Creative Think

New Version of Creative Whack Pack App!

Today, Apple approved a new version (3.1) of my Creative Whack Pack iPhone app. [Here is the link to iTunes.]

Since it was introduced last March, this product has become the iPhone's premier creativity/innovation tool. It has also been #1 in its category (Business). Great price too: $1.99.

 

The three main new features are:

• Note-taking workshops.
• Each specific Creative Whack card has its own sound effect. These enhance the user experience, and make the session more memorable.
• There is increased "sharability." You can now share Creative Whack cards with friends and colleagues via Twitter, Facebook, and email. A big Plus!

A five minute Creative Whack Pack break beats staring at your computer all day!

What's Your Creativity Style?

It's time again for some inspiration from Heraclitus, the world's first creativity teacher (he lived around 500 BC). Today's insight is: “I searched into myself.”

Heraclitus felt that consulting our own knowledge and intuition is a wonderful way to gain insight. Unfortunately, some of us never learned this lesson. Much of our educational system is an elaborate game of "guess what the teacher is thinking," and we come to believe that the best ideas are in someone else's head rather than our own. Heraclitus reminds us that there are good ideas within ourselves if we are willing to dig deeply enough.

I believe there's a creative strategy in Heraclitus' insight, and it is:

Discover your own creative style.

We can emulate Heraclitus by searching for own creative tendencies. Here are six of mine:

1. I get my ideas either when I'm under a lot of pressure — "the ultimate inspiration is the deadline" — or when I'm away from the problem altogether. I rarely get them when I'm doing routine tasks that require some attention.

2. If I'm mentally blocked in trying to solve a problem, it's usually because I'm in love with a particular idea — so much so that it prevents me from looking for alternatives. Only when I force myself to become detached from it and "kiss it goodbye" do I find new answers. Letting go of a previously cherished idea can be one of life's great pleasures.

3. I try to pay attention to small things: how much frowning takes place in beer commercials, what sorts of patterns dead leaves make around a storm drain, and so on. I do this partly because I've trained myself to do it, but also because I've been forced to. I'm left-handed, but the world is designed for right-handed people — something most "righties" don't even think about. I'm constantly being made conscious of how things are put together. For example, telephone booths are designed to make right-handed people feel comfortable and at ease, but lefties can feel clumsy using them.

4. My own ego can get in the way of discovering new things. However, if I allow myself to lower my resistance to those ideas that I typically dismiss as irrelevant or unattractive, I find that they can become doorways to solutions I've been overlooking.

5. I don't know what I don't know. I've got a big blind spot, and the only way to get access to what's lurking out there is to put myself in a humble, receptive frame of mind (not always easy to do) and ask others to point out what I'm not seeing.

6. Rejection of my work in the early phases of the creative process doesn't bother me. I'm not afraid of taking one of my less than stellar ideas and asking complete strangers what they think of it. I find their responses frank and refreshing.

Questions: What's your creative style? What are your strengths and weaknesses?

It's time again for some inspiration from Heraclitus, the world's first creativity teacher (he lived around 500 BC). Today's insight is: “I searched into myself.”

Heraclitus felt that consulting our own knowledge and intuition is a wonderful way to gain insight. Unfortunately, some of us never learned this lesson. Much of our educational system is an elaborate game of "guess what the teacher is thinking," and we come to believe that the best ideas are in someone else's head rather than our own. Heraclitus reminds us that there are good ideas within ourselves if we are willing to dig deeply enough.

I believe there's a creative strategy in Heraclitus' insight, and it is:

Discover your own creative style.

We can emulate Heraclitus by searching for own creative tendencies. Here are six of mine:

1. I get my ideas either when I'm under a lot of pressure — "the ultimate inspiration is the deadline" — or when I'm away from the problem altogether. I rarely get them when I'm doing routine tasks that require some attention.

2. If I'm mentally blocked in trying to solve a problem, it's usually because I'm in love with a particular idea — so much so that it prevents me from looking for alternatives. Only when I force myself to become detached from it and "kiss it goodbye" do I find new answers. Letting go of a previously cherished idea can be one of life's great pleasures.

3. I try to pay attention to small things: how much frowning takes place in beer commercials, what sorts of patterns dead leaves make around a storm drain, and so on. I do this partly because I've trained myself to do it, but also because I've been forced to. I'm left-handed, but the world is designed for right-handed people — something most "righties" don't even think about. I'm constantly being made conscious of how things are put together. For example, telephone booths are designed to make right-handed people feel comfortable and at ease, but lefties can feel clumsy using them.

4. My own ego can get in the way of discovering new things. However, if I allow myself to lower my resistance to those ideas that I typically dismiss as irrelevant or unattractive, I find that they can become doorways to solutions I've been overlooking.

5. I don't know what I don't know. I've got a big blind spot, and the only way to get access to what's lurking out there is to put myself in a humble, receptive frame of mind (not always easy to do) and ask others to point out what I'm not seeing.

6. Rejection of my work in the early phases of the creative process doesn't bother me. I'm not afraid of taking one of my less than stellar ideas and asking complete strangers what they think of it. I find their responses frank and refreshing.

Questions: What's your creative style? What are your strengths and weaknesses?

10,000,000 Yards Swimming This Decade!

If you asked me how this decade went for me, I'd say: "Swimmingly!"

Why? I'll share a personal swimming milestone with you.

This week, I passed the 10,000,000 yard mark for yards swum this decade (2000-2009). (9,144 kilometers, or approx. 5,700 miles.)

This started with an innocent remark that a teammate (Jim Merchant) made to me in January, 2000. He said: "I've had a couple of million-plus yard years." I thought, "That would be a fun goal." I ended 2000 with 1,177,000 yards.

All-told, I've had six million-plus yards years this decade: 2000-2003, and 2008-2009. The most yards was 2008 with 1.2 million. The biggest month was 142,000 yards (as part of a Max-Yards February).

The competitive highpoint was participating at the 2006 FINA World Swimming Championships.

Keeping track of yards has its upside and downside. The positive is that it kept me in the water a "little bit longer" per workout. For example, if I had done 3,300, I'd probably keep going until I got to 3,500 because it's easier to keep track of units of "500" and "000."

The negative, as many of you are probably thinking, is that it gets to be a little obsessive (but it's healthier than a lot of obsessions). I plan to stop keeping track after December (next month).

Swimming: what a great life-long sport!

Kenneth Clark's Series, Civilisation

For the past two weeks, I've watched the 1969 thirteen-part BBC series, "Civilisation" which was written and narrated by Kenneth Clark. This series --which focused on western art over the past thousand years -- was quite popular when it first appeared four decades ago. I greatly enjoyed it then, and I feel that it holds up pretty well now!

The Best Thing About "2010"

I think the best thing about about the year "2010" is that most people will call it Twenty-Ten.

Nice and simple. Only three syllables! [Not, God forbid, two thousand and ten. Ugh!]

This means a return to calling the first two digits of the year one number, and the last two digits another number. For example: 1948 is nineteen forty-eight.

I think that most of the years of this decade have been ponderous to pronounce, e.g., 2007 was two thousand and seven — and that's too many syllables. Twenty oh seven would have been just fine by me.

Hello Twenty Ten! Happy to see you!