Accidental Creative

Reading List

Here’s what I’m reading this week:

Artful Making: What Managers Need To Know About How Artists Work by Robert Austin and Lee Devin
This is my second pass at this one. It uses the metaphor of a theatre production company to demonstrate how companies can be more thoughtful of the creative process in their systems. Overall, I consider it a good read. (Hence, the second reading…)

Duma Key by Stephen King
Ooh…spine tingling. Actually, I’m only a little into this one, but I’m already hooked. 

In the queue:
The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Then We Came To The End by Joshua Ferris

So…what are you reading? What should be in my queue?

Visual Information

RESOURCE: About a year ago my friend and colleague David introduced me to some books he had purchased featuring the work of Edward Tufte. The books were a survey of some of Tufte’s best work, most of it centering around the visual representation of very compex information.

What moved me the most about Tufte’s work is the underlying beauty of this data when represented visually. I love patterns and I love finding meaning in seemingly meaningless places.

Tufte’s work will inspire anyone who desires to be challenged to see the beautiful simplicity on the other side of complexity. 

Reading List

I haven’t done this in a while, so I thought it was high-time to let you all in on my current reading efforts. I read a lot - usually a few or more books per week - so it becomes difficult to keep these updates fresh. Still, here’s what’s currently at the plate:

THIS WEEK
Books:

I’ve just finished Cormac McCarthy’s tome The Road. I’ve now begun a campaign to collect much of the non-perishable miscellaneous food that’s strewn around our offices and store it in my desk cabinet for…well…whatever might come. Not that I’m paranoid or anything…

 ADVICE: skip skim study SAVOR

POWER OF AN HOUR : This is not my usual fare, but given the reviews on Amazon I thought I would give it a try. Disappointingly, I managed to make it about 25% before putting it aside. Possibly good advice for some, but nothing that appealed much to me. Still, again, some might find it appealing.

ADVICE: SKIP skim study savor

 
A WHOLE NEW MIND : This one was a recommendation from our AC Premium forums. I’m finding it interesting thus far…I’ll provide a review upon completing it.
ADVICE: skip SKIM study savor

MICROTRENDS : I’m almost through this one as well. Who knew that petite women would soon rule the world?

ADVICE: skip skim STUDY savor

Magazines:
Atlantic Monthly (Dec 07), Time, Harvard Business Review (Dec 07)

 You can also visit the AC Bookshelf to see other related books on creativity, organizational life and innovation.

So…I’m always on the lookout…what are you reading right now? What should be in my queue?
 

The Ethic of Finishing

I spend a lot of my time “nexting.” I’m not referring to the phenomenon spelled out in the book Stumbling on Happiness in which our minds are filling in the gaps of our sensory experience to predict what’s coming next, I’m talking about starting work on the next thing before I’ve finished what’s in front of me.

This phenomenon is so prevalent in my life that it even affects my eating habits. Sad, but true. A few weeks ago the family was sitting around the dinner table and I stood up from the table to get another serving of vegetables. This is not especially odd except for the fact that I still had a half-serving of vegetables left on my plate! Even before I knew that I could finish what was in front of me, I was going to add more.

Sad? Yes. It’s not that I don’t finish, it’s that I don’t always finish strong. I sometimes let go of the reins as the chariot is thirty feet from the finish line because I see another race to join. (Eh…the horse knows what it’s doing, right?)

This not only (sometimes) hurts my work, it also affects my sense of accomplishment. When I don’t finish strong, I have less that I can point to and say “I did THAT. I poured myself into THAT. THAT was good.”

The two most difficult parts of the creative process are starting and finishing. I very good at the former. As the new year approaches, I’m making a personal commitment to be more of a finisher in my work.

And…I’m finished.

{mosgoogle}

Chasing Cool

I recently finished a book called "Chasing Cool ." It’s about the corporate temptation to try to "be cool" rather than allowing coolness to emerge from relevance.

I recently did an interview with a writer for HOW magazine (hi Lisa !) about designing for a specific target and stated that "relevance is proven by action." In other words, the attempt to be relevant immediately proves us other-than-relevant.
How do you handle the coolness factor? How do you avoid the temptation to "chase cool"?

For me, it’s a continual examination of my motives. Am I "positioning" myself? Even the attempt to "not try to be cool" can be a veiled attempt at coolness. (It’s amazing how so many teens who are a part of "counter-culture" look alike, dress alike, listen to the same music, etc.) We all want to connect with others in our expression, but we also can’t allow our unique edges to be smoothed over by the stream of cultural mediocrity. Culture tends toward the middle because it’s the safest place - like a dip in the middle of a sagging bed, we all roll to the middle.

Many of the people we call "cool" never wanted that tag - in fact, if you ask them, they would say they’re "geeks", "nerds" or misfits. It’s their willingness to shed popular opinion that gives them the ability to stare the fear of rejection in the eyes and walk through the heart of it. I’m still working on this one, but it’s definitely a battle worth fighting and winning.

Bird By Bird

Anne Lamott, in her wonderful work on writing called “Bird by Bird”, recounts a thesis on birds that her brother was writing in school.  As she remembers it, he was sitting at the kitchen table surrounded by open books, crying from being overwhelmed by the amount of work to be done.  As she tells the story, her father walked into the kitchen, noticed her brother slumped over the table and said “Bird by bird. Just do it bird by bird!”  

How many of us, as creatives, are regularly paralyzed by the seemingly overwhelming tasks in front of us?  The biggest obstacle to surmount is also the biggest asset we have - our conceptual nature!  We tend to see the greatness of the finished product in our minds, but we’re unable to understand or deal with the smaller chunks of tasks required to get there.  It’s this inability to define the "next thing" that causes us to shut down, completely discouraged by how impossible it is to do anything worthwhile. I call it "expectation escalation" - comparing everything we do to the best thing we’ve ever done - and "comparisonitis" - comparing everything we do to the best things anyone has ever done. (I’m guilty of both on a regular basis and it freezes my creative possibilities when I allow it.)

Because the world tends to be driven by results, we are pulled right along with it.  Process loses all value and we get swept up into the current of “what have you done for me lately?”  We want greatness, but we’re not always willing to pay the price for it.  

So what is the price of greatness? 

Patience. 

We forget that nothing happens all at once.  No great work of art, entrepreneurial venture or feat of architecture appears spontaneously out of thin air.  Each required months or even years of experimentation, learning, crafting and even blood, sweat and tears.  This is in addition to the years of training each artist had to forego and undergo in order to simply begin such a project. 

The thing to remember is that we are not going for the quick pay off.  If the goal is to use your creativity as a means to get rich quick or to be famous – best wishes!  But please know that you will eventually find yourself right back in the place of the beginner, desperately looking for meaning in what you make. If, however, you pay the price to develop disciplines and discover who you truly are as an artist, then you have something sustainable and meaningful to say.

Art - and life - is about improvisation, discovery and awe. It is about leaning over the edge and staring deep into the abyss. It’s about staring into our own inadequacies and, just as we think we might come up short, finding the answer that we need was there all the time. As we create we not only reveal Reality, we reveal ourselves.

It is important that we not allow expectation escalation and comparisonitis to suffocate us. 

Stimulus Finding

One of the regulars in my podcast diet is Cool Hunting. The latest episode is a profile of Lori Nix , whose art must be seen to be believed. I am always amazed at the extent some artists go to in order to realize their vision. Semantics are critical and vision is everything.

Cool Hunting - Lori Nix

Kickin’ the Crackberry to the Curb…

Actually, it’s my Treo (Creo?)

I’ve suddenly become aware that the constant stream of data, info, e-mail, rss feeds, etc., 24/7 wherever I am (except for that small pocket of dropped coverage on my way home each night) is NOT healthy. It’s sucking my soul and spitting it back to me with tags. The kicker for me was when I realized that I was often hitting the "check mail" button in my email app even though the app was set to check mail every ten minutes. (Apparently, I never know when I might be called upon to solve some global crisis or  to fill in at the last minute for a sick talk-show host.)

As of later today it will be gone. I’m sure there will be withdrawal, so I’m checking myself into the Crackberry clinic. I’ll see you on the other side of rehab.  (And we’ll have an intervention when the iPhone is released…)

For me this is a question of engagement in the moment. Creativity is about full-out, head-on engagement with whatever is in front of you. When my attention is divided or constantly interrupted, I find that my mind sets about solving multiple problems at once. Human beings ARE NOT WIRED to be on 24/7. We require rhythm, rest, periods of intense and satisfying work, periods of recuperation from the work, etc. This is all a part of how the natural world operates, but humans are the only beings who defy it.

So call my Treo-less life my attempt to take a stand against the obsessive wired-ness that is pervading our culture and a small effort to re-claim my humanity. I simply want my life and focus back. 

Einstein, Boating and the Beautiful Mess

This month’s WIRED features an article on the genius of Albert Einstein. It’s not earth-shaking to report on Einstein’s unconventional genius, but what really caught my attention in this piece was how Einstein "accidentally" stumbled upon his discovery that time was not constant right at the moment he was about to give up. In fact, it was the accidental convergence of his role as a patent clerk and and unlikely friendship (seeded by years of playful study and seemingly meaningless postulating) that eventually altered the very way we see the universe.

Einstein was received as a hack by his professors and peers right up until his significant discoveries. He was unable to earn a doctorate because of his unconventional approach. He also uttered the (much over-quoted) phrase "Imagination is more important than knowledge."

Lessons for me from this short article:
1. Creative success often comes at the moment of hopelessness.
2. Playful awareness leads to discovering solutions in unconventional places.
3. I spend WAY too much time trying to find "the right answer" instead of "the BEAUTIFUL answer."

The article can be found in this month’s WIRED. 

Understanding Procrastination

Whenever I’ve worked on ‘de-cluttering’ my living or working space, I’ve always found that it’s the unfinished project – whatever I’m procrastinating about - that takes up the most room.

Physically, it’s a constant reminder of something I tell myself I SHOULD be doing. Mentally, it consumes my thoughts and diverts my attention from the present moment.

Emotionally, it weighs down my heart and nicks away at my confidence.

In this article, I invite you to consider how procrastination, as a form of self-sabotage, shows up in the different areas of your life.