Creativity Top 5: Week of July 15, 2013

Superhydrophobic is my new favorite word.  

Trust Yourself

Designer James Victore at 99u: 

The first level of trust is having it in yourself—trusting that your opinions matter and are valid. Even believing that your guess is as good as anyone else’s adds a level of personal trust and self-respect. This perspective, allows you the courage to crawl further out on a limb, to take chances and make sure you are not playing safe—or, worse, “giving the people what they want.” It also allows you to listen to your own opinion without the nagging voice of well wishing, but fearful friends (“You’re gonna start a business… in THIS economy?”) whose sincerest wish is to shield you from failure, while only succeeding in protecting you from success. Or, worse, to listen to the tiny critics inside your own head who concoct the wildest scenes possible of failure, carnage and financial ruin. It takes grit to stay on course, to trust yourself, your vision, your calling, and recognize this resistance for what it is: fear.

A perfect complement to the previous post.  

Del Close's Eleven Commandments of Improvisation→

Another great post from Open Culture, Del Close's Eleven Commandments of Improvisation: 

1. You are all supporting actors.
2. Always check your impulses.
3. Never enter a scene unless you are NEEDED.
4. Save your fellow actor, don’t worry about the piece.
5. Your prime responsibility is to support.
6. Work at the top of your brains at all times.
7. Never underestimate or condescend to your audience.
8. No jokes (unless it is tipped in front that it is a joke.)
9. Trust… trust your fellow actors to support you; trust them to come through if you lay something heavy on them; trust yourself.
10. Avoid judging what is going down except in terms of whether it needs help (either by entering or cutting), what can best follow, or how you can support it imaginatively if your support is called for.
11. LISTEN

They apply to all creative endeavors.  

Creativity Top 5: Week of July 8, 2013

The bonus "and then there's this" at the end is a funny counterpoint to the #1 spot this week, very moving work for Skype.  

How to Be a Genius→

An excerpt from Roberta B. Ness' Genius Unmasked: 

Tool #1: Finding the Right Question

To generate an innovative answer requires asking the right question. Curiosity, a characteristic inherent to innovators, stimulated them to ask reams and reams of questions. Random questions, however, are like throwing darts blindfolded. Somehow innovators found their way to asking the right question in the right way

[…] 

A more unique characteristic of the questions asked by creative scientists is that they were big. Most scientists restrict their curiosity to precisely limited elaborations of existing theory. Iconic innovators (to turn a phrase) asked big, hairy, audacious questions.

More tools available at Medium. Check out another perspective on your elusive creative genius from Elizabeth Gilbert. To get you started, some questions to consider.