Categories
Category: Creativity
The GII report and ‘Index’ reports in general
Let me start by saying that one should be very careful when dealing with broad inter-country indicators and not just because they could (they will) contain mistakes (some have had very juicy scandals that involve cooking data and massaging numbers).. I think that many of these ‘reduce-everything-into-a-number’ measures, especially when they try to measure wide social processes carry inherent ‘conflation risks’ leading to waste of mass-scale resources.
“A vacation is an expensive way to read a book in peace”
– @naval
One of my summer reads this year was Dan Brown’s novel “Origin”, the fifth book in the (Robert) Langdon series. It has been sitting in the reading waiting list for a while, and it was pushed down the pipeline by other books in the last couple of years..
Give yourself permission to be creative
I came across this video (youtube’s cunning recommendation algorithm), and I was quite surprised how insightful and deep it was. It had many lessons on creativity, and the ‘self-permission’ it requires. Frequently, it takes courage to be creative, and this is nicely captured by the talk.
Here are some thoughts / lessons / reflections :
- The value of difference and irregularity: In a world where more and more things (and people) are similar, irregularity and unpredictability are valuable.
- It is quite hard for us to judge how good what we do is. I think that a better strategy would be to do great effort and keep thinking about growth and contribution.
- The world is an extremely unreliable critic: This has been tested many times. Think about it – if something is really original and new, then it – by definition – won’t be familiar, and most people dislike the unfamiliar (because it forces them to think).
- Making sense out of life is crucial , but only at key moments –> Why not always ? Well maybe because this activity of ‘making sense’ is not a guaranteed and linear process. You can’t be sure that you’ll make sense of it.
- Art helps with that: Art is not luxury – it is nourishment for the soul and the growth beyond the confines of the limited and bounded current reality.
- ‘Human Creativity is nature manifest in us’
- ‘Know yourself’ – what do you love ? if you get close to what you love , who you are is revealed to you… and it expands !
- My experience is not as unique as I’ve thought ..
- ‘There is no Path till you walk it’
- Be willing to Play the fool
- Read the book you want to read (I will probably talk about this later here)
- Listen to new music (challenge yourself to do it, even though it might not feel very comfortable at first).