How do you create? (A TED Remix)
/“So, how do we create? And part of the question that I have answered is we create by surrounding ourselves with stimuli, with human achievement, with history, with the things that drive us and make us human. The passionate discovery, the bones of dinosaurs long gone, the maps of space that we’ve experienced, and ultimately the hallways that stimulate our mind and our imagination.” - Jay Walker
Related:
Ken Robinson’s The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything
Lawrence Lessig’s Remix: Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy
Tim Brown’s Change by Design: How Design Thinking Transforms Organizations and Inspires Innovation
Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman’s Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia
The Autodidact Deck: Card 86
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The Autodidact Deck was introduced and explained in this post.
Giving thanks behind the scenes
/This coming Thursday is Thanksgiving in the US. A moment to pause after a very strange year and give thanks for family, friends, the people and things that enrich our lives. This time always makes me think about the behind the scenes people. My kind of people.
While attending college I often worked during this holiday. Because of my background in the arts a lot of the holiday season was spent in theaters with stage managers, house managers and production crews. Later when my job was to produce and sell the arts, I was at box offices, with volunteers, worrying about ticket sales, about marketing campaigns, surveys, display ads, and attendance, praying that the weather will not force any cancellations. When I began working in advertising managing creative services I started spending time with vendors, printers, fabricators, making sure that everything was in place for the holiday season.
Which is why I think about the behind the scenes of life. If all the world is a stage, then certainly someone is back there putting on the show.
I want to encourage you to think about the often invisible people that are so important to your life. And be grateful for them.
Think about the people that raised and farmed the food you are about to eat. The people that got it from its source to the market where you bought it. When watching the parade and the games on television think about the volunteers that got up before dawn to help the parade happen. Think about the camera crews. Think about the people working shifts in hospitals, police stations. Think about the people that made the clothes you are wearing. In theaters big and small there are rehearsals for “The Nutcracker” going on right now, people working hard for your enjoyment. Ponder how the device you are using to read this was made and think about all the people that were a part of its creation. Think about the unnamed people that contributed greatly to this year and made it better for you.
And give thanks for them.
Related:
Thanksgiving - wiki
The Autodidact Deck: Card 23
/Oblique Strategies is a set of cards created by Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt, published in 1975. Each card contains a phrase or a question that can be used to jumpstart a thinking process or brainstorm. For example:
“Honor thy error as a hidden intention.”
“You don’t have to be ashamed of using your own ideas.”
“What to maintain?”
“Do we need holes?”
Though no longer available, Oblique Strategies was also released as an iPhone app.
I sometimes use the deck thinking about a specific creative problem. While looking at random cards using the app I realized the one flaw the deck has, these strategies only encourage further thinking concerning whatever you are working on. Though random and thought-provocking these questions and phrases are by definition about whatever brings you to the cards.
I started thinking that what I wanted and needed was a deck of cards, inspired by Oblique Strategies, that would instead take me away from what I was focusing on and introduce a new subject. A kind of controlled distraction. I wanted a question or a subject on something I didn’t know, that I could research as quickly or deeply as I wanted in order to cleanse my thinking palette. That’s how The Autodidact Deck was born. I developed a pack of 100 cards to be released here over time.
You can use the cards as they are posted to go on a self-learning adventure.
And here is the first card released:
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