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"When all think alike, then no one is thinking." — Walter Lippman
The WECREATE Daily highlights stories around the world that are making an impact in the world of innovation. Here are today’s recommended reads:
A different drummer: Stanford engineers discover neural rhythms drive physical movement(eurekalert.org)
What Motivates Creativity?(bigthink.com)
Unconscious Creativity: Step Back To Step Forward(Bigthink.com)
WECREATE is proud to announce a new collaboration with RAD AND HUNGRY, a travel and design inspired line of lo-fi goods for creatives. Look for RAH goods at our new workstation in our Union Square space that encourage entrepreneurs to create purposeful works.
We love that RAH’s mission is about pushing design through travel and travel through design where lo-fi office goods are the particulars they share with the world. Read more about RAH’s insight on doodling, collaboration and why they use paper and pencil to make ideas happen. Thanks to Laura Dedon and Hen Chung for sharing their story.
Indulge me – when was the last time you hand-wrote something? I’m not talking a grocery list, or your digits on the back of a bar receipt. I’m talking a proposal, a story, a concept. Felt the pencil move across the paper. Smelled the graphite. Doodled in the margins.
Doing things by hand is important. It opens up another part of the brain – some primitive area with stored-up creativity just busting to get out. A computer is sterile. You can’t doodle. You can’t scrawl at an ever-quickening pace when you get a holy-shit-this-is-genius idea and just have to get it out now.
When I first got involved with RAD AND HUNGRY, I didn’t realize this connection. I started using the paper, pens, pencils piled high on my desk, composing by hand rather than by computer. And ideas that were stuck became unstuck. Storylines unfolded. Drive-you-crazy problems found solutions.
And there’s another area where handwriting wins – collaboration. Sometimes you need more brains than the one you got, and a group of people huddling around a computer just doesn’t cut it. You need a table, paper, pens. Trust that these two simple acts – handwriting and collaborating – can produce something big. That they can solve the drive-you-crazy problems.
That act of movement – hand on paper, pushing pencil – is key. It unlocks a portion of your brain that digital turns off.
Our goal using RAH goods at WECREATE is to document how innovators in our space use tools to foster creativity, collaboration, and productivity. WECREATE advocates for experimentation, mistakes, and diverse thought process. We are excited to have RAH as our exclusive product sponsor.
ABOUT RAH
RAD AND HUNGRY (RAH) delivers a world tour of limited-edition goods with lo-fi style, pushing design through travel and travel through design. RAH was founded in Seattle, October 2010. Products can be viewed or purchased at www.radandhungry.com.
This piece is part of a thought-curated series on innovation and collaboration in New York City written by a community of visionaries who are interested in generating lasting economy and social change.
Genevieve DeGuzman of Night Owls Press joins us in proposing a new model for entrepreneurship. Read her last post, Disrupt the Clock, which shows us how taking a break in our work schedule can help productivity.
Reinvent yourself and redefine what you do. As an entrepreneur, we’re misguided into thinking that we need to work full-time at something to succeed. Of course, you’ll need to dedicate the time to honing your craft and developing your company. But such single-mindedness can be shortchanging other aspects of your personal and professional development. Evaluate what you have to offer and reinvent your services to rekindle new passions in your work. Try spending part of your core work day (say, 1-2 hours) to exploring alternative opportunities to consult, coach, do speaking engagements, and write.
Most work, not even the most demanding jobs or projects, need our full attention all the time. Take advantage of the little 15-20 minute idle moments that fill our day. These doldrums and dead periods (e.g. during that commute on the train; waiting in line at the store; lingering at the laundry mat) are opportune times for tapping unbanked time. Read a book, do some research, go through your reading list on Instareads or Longreads – do the necessary groundwork to keep yourself inspired and thinking about new ideas.
Keep a finger on the pulse of your industry by reading the news from key sites and the blogs of thought leaders you admire. What you pick up can also provide excellent fodder and material to share on blogs, Facebook posts, or tweets. Also, by presenting and curating information, you present yourself as an authority in your field.
But don’t limit your knowledge base. Read and learn things outside your expertise.
In that stirring commencement speech for the Stanford graduating class of 2005 we’ve all probably seen, Steve Jobs described how seemingly small and irrelevant things we learn can have long term impacts on our lives. In one part of his speech, he spoke of his time at Reed College. He had dropped most of his classes but decided to take a calligraphy class. If there was ever proof that the “butterfly effect” exists, this was it. That one elective class forever changed how he looked at innovative design. “Stay hungry,” Steve Jobs advised at the end of the speech.
When you’re feeling stuck, staring zombie-eyed at your computer screen, take a creative break and read something new and intriguing. Two of my favorite sites for a jolt of inspiration include BoingBoing for quirky and thought-provoking news and Brain Pickings, which juxtaposes a wide variety of topics and ideas (one example: “The Happiness of Pursuit: What Science and Philosophy Can Teach Us About the Holy Grail of Existence”). If you’re ready to go beyond blogs and articles to delve deep into some serious reading, check out Kirby Ferguson’s reference list for his “Everything is a Remix” series. It contains a treasure trove of books from The Myths of Innovation by Scott Berkun, a book about innovation, to Remix by Laurence Lessig, which addresses how we create and consume art in the digital age.
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Well, that’s the end of the multi-part post on “Debunking the Myth of the Entrepreneur”. Weathering the emotional highs and lows of running a startup takes passion and creativity. To become a viable and sustainable business that enriches your life not consumes it, we also need to move beyond the myth – and ground ourselves in the reality.
Genevieve DeGuzman is the co-founder and managing editor of Night Owls Press, a San Francisco-based company that provides creative independent publishing and editorial services for small businesses and organizations. Night Owls Press publishes works on business innovation, social entrepreneurship, the collaborative economy, D-I-Y culture, and education.
The WECREATE Daily highlights stories around the world that are making an impact in the world of innovation. Here are today’s recommended reads:
Stanford aero-engineers debut open-source fluid dynamics design application(engineering.stanford.edu)
“Stanford University Unstructured (SU2) is an open-source software package that gives advanced engineering students a crucial leg up on the time-consuming process of writing their own code to optimize aerospace designs — offering for free what commercial applications command thousands of dollars to do.”
Apple and Google as Creative Archetypes(nytimes.com)
“In the hunt for innovation, that elusive elixir of economic growth and corporate prosperity, try a little jazz as an inspirational metaphor. ”
Rap music powers rhythmic action of medical sensor(Purdue.edu)
“The driving bass rhythm of rap music can be harnessed to power a new type of miniature medical sensor designed to be implanted in the body.”
Within the entrepreneurial industry there are many workshops, books and blogs dedicated to moving things faster or providing some sort of secret to success. However, there is plenty of evidence that many of our most astonishing achievements have taken years or even decades to accomplish.
We have a societal obsession with getting things done faster or finding the optimal route to success, but what does history teach us about time? What do we lose by not letting things evolve at their own pace?
The economy continues to be unstable. It is forcing people to ask really big questions, such as: how do we create a better way of life? How do we create a better economy? These questions are not going to be answered with a formula or by going faster. We have met many entrepreneurs that are looking to create lasting change and we often hear their frustration with time.
We spoke recently with Alison Coward, founder of Bracket, a collaborative agency building the tools and platforms for the economy of the future. As more people turn to enterprise and freelancing, we will move from working in stagnant groups to collaborative projects. This new way of working needs the time to be accepted. To start with, behavioral norms need to change, the advantages of working in this new way need to be proved, and word needs spread.
History
History and nature teaches us the importance of time. Look at the growth process of an oak tree, how it grows from the tiniest of seeds into one of the most majestic trees. Can you imagine if nature was as obsessed with time? It would have missed many of its evolutionary advantages, beauty and sophistication.
Or look at the sophistication and evolution of our tools: we were a species that started with a flint and now we have beautifully designed technology that allows us to study everything from the cosmos to the brain.
Not Optimizing
Understandably, once we understand a problem repeating is not the optimal choice. However, going down a linear optimal road is not just boring but can stop discovery. Einstein’s law of relativity was not discovered in a linear optimal manner. It took him many walks, copious sheets of formulae, and even moments of complete chaos before getting to his beautiful formula of E=MC^2. We should learn to feel more comfortable with chaos. The first step to accepting and feeling comfortable with chaos is by learning to observe it rather than fighting it or zooming past it.. The elapsing of time can teach us lessons, add depth to our studies, and leads us to unexpected discoveries. These are all things that could be lost through dogmatic optimisation.
About WECREATE
WECREATENYC is an Idea Engineering Agency coworking space located in New York City’s Union Square. We provide independent workers with a neurochemically designed workspace that is designed for collaboration and creativity. Our space includes open coworking, conference room rental, business mentoring, and a diverse community of change-makers. Join us at our upcoming events, Platypus series or Skillshare classes to learn more.
The WECREATE Daily highlights stories around the world that are making an impact in the world of innovation. Here are today’s recommended reads:
Rewinding time reveals our insignificance(newscientist.com)
“Once the universe stops expanding, it will shrink, and everything inside it will cram into a dense, hot crunch. As the universe collapses, the destiny of life is unknown. But here’s an idea.”
To “Think Outside the Box”, Think Outside the Box(psychologicalscience.org)
“The authors of the new paper were inspired by research that has found that many of the metaphors we use actually “work”—people who hold something warm think a stranger they meet has a warmer personality; making a fist makes men more assertive. Angela Leung of Singapore Management University and her coauthors from the University of Michigan, Cornell University, and others wondered if the same was true of metaphors about creativity. “Creativity is a highly sought-after skill,” they write. “Metaphors of creative thinking abound in everyday use.””
How to Predict the Future of Technology(scientificamerican.com)
“As a tech columnist, I’m often asked to speak about the future of technology. Well, sure. Who doesn’t want to know what the future holds? Yet I’d be in much better shape if I were asked to predict the future of politics or bass fishing. Because nothing changes faster, and more unpredictably, than consumer technology.”
Here are links to articles that are creating impact.
The Art of 3-D Printing(technologyreview.com)
“MIT professor Neri Oxman is developing new design techniques that take advantage of ‘additive manufacturing.’ ”
Why Development Aid is Not Enough(project-syndicate.org)
“Poverty is not only about not having enough money. It is also about exploitation and oppression, and about armed conflicts and wars that make it impossible to run a business, visit the doctor, or send children to school.”
How the brain routes traffic for maximum alertness(ucdavis.edu)
“In order to behave efficiently, you want to process relevant sensory information as fast as possible, but relevance is determined by your current situation,” said Joy Geng, assistant professor of psychology at the UC Davis Center for Mind and Brain.
We May Be Less Happy, But Our Language Isn’t(uvm.edu)
“English, it turns out, is strongly biased toward being positive,” said Peter Dodds, an applied mathematician at the University of Vermont.
Testing Creativity(psychologicalscience.org)
“Widow. Bite. Monkey. What word goes with these three words? This is the kind of question on the Remote Associates Test, which psychologists use to study creativity.”
About WECREATE
WECREATENYC is an Idea Engineering Agency coworking space located in New York City’s Union Square. We provide independent workers with a neurochemically designed workspace that is designed for collaboration and creativity. Our space includes open coworking, conference room rental, business mentoring, and a diverse community of change-makers. Join us at our upcoming events, Platypus series or Skillshare classes to learn more.
Over the summer we invited Jonathan Kemp from Smart Wisdom to talk to THECUBE London members about productivity. We constantly hear of entrepreneurs working ’24/7′, so we asked Jonathan to give us his thoughts on this popular time myth.
My own natural tendency is to work 24/7. I have run my own business now for 12 years now. This includes mentoring other business owners and senior professionals in large organisations. So I am keenly aware of the advantages and disadvantages of “putting in the extra hours”.
In general I believe a time boundary around working hours is good practice commercially and for personal well-being. Working outside of these hours is also positive if the time is used to focus on a specific project. As long as you know that once the project is complete, you return to a regular work pattern. Another good practice is having a weekly plan which creates balance. Some days work finishes on time. Other days extra time is spent either before or after “working hours” to clear additional work.
If working long hours and weekends is the norm, this will not always enhance productivity. Sometimes work is just expanding to fill the time available. Over time, working long hours increases stress and tiredness. This impacts our memory, thinking, decision-making and eventually our health. When work becomes the centre of our universe, there is an additional risk. We leave ourselves with little emotional back up and support when things go wrong or there is a downturn.
Having a time boundary around work is a very effective way of sparking creativity. We suddenly need to be more focused and question:
We can also increases the pace at which we work over a 6 to 8 hour period. As long as we have a definite cut off time.
Finally, for those of us who are perfectionists we can also start to apply the Pareto principle a bit more vigorously: “20% effort equals 80% result”.
About WECREATE
WECREATENYC is an Idea Engineering Agency coworking space located in New York City’s Union Square. We provide independent workers with a neurochemically designed workspace that is designed for collaboration and creativity. Our space includes open coworking, conference room rental, business mentoring, and a diverse community of change-makers. Join us at our upcoming events, Platypus series or Skillshare classes to learn more.