Category: creativity

Happened to go through half a day’s training undertaken by Enable
India a few months ago, this is a long procrastinated writeup.

It was a training on training blind people on computer literacy.

Its important to understand the people one is working with.

(more…)

I’m no authority on all this, I’m just summarising what I’ve so far learnt and understood from various sources.

I think the Mahabharatha can be seen at many different levels. At one level, its a story – someone kills someone, someone takes an oath to not do that, someone plots against someone, someone else sticks to the truth and righteousness, etc… there’s a lot of drama involved beyond what even the best Bollywood movie can ever aspire to beat.

However, at a deeper level, if we look beyond the story but at the various characteristics of each person involved – the Mahabharatha (and of course the Gita in particular) can be seen as the ultimate and most practical self-development book.
(more…)

There are a lot of nice things out here on this site which I get regularly from their mailing list. But this particular one on creativity really got to me. (It includes music as well).

(more…)

Prerequisite: See [nine dot puzzle](http://msanjay.weblogs.us/entries/133/my-dads-second-last-puzzle)

More than the solution to the [nine dot puzzle](http://msanjay.weblogs.us/entries/133/my-dads-second-last-puzzle)
, the struggle involved in solving it is what really matters – the point is that it’s a clear demonstration of the fundamental folly of all of humanity, regardless of race, intellect or era.

(more…)

Succinct article about the learning curve…

The Holistic Theory of Learning
(The Whole Is More Than The Sum Of The Parts)
by
James R. melton

Source: how to be creative

(Only small excerpt here…)

So you want to be more creative, in art, in business, whatever. Here are
some tips that have worked for me over the years:

1. Ignore everybody.

The more original your idea is, the less good advice other people will be
able to give you. When I first started with the biz card format, people
thought I was nuts. Why wasn’t I trying to do something more easy for
markets to digest i.e. cutey-pie greeting cards or whatever?

(more…)

2. The idea doesn’t have to be big. It just has to change the world.

The two are not the same thing.

(more…)

3. Put the hours in.

Doing anything worthwhile takes forever. 90% of what separates successful
people and failed people is time, effort and stamina.

(more…)

4. If your biz plan depends on you suddenly being “discovered” by some big
shot, your plan will probably fail.

Nobody suddenly discovers anything. Things are made slowly and in pain.

(more…)

5. You are responsible for your own experience.

Nobody can tell you if what you’re doing is good, meaningful or worthwhile.
The more compelling the path, the more lonely it is.

(more…)

6. Everyone is born creative; everyone is given a box of crayons in
kindergarten.

Then when you hit puberty they take the crayons away and replace them with
books on algebra etc. Being suddenly hit years later with the creative bug
is just a wee voice telling you, “I’d like my crayons back, please.”

(more…)

7. Keep your day job.

I’m not just saying that for the usual reason i.e. because I think your idea
will fail. I’m saying it because to suddenly quit one’s job in a big ol’
creative drama-queen moment is always, always, always in direct conflict
with what I call “The Sex & Cash Theory”.

8. Companies that squelch creativity can no longer compete with companies
that champion creativity.

Nor can you bully a subordinate into becoming a genius.

(more…)

9. Everybody has their own private Mount Everest they were put on this earth
to climb.

You may never reach the summit; for that you will be forgiven. But if you
don’t make at least one serious attempt to get above the snow-line, years
later you will find yourself lying on your deathbed, and all you will feel
is emptiness.

(more…)

10. The more talented somebody is, the less they need the props.

Meeting a person who wrote a masterpiece on the back of a deli menu would
not surprise me. Meeting a person who wrote a masterpiece with a silver
Cartier fountain pen on an antique writing table in an airy SoHo loft would
SERIOUSLY surprise me.

(more…)

11. Don’t try to stand out from the crowd; avoid crowds altogether.

Your plan for getting your work out there has to be as original as the
actual work, perhaps even more so. The work has to create a totally new
market. There’s no point trying to do the same thing as 250,000 other young
hopefuls, waiting for a miracle. All existing business models are wrong.
Find a new one.

From: THE GURTEEN KNOWLEDGE-LETTER

I came across this quite randomly when I was searching for something else. I found a lot of things here really fascinating, esp the posts by a girl named Kay.

Of course there’s also a certain amount of science of human nature involved – whether a person can learn to something (in this case, draw) very well irrespective of whether he has talent or not.

In particular, I found the comments by Kay (kallen) simply fascinating…

can someone learn to draw?? and not just draw draw well.

Sometimes I end up posting some links related to some particular topic, and I am asked by some who mail me, not in any offensive way but out of curiosity, where I find endless hours of time to google for such links.

Since I have heard this enough number of times, I thought of explaining things a bit assuming hopefully that the explanation might be worth a post.

In short, the answer is no – I usually don’t spend endless hours of time googling for something just to post about it. The links get emailed to me from somewhere or the other, by coincidence.

Though there are times when I remember part of some quote from some book or webpage, …and do resort to googling to dig it up, but this is far less than the average case, and usually I find it within the first few hits. And of course, theres the soft copy of h2g2, and because there’s something related to almost anything in that book, a search within that takes only a few seconds.

Anyway the main point is… the coincidence. As if to prove it, I was asked this question end of last week for the nth time which provoked me to give a reply. Was wondering how I could explain but then didnt bother. Was reading a book over the weekend… and came across this para (note the explanation of the holistic theory).

Sally Mills: "You don't look like a private detective."

Dirk Gently: "No private detective looks like a private detective. That's
one of the first rules of private detection."

"But if no private detective looks like a private detective, how does a
private detective know what it is he's supposed not to look like?
Seems to me there's a problem there."

"Yes, but it's not one that keeps me awake at nights," said Dirk in
exasperation. "Anyway, I am not as other private detectives. My methods are
holistic and, in a very proper sense of the word, chaotic. I operate by
investigating the fundamental interconnectedness of all things."

Sally Mills merely blinked at him.

"Every particle in the universe," continued Dirk, warming to his subject and
beginning to stare a bit, "affects every other particle, however faintly or
obliquely. Everything interconnects with everything.
The beating of a butterfly's wings in China can affect the course of an
Atlantic hurricane. If I could interrogate this table-leg in a way that made
sense to me, or to the table-leg, then it could provide me with the answer
to any question about the universe. I could ask anybody I liked, chosen
entirely by chance, any random question I cared to think of, and their
answer, or lack of it, would in some way bear upon the problem to which I am
seeking a solution. It is only a question of knowing how to interpret it.
Even you, whom I have met entirely by chance, probably know things that are
vital to my investigation, if only I knew what to ask you, which I don't,
and if only I could be bothered to, which I can't."

 

– The Long Dark Tea Time of the Soul (Adams)

Of course “knowing how to interpret the answer” is the tricky part which is why it isn’t always as helpful to know this theory as one might like to assume.

So anyway thats how the Universe works. Or atleast it did, at the time of this posting 😉

---

“There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers
exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will
instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more
bizarre and inexplicable.

There is another theory which states that this has already
happened.”

– h2g2

PS: needless to say, all the excerpts are from science-fiction books, not scientific journals… so all this is to be taken with a pinch of salt 😉

See also: holistic theory of learning