#VonWongDaily

A thought a day keeps my ideas from fading away.

Posts Tagged ‘Creativity’

270- Operations and Creativity

When thinking about art, #efficiency is rarely the word that comes to mind.

But if you study the career of artists, regardless if they find themselves in the fine art, editorial or commercial world – you’ll notice elements of repetition.

The most financially successful artists are the ones that have figured out how to operationalize aspects of their careers.

Repetition leads to greater efficiency in delivering an experience which creates more profit that finally leads to financial stability.

As an artist addicted to bespoke, custom, and novel projects – the key to sustaining my experiments has been the repeatable components: speaking engagements, licensing opportunities, and consulting gigs.

Adding efficiency ironically helps enable more #creativity, as long as we don’t allow it to take over our careers.

217- How do you get inspired?

One of the most common interview questions that I hear asked to successful creatives is: “How do you get inspired?”

Inevitably, the answer is disappointing because it’s always the same: You combine inputs from the external world (through travel, books, or film) with your inner world (feelings, experiences, and knowledge) to create something unique to you.

Most of us have ideas all the time. They pop up in our conversations, dreams, and journals.

The question is whether we remember them when we need them.

A better question is: What techniques, routines, or habits do you use to remember and refine your best ideas?

Then you’ll have a list of exercises to try.

#Inspiration #Creativity

160- Creativity and Patience

I recently stumbled across a #framework written in 1936 that describes a 5-step process to develop creative ideas.

It’s built off the insight that new ideas result from a combination of old information – and that our ability to see relationships between elements defines how creative we are.

Summarized, it goes something like this:

  • Step 1: Gather raw material (existing ideas) that is both specific (related to the product or task) and general (tangential or completely unrelated).
  • Step 2: Mentally “chew” on the materials by looking at them from different angles and combining them in different ways.
  • Step 3: Take a break. Do something completely unrelated that energizes you.
  • Step 4: Allow the idea to come back to you with a flash of insight. This only happens after you stop trying.
  • Step 5: Slowly reveal the idea to others and begin collecting criticism. Expect to be frustrated as the idea goes through cycles of iteration and improvement.

This creative framework surprisingly mirrors my own, except for one key difference: It highlights the importance of spaciousness and time.

Rather than turning away, I often force the process, leading to unnecessary frustration and a probable decrease in long-term performance.

Patience is a part of the creative process, whether we like it or not.

#Creativity

ht: James Webb Young – https://amzn.to/33EOPrg

156- Economics of Creativity

When we try to “follow our passions,” we rarely think about them in terms of #technology trends.

The principles of #ikigai tell us to focus on what we enjoy, what we’re good at, what the world needs, and what we can get paid for – without emphasizing that how much we get paid fluctuates massively as a result of technology.

For example, the same piece of digital art thriving in an NFT marketspace today would have been nearly worthless just a couple of years ago. Why? Because technological trends attract a massive amount of money, interest, and attention.

If we think of technological trends as waves, a big part of making our passions sustainable is ensuring that we’re able to catch the largest waves.

Practicing and ensuring that we’ve acquired the foundation and skills necessary to catch the wave is just one part of the equation. The other part is going where the waves are.

It doesn’t matter how amazing a surfer you are if you’re in a place with no waves.

ht: The Economics of Creativity

#Creativity #Economics