June 2008

As I mentioned (or threatened) earlier, here is the second part of our tour stop for the Post2Post virtual book tour. I’d like to share with you some of my experience as I read A Whack on the Side of the Head: How You Can Be More Creative.

Whack is an easy read, but don’t let that fool you. It is trite, but true…you will only get as much out of this book as you put into it. While it can be read straight through, I’d also suggest keeping it handy as a, well, whack on the head. Sprinkled throughout the book are creative exercises and quizzes to shake up your thought patterns. Similar to OneWord, these exercises can help get your brain going.

It was in the last section that I found some ideas that have stuck with me the most. Von Oech describes the four roles one moves through in the creative process:

• Explorer - searching for the raw material of new ideas in places that are “off the beaten path”
• Artist - begin to give some kind of shape to how the new ideas are forming
• Judge - evaluate the idea and determine if it is worth putting further work into
• Warrior - implementation, take the ideas that are worth pursuing and bring them to life

It is helpful for me to see these roles and be conscious of them as I am in the midst of various projects. I tend to enjoy the Explorer and Artist stage, but start to fade as I move on into Judge and Warrior. (And something tells me I’m not the only one.) I’m trying to think of some ideas about how I work these four roles into my workflow to help me push through creative ideas. Of course, that idea is stuck at the Artist stage.

The other tour stops this week have had some excellent insights on the book. I’d encourage you to visit them as well:
Monday - Get Fresh Minds
Tuesday - Catch Your Limit
Yesterday - The Entrepreneurial Experience. Candid. Daily.
Tomorrow - Good Morning Thinkers!

Popularity: 74% [?]

Today, we are the tour stop for the Post2Post virtual book tour. I’m honored to be hosting Roger von Oech, author of the new revised and updated A Whack on the Side of the Head: How You Can Be More Creative.

I’ll be posting some thoughts on my own experience with the book later today. In the meantime, here are some thoughts Roger had to offer via a recent email Q&A:

Q: Richard Florida has made a name for himself by describing the Rise of the Creative Class in the last few decades. Between the first publication of A Whack on the Side of the Head and now, how have you seen “creative industry” change because of this growing recognition of the creative class?

I’m aware of Florida’s ideas, but I haven’t read his book. Interesting thesis, but personally I really don’t think in terms of a “creative class.”

What I have noticed, though, is that most companies have a much greater expectation that a larger percentage of their employees need to use their creative abilities in their work. In the early 1980s, maybe 10% of a company’s work force was expected to be innovative. These jobs would often be found in R&D and marketing, for example. Today, I’d say that 35-40% of a company’s employees are expected to look for innovative opportunities in their work. I think this increased expectation is a very good thing.

Of course, increasingly sophisticated computer technology has presented more people with greater and more powerful tools to do their work. This also gives them more opportunities them to be more innovative.

Q: One of the recurring themes in A Whack on the Side of the Head deals with how we lose that sense of creativity we had as children. As a father with three little ones, this is a topic near to my heart. How would you suggest we stimulate and encourage our children to think creatively even when the educational system might be discouraging that?

I get this question a lot. The number one thing you can do for them is to be creative in your own life and work. You are your children’s role model. If they see that you are creative (and enjoy doing it), they’ll want to engage in creative behavior as well.

In addition, give them time to play. I find that I’m most creative when I’m “just playing around with a problem.” It’s important for them to learn the power of play, and not have them get sucked into a lot of structured activities.

Q: Sometimes, I think there is an assumption that organization and creativity are in tension with each other. I’m not sure that’s true, and on Creativityist.com, I write a lot about shaping habits that allow us to find the space to be creative — whether it be physical space, mental space, or space in our calendar. Can you share a little bit about how you structure your life in order to maintain your creative edge?

Well, I work for myself. Thus, I have more control over my time than most people. But I also have obligations to my clients and business partners. Typically, I spend my mornings talking with people (designers, publisher, clients), and doing the routine parts of my business.

Then, from 11:30 to 1:30 I swim on a masters swimming team (Stanford Masters). I find that this really cleans out my mind.

My afternoons are spend writing and designing. I’m currently working on a follow-up product to the “Ball of Whacks” (that’s what I’ve been designing). Around six in the evening, I’ll call my manufacturer in China (it’s morning there) and have some business and design conversations. In the evening, my wife and I might watch a (foreign) film (from Netflix).

So, it’s a nice balance between business obligations and my own creative time.

Thank you to Roger for being available to answer these questions.

As I’ve already mentioned, I’ll post about my own experience with the book later today. If you’d like to visit the other tour stops, here’s the schedule:
Here’s the rundown of the tour that week:
Monday - Get Fresh Minds
Tuesday - Catch Your Limit
Yesterday - The Entrepreneurial Experience. Candid. Daily.
Tomorrow - Good Morning Thinkers!

Popularity: 59% [?]

Reading On Writing feels like I just sat down for a beer with Stephen King and had a conversation about writing. I didn’t say much. I just listened as he unloaded his heart, experience, and knowledge right off the page. Of course, he doesn’t seem to drink beer anymore, and I never acquired a taste for the stuff, so the steins are sitting untouched. But otherwise it feels just like that.

Writing is a very personal experience, and you can’t escape that as you read this book. King didn’t just mail in a transcript with some advice for the aspiring writer — he is present in the words. The book begins with a memoir of how he was shaped as a writer even as a child. It ends with a reflection on how writing help him recover from a horrible accident as he was writing this book. Sandwiched in between, he writes about writing in a way that comes from his very self.

I won’t ever be Stephen King…or even the next Stephen King. But it is motivating to read the thoughts of an artist as he describes his craft. No matter what your medium is, I’d recommend On Writing as it shows the soul of an artist at work.

Popularity: 58% [?]

Some of my favorite news out of WWDC this week — OmniGroup is offering some more info about OmniFocus for the iPhone. My favorite feature: “Synchronized with your Mac via .Mac or WebDAV. Live. Automatically.” I had every reason to expect that OmniGroup would get this right, and they did.

They offer some screenshots and some other information. Most important, a separate blog post from Omni mentions that OmniFocus will be available around the same time as the launch of the App Store. Looks like it will be a separate app from OmniFocus for Mac, but it is one that I will gladly pay for.

Popularity: 64% [?]

I’m an avid reader. I set a goal each year to read an average of a book a week. I enjoy reading, but it is also a discipline of creative work. Ideas rarely initiate out of nowhere. Some of my most creative thoughts cascade out of other ideas, and reading provides me with a torrent of ideas to fuel creative thinking.

In order to help capture some of my favorite ideas and quotes out of the reading that I do, I keep a book journal. A friend of mine had an actual journal a few years ago that was designed for readers. It had two pages for each book with some spaces to fill in: when the book was read, what you agreed with, what you didn’t, etc.

I had never seen something like this, but it was perfect. I quickly developed a system to keep a digital journal, with an entry for each book I read. I keep the journal in Yojimbo. When I start a new book, I create an entry. The title of the entry is the title of the book. Then I capture some basic information about the book by filling in this simple form:

Author:
Pages:
Recommended by:
Date Began:
Date Finished:
Rating:

As I work through a book, I underline, make notes in margins, and dog-ear pages. After I have finished reading the book, I sit down with the book in front of my computer and work back through the pages, reviewing my markings. Ideas and quotes that I want to hold on to are captured in the journal by indicating the page number, followed by the quote or thoughts.

The process of working through the book a second time is helpful to get an overall feel for the book, and the notes I take can be helpful for years to come. I’m sure there are some book notes I have never returned to. But there have been many times where I have been able to search for a word or phrase that was no more than a vague memory.

Popularity: 66% [?]

I’m excited that Creativityist is going to be a stop on the Post2Post virtual book tour two weeks from today. We will be interacting with Roger von Oech about the re-release of his classic work on creativity: A Whack on the SIde of the Head.

Here’s the rundown of the tour that week:
Mon, June 16 - Get Fresh Minds
Tue, June 17 - Catch Your Limit
Wed, June 18 - The Entrepreneurial Experience. Candid. Daily.
Thur, June 19 - Creativityist
Fri, June 20 - Good Morning Thinkers!

I hope you can take time that week to visit each site to hear about the experience each of us has had with the book, and to hear some thoughts from Roger.

Popularity: 52% [?]

Yesterday, Lifehacker linked to a post on MacApper highlighting a few Quicksilver interfaces. Now, before I rave about my new Quicksilver interface, let me give a little love to MacApper — I’m now a subscriber.

Now, on to SilverFlow. This is a lovely plugin that is modeled after, well, CoverFlow. The icons whiz past as you start typing. You can see the next options lined up after the current selection:

SilverFlow offers that extra luster I want from a Quicksilver interface. But that’s not my favorite feature. I use Quicksilver every day to pass text into OmniFocus and Yojimbo. (BTW, lack of a Quicksilver plugin is still the main thing that is keeping me from seriously considering a switch to Evernote. Sometimes, those blocks of text are larger than a typical window in Quicksilver offers. Not so with SilverFlow:

When you type a ‘.’ to enter text entry mode, the entire window flips over to reveal one large text box. There is plenty of space to capture your thought while being able to see all of it. Perfect.

Popularity: 58% [?]