The Infinite Loops Guide to... Creativity
"The most regretful people on earth are those who felt the call to creative work, who felt their own creative power restive and uprising, and gave to it neither power nor time" ~ Mary Oliver
1. John Fio | Abandon Your Ego
“Everyone thinks that these crazy artists are unbelievably egotistical and, ‘Oh, look at them. They're obsessed with themselves.’ I think Kanye is the best example of this. Everyone thinks that he's this egomaniac […] Actually it is impossible to create on the level that he's created, for as many people as he's created, to have an ego. I actually would say that the mistake that people make when they look at this archetype of a maniacal artist is that they're egotistical and self-obsessed and attention obsessed, I would say it's the exact opposite, that they basically have completely submitted themselves to this idea that they actually do not and cannot create anything for themselves. And they've submitted to this idea that it is all for this people and for the ether, for God.”
More from John: The Wizard & The Warrior (Ep. 184)2. Eric Jorgenson | Embrace the Steal
“But I think to your point, exactly, curation is so important. In an age where there is so much created, curation becomes just as important as creation, if not more important. And it all exists on the same scale. Originality is absolutely a false god. It is an idol that is worshiped for no reason by sort of try hard creatives that are artists trying to do something like purely original, and you'll be a better artist if you just embrace the steal.”
More from Eric: on Publishing, Progress & Reinventing the Playbook (Ep. 194) | The Almanack of Naval Ravikant (Ep. 11)3. Trung Phan | Pay Attention
“Rick Rubin actually talks about that extensively in his book. He says, ‘It's particularly difficult in the smartphone age with the distractions to literally just notice’ […] If you have nothing else distracting you, you could marinate on an elevator song, like you could be an elevator, but forgot your phone, like"Oh, this song is kind of dope." But literally, just distractions all the time. You don't even have the opportunity to marinate on all these things that are happening around you […] When he says ‘be a vessel’, it's already happening. You just have to pay attention, but most people can't and are easily distracted.”
More from Trung: Apocalypse Now (Ep. 178)| On Smart Threads and Dumb Memes (Ep. 109) | Talking Television (Ep. 124)4. Alice Albrecht | Let Your Mind Wander
“I think you can increase your creativity […] you can't be hyper-focused [...] [I]f you get so narrow that you're really only really thinking about one thing really hard in a difficult way, it can be harder to come up with creative solution. You have to step away from that, loosen your focus, let your mind wander. And in the internal mind wandering, what it's doing is picking about this tree and looking for those connections. And then they come together when you're walking down the street and you're like, ‘Oh, I figured it out.’ So I think managing your time, managing your space in that way is also really important to increase that creative thought work.”
More from Alice: On Creativity, Connection & Convergence (Ep. 198)5. Devon Eriksen | Believe in Your Artistic Vision
“[Y]ou don't need to wait around for somebody to say, ‘You can create, do so.’ You can say to the world, ‘I can create, and I will do so whether you wish it or not. And the only thing that's going to stand in my way is if I fail to create something the audience likes, and then I'm just going to go back to the drawing board and try again.’ It sounds like such a cliche to say believe in yourself, but that's not what I'm saying. I'm saying believe in your artistic vision, in your vision, your complete whole vision of a thing that's not written by a committee that you think will be good and worthwhile, and try that because you're the only one who can do it. Nobody else can create what you see in your head. Either you're going to do it or it's not going to get done.”
More from David: Theft of Fire (Ep. 206)6. Visakan Veerasamy | Embrace Your Mistakes
“[M]ultiple musicians and artists have said things like that, when you've made a mistake, it's the flinching around the mistake that designates it as a mistake and the audience feels that it's a mistake. Whereas if you just play a note and it's not the note you wanted, you can flow into the next note in a way that makes it still work. And if you flow smoothly enough, it's like a spicy note. It doesn't seem like a mistake. So it's your own flinching and aversion that designates a mistake as a mistake. So Victor Wooten says, ‘you can erase the mistake by making music with it'.’ Which is very profound when you witness it and you feel it, you feel that acceptance of the mistake. And I think this really generalizes beyond music to all human relations."
More from Visa: On Creativity, Introspection & Being a Good Reply Guy (Ep. 149) | Expanding Our Possibility-Space (Ep. 210)7. Rob Henderson | Let the Process Do the Work
“Coppola wasn't actually a great artist when he started the project [Ed: Apocalypse Now], but in the process of trying to make the film, he fulfilled the steps required for greatness, and through that process became the artist that could make such a film […] [A]s a writer, I think, and I know you both write, I think you can connect with that […] where you have an idea it’s sort of messy in your mind and you sit down and suddenly these ideas come out and you're making these connections and you're like, ‘Where's all this coming from?’”
More from Rob: Apocalypse Now (Ep. 178) | Evolution of Social Hierarchies (Ep. 64) | Talking Television (Ep. 124) | Troubled (Ep. 203)8. Lisa Feldman Barrett | Choose Your Environment Wisely
"[H]umans have a suite of abilities that allow us to learn things very quickly and not always by having to experience them ourselves directly. So we can learn from the experiences of other people actually just by watching them and we can communicate really effectively about it, and we can cooperate in doing so. And we can be creative in the way that we do these things. That means that you can learn things. In fact, your brain is bathed in information that it's constantly taking in and your brain wires itself to the world that it encounters. It does this really quickly when you're little and it does it slower when you're grown up, but it's still doing it when you're grown up. So if you read books, see movies, talk to people over coffee, their experiences to some extent become your experiences […] But the point is that you're always cultivating the environment that's wiring your brain, always."
More from Lisa: Why does the brain exist? (Ep. 82)9. Herbert Lui | Release the Madman
"[T]he Madman is basically this creative force. They can scribble out 10 pages in an hour, they can do anything and everything. And they love to play super energetic […] And the Judge is very controlled, very calculative, very protective, and helps keep you safe basically […] And so throughout the years, our Judge actually gets stronger and stronger and stronger and more practiced at the cost of the Madman usually, which is basically getting weaker and weaker to the point where one day we feel like we're not creative anymore because we haven't experienced one of those impulses or acted on them in a long time […] And so part of the key to uniting the conscious and unconscious mind, the unconscious represented by the Madman, the conscious Judge, is to get them to be friends again, but also to practice to feed the Madman a little more and to be like, ‘Hey, I'm going to practice being spontaneous every day in this part of my life or in that part of my life.’”
More from Herbert: Creative Doing (Ep. 129)10. Ana Lorena Fabrega | Harness Constraints
“Again, the ability to be creative and innovative today is more useful and needed than ever. So, if we give activities all the time like Legos that come with instructions or paint by the numbers and things like that, then kids are really not practicing their creativity […] [Y]ou also need certain constraints, so that there’re parameters and that helps you come up with new ideas, right? Because otherwise, it's like kids will maybe draw the first thing that comes to mind and sort of leave it there. But if there's some constraints and some obstacles, then they have to keep fighting until they find a better idea or a more innovative idea or a novel idea. So, also having certain activities with certain constraints is really good for creativity.”
More from Anna: Gamification of Learning (Ep. 76)