Achieving your dreams: Here’s how a lousy day job can turn you into a great artist.
ur day job is not stopping you from achieving your dreams. It's teaching you everything you need to know. Steven Pressfield's book The War of Art is all about achieving your dreams and accomplishing your creative goals. He takes a very craftsman-like attitude toward becoming great -- and argues this is what is lacking in many struggling creative people. Where does he feel you can learn the most about what it takes to succeed in an artistic profession? Your day job. This idea…
3 minutes
Creative companies: What are the 10 secrets of innovative offices?
What do creative companies do right? Keith Sawyer got his PhD studying under Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi — the researcher who coined the idea of Flow. I've posted about his research on top creative teams and how brainstorming is broken. What did he find when he studied creative companies? 1) Keep Many Irons in the Fire Via Group Genius: The Creative Power of Collaboration: In 1997, Shona Brown of McKinsey and Company, working with Kathleen Eisenhardt of Stanford University’s business school, compared three collaborative organizations…
5 minutes
How to network: 5 methods by top experts
ey say networking is vital but nobody explains how to network How to network is the real question. But first, in case you're a doubter, some quick proof that networking is essential: Research shows networking is essential to staying employed, salary growth and job satisfaction. It makes you more likely to get a job. Via Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference: In his classic 1974 study Getting a Job, Granovetter...found that 56 percent of those he talked…
5 minutes
Spend time wisely: How to focus on the things that matter
w Can You Spend Time Wisely? We all wonder where the hours go. There's a good reason for that -- we're absolutely terrible at remembering how we really spend our time. Via What the Most Successful People Do at Work: A Short Guide to Making Over Your Career: Hunting through data from the American Time Use Survey, conducted annually by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and other time diary projects, I came to the inescapable conclusion that how we think we…
5 minutes
Brainstorming: 3 reasons why everything you know is wrong.
ainstorming is broken. We all know the standard method of brainstorming: Get a bunch of people together. Generate lots of ideas. Don't be critical. There's one problem with this system. It's totally wrong. 1) Don't work in a group The research consistently shows that individuals who generate ideas on their own and then meet afterward come up with more (and better) ideas. Via Imagine: How Creativity Works: There’s just one problem with brainstorming: it doesn’t work. Keith Sawyer, a psychologist at Washington…
4 minutes
Creative Teams – What 7 elements do they all share?
eat creative teams -- what do they all have in common? What can we learn from them? Keith Sawyer got his PhD studying under Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi -- the researcher who coined the idea of Flow. Sawyer looked at how creativity came about in collaborations vs. individuals. He analyzed jazz ensembles, improv comedy groups and other great creative teams to see what worked. What did he find? Via Group Genius: The Creative Power of Collaboration: 1. Innovation Emerges over Time No single…
4 minutes
Are nice people more likely to win a Nobel prize?
at's it take to win a Nobel prize? How about "being nice"? The other day I posted the research for and against "nice guys finish last." Turns out there's one more area where being good pays off. How do we know? Researchers who hog the credit on scientific papers are less likely to win a Nobel prize. Those who give younger academics a bit of the spotlight are more likely to have a trip to Stockholm in their future. Via The…
3 minutes
How To Be A Genius: 5 Secrets From Experts
nt to know how to be a genius? There are five things you can learn from looking at those who are the very best. 1) Be Curious And Driven For his book Creativity, noted professor Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi did interviews with 91 groundbreaking individuals across a number of disciplines, including 14 Nobel Prize winners. In 50 Psychology Classics Tom Butler-Bowdon summed up many of Csikszentmihalyi’s findings including this one: Successful creative people tend to have two things in abundance, curiosity and drive. They are absolutely fascinated by…
5 minutes
