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(i) Start Here!
(ii) Creativity
More: See all creativity posts
(iii) Creative Thinking and Innovation
(v) Procrastination vs. Marination
(iv) Neuroscience and Psychology
The ‘Third Layer’ process itself
The Creative Foundation and Creativity Pyramid
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Creativity = Chaos, Order, and the Salience Network
The Salience Network loves to come out in the shower, on a hiking trail, first thing in the morning, on a smoke break, while washing the dishes — anywhere but wherever the Central Executive Network is watching with its scary hyper-focus on productivity and competence. (Or where the Default Mode Network is choreographing an interpretative dance with scarves of the wildebeest migration … bless its DMN heart.)
Replace Aha! moments with ‘keychain’ moments
‘Ooh!’ said her brain with a fun little wiggle that ran from her heart to her soul to a pen. ‘I should add this keychain to my list!’
Gravity problems vs tangible and intangible issues
When it comes to our creativity, what’s a gravity problem, what’s a tangible barrier, and what’s an intangible block?
Creative avoidance
Creative freezing requires awareness, kindness and gentle acknowledgement. Creative avoidance requires a swift kick in the pants. How do you know which one you’re doing?
Creative freezing (aka writer’s block, creativity black hole, etc)
Think of your stagnating creativity as the frozen pizza inside your brain’s freezer. And then the hot oven is your own self-awareness.
Flow and creativity: thanks, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
But happiness is like being in a flowing river. You can feel the water as it rushes past, but try to grab hold of it. The water has to come to you; even thinking of trying to control the water changes the experience.
Writing happens in three layers
Before you write, you need to think. And after you write is when you edit. Keep each layer distinctly separate — like a chocolate layer cake, perhaps — and writing will go faster and smoother.
Run the tap before you drink the beer
We need to generate creativity in order to write. Creativity creates something out of nothing. And nothing is a terrible place to start feeling generative.
Capital-W Writing, writing, and pre-writing
Capital-W writing is scary. Pre-write before you Write, using techniques from improv.
Ten Rules for Third Layer Creativity
Our brains are wired for survival, not creativity. Survival brain is what keeps us going; what we create with it makes it worthwhile. But we need a way to communicate with our survival brain, to let it know creativity isn’t going to hurt us.
Pinpoint vs elastic creativity
Pinpoint creativity is nailing the bullseye as close to a 10 as possible. Elastic creativity is designing the bullseye.
Noping, defined
‘Noping’ denies, negates, belittles, refuses, gaslights, shuts down, lacks empathy … often all of the above.
The ‘Fuck It’ budget
Creativity — like a financial budget — is messy. The fuck-it budget predicts some of that messiness and gives the privilege of acceptance.
How is improv like writing, and vice versa?
If you want to kill my creativity, sit me in a chair and ask me to write something that will be heavily critiqued.
Poetry vs neuroscience: a creativity smackdown
Just like video killed the radio star, science threatens to kill both the theologian and the poet. It doesn’t have to be that way, but scientists need to acknowledge we do lose something when we gain scientific knowledge.
Mathematical idioms, unspoken quantification and creativity
We quantify the creatively unquantifiable all the time without realizing it. A list of how we use language to put ourselves on the map.
Writing: Self-awareness vs rumination
Writing can improve your mental health, but the writing should elicit self-awareness (not rumination).
Perfectionism is death
Perfectionism is stagnation, fear and death. And nothing is a perfect 10 anyway.
The mathematics of joy
Start a list.
Write down 3-5 things that bring you joy.
Over the next week or two, continue to add things until you reach 100.
