#creativity

I first came across Are.na in early 2018 when I was doing my research for the whitepaper of what became MoodleNet. It's a wonderful place, and one that I've spent much more time over the last year or so as a Premium subscriber.

For a seed to achieve its greatest expression, it must come completely undone. The shell cracks, its insides come out and everything changes. To someone who doesn’t understand growth, it would look like complete destruction.

…

There is a certain type of person who fetishises human creativity, which I see as a lowkey version of the great man theory of history. It's almost as if they've a) never heard of Brian Eno's idea of scenius, nor b) understood that "we shape our tools, and then our tools shape us".

Despite their different framing, thinkers like Tharp, Kleon, Pressfield and Rubin... all describe roughly similar (or subsets of) aspects outlined by Csikszentmihalyi:

Preparation → Incubation → Insight → Evaluation → Elaboration → Sharing

…

I like this as an encouragement to do things. Everyone thinks that the way they see the world is "obvious" but it's very much dependent on everything from your genetics through to your experience and interests.