Creative Creativity: Inspiration and Tools for Creativity

That's all you do - Unimpressive Creativity

I was talking to a reporter today about some of the products we make at my work. I named Bacon Mints and the Yodelling Pickle as examples of popular items.

She then said, rather dismissively, "So, all you guys do is find things that have never been put together before and join them up, right? Pick two things and figure out how they go together."

And, a bit insulted to have my work so belittled, I thought to myself, that's what all creativity is at its most basic level. Don't we all strive to find new connections between things in an attempt to come up with something new?

So yes, like every artist, inventor and philosopher that has ever lived, that's all we do.

In another sense, I think maybe this is a useful way of looking at it. It's not hard, you can do it yourself. Just pick two things and find the connection between them. There is no mystery, difficulty or speed bumps, it really is that simple. All the books that have been written are pretty much making a big deal out of nothing.

All of us creative people, that's all we do.

Cult of Done Manifesto

I know this has been posted all over the place, but it deserves to be posted even more. Bre Pettis and Kio Stark have written this manifesto for getting things done. They did it in 20 minutes! If you go to the actual post, you can find a fancy jpg version of it to print out and hang in a spot where you have to read it every day.

The Cult of Done Manifesto

1. There are three states of being. Not knowing, action and completion.
2. Accept that everything is a draft. It helps to get it done.
3. There is no editing stage.
4. Pretending you know what you're doing is almost the same as knowing what you are doing, so just accept that you know what you're doing even if you don't and do it.
5. Banish procrastination. If you wait more than a week to get an idea done, abandon it.
6. The point of being done is not to finish but to get other things done.
7. Once you're done you can throw it away.
8. Laugh at perfection. It's boring and keeps you from being done.
9. People without dirty hands are wrong. Doing something makes you right.
10. Failure counts as done. So do mistakes.
11. Destruction is a variant of done.
12. If you have an idea and publish it on the internet, that counts as a ghost of done.
13. Done is the engine of more

From Bre Pettis's blog

David Byrne on How and When to Handle Criticism

David Byrne posted in his blog today that one of his friends warned him not to read a review of his current tour in the New York Times. It was less than flattering and was written by someone who had not liked his work in the past. He passed on this advice.

While taking criticism on board can be constructive, it can also be detrimental to the creative process if it’s considered while that process is still under way. It undermines one’s enthusiasm and will — which is OK, beneficial even, but only after a tour (for example) is over. This review, by all reports, wasn’t helpful criticism anyway — it seemed to be one of those reviews that comes from some psychological issues the writer has — and therefore even a belated reading is not going to help us refine what we do.

David Byrne