This is an important thing to know about life.
(Source: think-different-think-freely)
According to Bruce Nussbaum, author of a new book titled Creative Intelligence,”Creativity is learned behavior that gets better with training—like sports. You can make creativity routine and a regular part of your life.”
Here are 4 Ways to Amplify Your Creativity today.
1. Assemble a creative circle.
So you need to engage with creative people. Ask yourself, among your friends and colleagues, who is the most creative? Who brings out the most creativity in you?
2. Belong to a pivot circle.
Successful creativity requires scaling your new concept into an actual product. You have to pivot from creativity to creation. To do that, you need to find the resources to transform your concept into reality…I like to call them “wanderers,” people (or smart crowds) experienced enough to screen new ideas, pick those likely to succeed, and provide the resources to try them out.
3. Conduct a creativity audit.
So take a moment to take a creativity audit. What do you really know that might be of value? What does your generation, your group, your family, your hobbies, your obsessions give you that might connect to new technologies or other bits of knowledge that might lead to something new?
4. Map your creativity.
Being creative means leading a creative life. We need to reflect on what we do, with whom we engage, how we act in order to increase our creative capacities. One easy way is to keep a creativity journal and map our creativity.
A creativity map can reveal your process of creativity. Or it can show the banality of your life and why you should change it.How else can you be more creative today?
It turns out procrastination is not typically a function of laziness, apathy or work ethic as it is often regarded to be. It’s a neurotic self-defense behavior that develops to protect a person’s sense of self-worth.
You see, procrastinators tend to be people who have, for whatever reason, developed to perceive an unusually strong association between their performance and their value as a person. This makes failure or criticism disproportionately painful, which leads naturally to hesitancy when it comes to the prospect of doing anything that reflects their ability — which is pretty much everything.
But in real life, you can’t avoid doing things. We have to earn a living, do our taxes, have difficult conversations sometimes. Human life requires confronting uncertainty and risk, so pressure mounts. Procrastination gives a person a temporary hit of relief from this pressure of “having to do” things, which is a self-rewarding behavior. So it continues and becomes the normal way to respond to these pressures.
Particularly prone to serious procrastination problems are children who grew up with unusually high expectations placed on them. Their older siblings may have been high achievers, leaving big shoes to fill, or their parents may have had neurotic and inhuman expectations of their own, or else they exhibited exceptional talents early on, and thereafter “average” performances were met with concern and suspicion from parents and teachers.
”| — | David Cain, “Procrastination Is Not Laziness” (via pawneeparksdepartment) This totally justifies every excuse I’ve been giving myself from not doing that thing I’m supposed to do. (via aaronmoles) This article just AIRED. ME. OUT. |
A very intense couple of days serving as primary caregiver for my almost 89 year old granny with advanced Parkinson’s while my 90 year old gramps gets checked out in hospital after what they thought might have been another minor stroke (no signs of it, however!). He’ll be home today, and my dad is there now making sure all is well.
A lot to think about now that I’m back.
But mainly, I feel so grateful to still have them both.
Go Camping With Dodge, 1965
My naughty brain saw that first line as “Drug Dealer,” and it seriously makes WAY MORE SENSE.
| — | says Ellen Ullman, whose brilliance I wrote about for Salon. (via maudnewton) |
![thedailywhat:
Dear Ann Coulter of the Day: After Ann Coulter referred to President Obama as a retard in a tweet during Monday night’s presidential debate, Special Olympics athlete and global messenger John Franklin Stephens penned her this open letter:
Dear Ann Coulter, Come on Ms. Coulter, you aren’t dumb and you aren’t shallow. So why are you continually using a word like the R-word as an insult? I’m a 30 year old man with Down syndrome who has struggled with the public’s perception that an intellectual disability means that I am dumb and shallow. I am not either of those things, but I do process information more slowly than the rest of you. In fact it has taken me all day to figure out how to respond to your use of the R-word last night. I thought first of asking whether you meant to describe the President as someone who was bullied as a child by people like you, but rose above it to find a way to succeed in life as many of my fellow Special Olympians have. Then I wondered if you meant to describe him as someone who has to struggle to be thoughtful about everything he says, as everyone else races from one snarkey sound bite to the next. Finally, I wondered if you meant to degrade him as someone who is likely to receive bad health care, live in low grade housing with very little income and still manages to see life as a wonderful gift. Because, Ms. Coulter, that is who we are – and much, much more. After I saw your tweet, I realized you just wanted to belittle the President by linking him to people like me. You assumed that people would understand and accept that being linked to someone like me is an insult and you assumed you could get away with it and still appear on TV. I have to wonder if you considered other hateful words but recoiled from the backlash. Well, Ms. Coulter, you, and society, need to learn that being compared to people like me should be considered a badge of honor. No one overcomes more than we do and still loves life so much. Come join us someday at Special Olympics. See if you can walk away with your heart unchanged. A friend you haven’t made yet, John Franklin Stephens Global Messenger Special Olympics Virginia
[specialolympicsblog]](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_mceq34XHBY1qzpwi0o1_500.jpg)
Dear Ann Coulter of the Day: After Ann Coulter referred to President Obama as a retard in a tweet during Monday night’s presidential debate, Special Olympics athlete and global messenger John Franklin Stephens penned her this open letter:
Dear Ann Coulter,
Come on Ms. Coulter, you aren’t dumb and you aren’t shallow. So why are you continually using a word like the R-word as an insult?
I’m a 30 year old man with Down syndrome who has struggled with the public’s perception that an intellectual disability means that I am dumb and shallow. I am not either of those things, but I do process information more slowly than the rest of you. In fact it has taken me all day to figure out how to respond to your use of the R-word last night.
I thought first of asking whether you meant to describe the President as someone who was bullied as a child by people like you, but rose above it to find a way to succeed in life as many of my fellow Special Olympians have.
Then I wondered if you meant to describe him as someone who has to struggle to be thoughtful about everything he says, as everyone else races from one snarkey sound bite to the next.
Finally, I wondered if you meant to degrade him as someone who is likely to receive bad health care, live in low grade housing with very little income and still manages to see life as a wonderful gift.
Because, Ms. Coulter, that is who we are – and much, much more.
After I saw your tweet, I realized you just wanted to belittle the President by linking him to people like me. You assumed that people would understand and accept that being linked to someone like me is an insult and you assumed you could get away with it and still appear on TV.
I have to wonder if you considered other hateful words but recoiled from the backlash.
Well, Ms. Coulter, you, and society, need to learn that being compared to people like me should be considered a badge of honor.
No one overcomes more than we do and still loves life so much.
Come join us someday at Special Olympics. See if you can walk away with your heart unchanged.
A friend you haven’t made yet, John Franklin Stephens Global Messenger Special Olympics Virginia
Let’s be crystal fucking clear here: if you don’t believe that all people deserve the absolute same rights - including marriage - then I’m not being an asshole when I call you bigoted; I’m being accurate.
One of us believes it’s perfectly acceptable to separate people out as worthy or unworthy based on their perceived or actual sexual orientation, that some people deserve more or less “rights” as human beings, and that certain types of people have “chosen” to be denied some of the most basic aspects of the human experience.
The other one’s me.
“A revealing way of describing science fiction is to say that it is part of a literary mode which one may call ‘fabril’*. ‘Fabril’ is the opposite of ‘pastoral’. But while the pastoral is an established and much discussed literary mode, recognized as such since early antiquity, its dark opposite has not yet been accepted, or even named, by the law-givers of literature. Yet the opposite is a clear one. Pastoral literature is rural, nostalgic, conservative. It idealizes the past and tends to convert complexities into simplicity; its central image is the shepherd. Fabril literature (of which science fiction is now by far the most prominent genre) is overwhelmingly urban, disruptive, future-orientated, eager for novelty; its central image is the ‘faber’, the smith or blacksmith in older usage, but now extended in science fiction to mean the creator of artifacts in general - metallic, crystalline, genetic, or even social… What science fiction has been doing over the decades of this century has been steadily to extend the perceived boundaries of Culture (technology, government, social organization, all seen as affecting - if not absolutely determining - the way human beings act and feel), while at the same time becoming more and more aware of the immense scale of Nature, against which human beings are set and against which they are ultimately powerless… What science fiction has had to offer many readers is Truth.”
*As far as I am aware, this word has never been used in print. I owe it to Dr. James Bradley, of the University of British Columbia, who coined word and concept in his study of early Germanic smithcraft. Tom Shippy in his introduction to ‘The Oxford Book of Science Fiction Stories’ (Oxford University Press, 1992)
”| — | Via my good friend John Porter (wine for the dreamers). (via jayrobinson) Not only is this a great quote describing a fascinating development in literature and culture… it’s based around a coinage by a prof at my alma mater. ;-) |
A little perspective
Really makes you think.
Neil deGrasse Tyson!!!
#SaveBigBird
#SAVEBIGBIRD indeed.
(Source: prettayprettaygood)
eec:
Edith Head never gets the credit she is due for INVENTING PUNK back in the 1940s. Major oversight on the Costume Institute’s behalf.
On the other hand, I am delighted that there will be a Pavilion of Anarchy and Elegance and a Couturiers Situationists Gallery at the Met.
In other birth of punk claims, the Guardian catches up with the revival of Peru’s Los Saicos.
I have no dog in this fight. I know of nobody at JPL, care not for a single line of code, understand nothing of the sacrifices for this endeavor. I am neither American nor an international citizen.
I’m just a kid in awe. That emotion of elation is my narcissistic selfishness thinking that I, and I alone, will one day in another frontier that no one has ever been to. A kid submitting completely to the slow realization I live in the jetpack future despite my brain refusing to believe so. But I do know this is awesome.
I also know how hard this is going to be. To know that humanity can touch beyond ourselves yet at the same time mired amongst ourselves. To be stuck shooting each ourselves before getting anywhere. To behave as if every distracting vanity is the very last everlasting thing we need right now. To be in a society addicted to digital crack served on cracked black mirrors instead of focusing on the work that need to be done. To be busy with what’s down here so it becomes harder to know what’s out there.
So if you’re a born alien, never settling in with the rest of them, here’s a sign. Don’t dream, chase.
It’s been a big couple of days down here on this little planet of ours, and and I just found my favourite bit of writing about it so far.
| — | How We Share Content And Why - Adrants Actually, they’re being waaaaaaay too kind. I wasn’t suggesting toxoplasmosis as a metaphor for memes. I was suggesting that memes are an emergent form of life that use humans to propagate. We always talk about this stuff with us (humans) at the center. Maybe we’re just nodes that happen to have a flicker of self awareness. (via kenyatta) Later, when someone writes a Matrix-esque film about how the sentient Internet actually created humanity so that it could exist, I want to see Kenyatta credited as an EP. (via spytap) |
Mimas, one of Saturn’s 62 moons.
What’s interesting about Mimas, is its resemblance to the Death Star is merely coincidence as Mimas was not clearly photgraphed until a few years after A New Hope came out.
Mind. Blown.