the way people look at me. Vibram Five Fingers are quite possibly the ugliest shoes on the market, but they quickly became my favourite thing to wear on my feet (I am wearing my VFF Sprints as I write this). I highly recommend them if you don’t mind strangers whispering things about you as you go by.

Twitter: This year, I hopped on the bandwagon and started using Twitter. It took me a little while, but I eventually got the hang of it, and while I’m far from being an addict, I do enjoy logging in for a few minutes a day to see what’s happening. The great thing about Twitter is that its simplicity means the only limit to its usage is your imagination. It can be a tool for businesses, for writers, or just for having fun.

Personal Life/Social

There were no major events in my personal life this year, and I’m okay with that. My relationships, with family, friends and girlfriend remained the same, or got stronger. I realized that the most important people in my life have not changed for at least five years, and most of those, I’ve known far longer. Change is good, but sometimes, stability is better.

Overall

I may have come short of my goal to write 52 short stories, but in many other ways, in both writing, and outside of writing, 2009 was a good year for me, and I’m going to spend what’s left of it being grateful for that.

So, now that the year’s over, what happens to 52SS? Well, I think it’s going to stick around. I think I’ll extend the experiment, and I enjoy having a spot to share my thoughts. Expect the next post to come in the new year, and to talk about what’s in store for 52SS, and for me, in 2010.

How was your 2009? I’d love to hear what you’re proud of having accomplished in 2009, so please share in the comments.

A good friend of mine wrote to me to bust my balls about not posting updates here more often. What was interesting about the note was the subject line. It read, “In need of some inspirational words…”

The purpose of this blog was never to inspire anyone. If anything, it’s a chronicle of my own quest for writing inspiration. Despite this, at least one person uses it as a source of inspiration. I’ve written before about alternative places to find inspiration, but now I realize that lists of places to find inspiration miss the point.

As a person interested in the creative process, I’m sure I’ve read hundreds of pieces on places to find inspiration. Most of them look very similar. Occasionally, I’ll find something in one of these lists that I hadn’t thought of, but more often than not, I read them and nod. Most creative types experience the same thing. They read these things about what they are supposed to do, and finish them realizing that they already knew it all. The reading isn’t really informative, it’s comforting. It’s reaffirmation.

In that sense, looking to writers and other creatives for a laundry list of places to find inspiration is useless. There is nowhere I can tell you to look that you won’t hear and think to yourself, “Duh.” The reason for this is that inspiration is everywhere, but it’s different for everyone. I read this blog and see a writer struggling with his own limitations. My friend reads this blog and sees inspiration. I never would have thought to tell someone to read this as a source of inspiration. Similarly, I can find inspiration in my breakfast, but I don’t think anyone has ever included “Your morning meal” in any list of sources of inspiration.

Inspiration is everywhere, and no one can tell you where to look for it. Be open to it and it will hit you. This doesn’t just apply to writers and artists, it applies to anyone who wants to think creatively. You can find the inspiration for the solution of a work problem in the most unlikely places, too. Open yourself up to new experiences – even if these experiences are things you never thought you’d do – and find your unlikely source of inspiration.

And stop reading those list posts. Nodding along never inspired anyone.

Last week, I was reading Lateral Action, one of my favourite creativity blogs, and Mark was writing about computer programs that were thinking creatively. Using algorithms, computers were able to extrapolate patterns to create new ideas that were judged by a panel to be more creative than similar ideas thought up by humans.

I’m a big believer that creativity does indeed happen in an incremental fashion and is informed by previous experience and knowledge. I’m not a proponent of the “muse” school of thought that tends to favour a theory of sudden inspiration of a nearly other-worldly nature. As such, the idea that algorithms could be used for creative thinking was not terribly surprising to me. However, the idea that computers could be “creative” in the same way as humans and produce “art” was more unsettling.

Instinctively, I knew this could not be true, but I was at a loss to explain why. In his post, Mark offered the explanation of critical thinking, and that computers can’t critique themselves, but that explanation still didn’t feel right to me.

So, I began thinking about the finished product and what it achieves. A computer can be programmed to do something creative. In that context, creative will mean unique and different. If you take any pattern far enough, you’ll get to a point that no one has been before, and that’s what these computers are doing. They’re taking old things and creating new things. The resulting new thing is different from anything else I’ve seen before, but what is my reaction to it? “Hey, that’s different.”

A human creating something new will basically follow the same basic steps. He will take his previous experience and create something new that hasn’t been done before. Where the finished product is different from what the computer has done is where that product becomes art. Humans can create art. Computers cannot.

Computers can create images, and musical arrangements, and sequences of words, but these will never be art because true art elicits an emotional response. If it doesn’t conjure up some emotion in its audience, it has failed at being art. The reason computers cannot cause this emotional reaction is because to do so, the artist needs to inject his own emotion into the work. Computers with the most sophisticated algorithms imaginable can outmatch humans in logic, but they will never have emotion. Without that emotion, whatever is created by a computer is hollow.

Because an artist injects his emotion into his art, and it then causes a reaction in his audience, art is in fact a medium for connecting artist and audience. So, not only does the art differ because it is infused with emotion, but it serves an additional purpose of creating connections. You can’t connect with a computer, and nothing a computer creates will have any soul.

In the end, this is all just a convoluted attempt to explain the uneasiness that we feel when we hear that computers can be creative. I explain it as a lack of emotion in the work, and a lack of human connection with an artist. Mark explained it as a lack of critical thinking. Others explained it as a lack of personality. Whatever it is, there is something uniquely human about the creative process. It is something that logic and algorithms alone can’t replicate, and whether we can explain it or not, our gut tells us it’s there.

That’s why, I for one, am not scared that computers will take over the creative world.

Recently, I’ve been hearing a lot about words like “obsession” and “passion.” A good part of that is because Gary Vaynerchuk, one of the most obsessive and passionate guys around, is promoting his book, Crush It!: Why NOW Is the Time to Cash In on Your Passion. I haven’t read the book yet, but I have pre-ordered it, and I suggest you do the same. Gary’s an interesting guy, and a case study about how to turn an obsession into a 60-million dollar a year business.

All of this talk about obsession, however, has me asking myself the question whether obsession is truly necessary for success? For the purposes of this discussion, I’m going to define obsession as an interest so important that it becomes one of the three most important things in your life. I think that’s a fair definition, because some would go as far as saying that obsession is the single most important thing in your life. I think that’s too limiting, so I’m being a little more generous. Even Gary Vee would have to agree with me that family is more important than anything else, and yet, no one’s going to argue that Gary’s obsessed with wine and with sports.

In my mind the easiest way to answer this question is to make two lists. One of things that I’m obsessed with, and a second of things that I’ve succeeded at. Now, compare the two lists. The simple fact of the matter is that anyone who does this exercise will surely find that she has succeeded at things that she is not obsessed with. I’ve succeeded at many things in life that I’m not obsessed with. In fact, I’ve succeeded at things I didn’t even like.

Obsession is not necessary to succeed.

So what’s the big deal about it, then? Well, let’s say we tweak those lists we made earlier. Keep the list of things you’re obsessed with, but now compare it to a list of things that you’re truly happy doing. I’ll bet anything there’s a much closer correlation. I know in my case there is. Obsession isn’t necessary for success, it’s necessary for happiness.

Whether, you’re a writer, an artist, a businessperson, a stay-at-home dad, or anything else, being obsessed won’t guarantee you succeed at what you do. What it will do is make you happy in doing it. When you’re happy doing something, you’re more likely to work harder at it, and put in the hustle necessary to become successful.

Obsession isn’t necessary for success, but it sure as hell makes it easier and a lot more fun.

At www.adamdistefano.com, I’ll be writing mainly about internet marketing for small and medium-sized businesses and entrepreneurs. I know a thing or two about the topic because it’s what I do for a living. While I’ll continue on with 52 Short Stories, as my passion project, you can think of www.adamdistefano.com as my professional blog.

There is still more to me than writing and marketing, but I have opened up another window into my life. As time goes on, who knows how much I’ll share online? I don’t think I’ll ever get to the point where I’m tweeting what I’m having for breakfast. On the other hand, an online diary of a diet and exercise regimen is plausible.

The web is becoming a platform for broadcasting your life to the world (or lifecasting). It’s a great thing that audiences get to see more of the writers, artists and creators behind the works they enjoy. It makes for a more intimate experience. But how much is too much? Should a web persona be the full three dimensional representation of who we are, or should it still be a facade?

What do you think? Or would you rather not say?

I spent the majority of my life trying to be a realist. It seemed like the thing to be. Realists are self-aware. They don’t get disappointed very often. They’re right more often than not. They usually get the girl.

Idealists are bright-eyed and bushy tailed. They’re naive. They spend their time in their own little world. They’re often disappointed. They’re not particularly cool.

Is it any wonder I spent so long trying to be a realist? It seemed a hell of a lot easier. Here’s the thing, though: It was really tough for me. It was tough for me because I’m an idealist at heart. I think all creative people are idealists at heart. And since I believe that everyone has the capacity to be creative, I think everyone is really an idealist. The problem is that being an idealist is rough, so we try to change ourselves into being realists. That’s a mistake.

Realists are rarely disappointed because they set their expectations low. They’re often right because they always make the safe bet. They usually get the girl (or guy) because they’re settling for the convenient one, and not the love of their lives.

Idealists on the other hand set themselves up for failure because they reach for the stars. They take crazy risks. They chase their soulmates. And, sure enough, more often than not, they fail. But, I’ve already said repeatedly on this blog that failing isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It’s a learning experience. It’s okay that idealists fail a lot, because every once in a while they succeed. And when an idealist succeeds, he knows he’s done something special.

What’s the point of going through life playing it safe? Sure, you might not fail as often, but you definitely won’t get the great rewards, either. Instead, do something crazy, take a risk, try to change the world. Fail enough times and eventually you’ll succeed, and when you do, it will all have been worth it.

If you’re not trying to change the world, then what’s the point?

Starting right now, become an idealist. Go start working on something that will change the world. If it doesn’t work out right away, don’t worry about it, just keep plugging away. At the very least, you’ll know that you’re working towards something worthwhile.

Finish that novel. Start that sculpture. Get to work on that business plan. Find your soulmate. Embark on the journey of a lifetime. Change the world.