Showing posts with label creativity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label creativity. Show all posts

The Adjacent Possible: Evolve Your Art. from Blank Canvas to Prolific Artist by Nancy Hillis (2021)

, 1 Sept 2022

Hilli's book is both a source of inspiration and a constant frustration to read.  This could have been a great book if anyone had bothered to edit the book for content. It has great advice and concepts, but it is too wordy and repetitive and feels amateurish.
 
MAIN CONCEPTS
> Zero to One, there is more distance or space between zero and one, than from one to two, two to three. In art, this means that the most difficult thing to do is starting anything. That is why a blank canvas can be terrifying and we postpone or delay working on it.
> The adjacent possible shows that any option that we make, whether in life or art, leads to something else that was unpredictable or unknown. It is something like the butterfly effect. So a new mark or line in a canvas might create, for example, a shape that inspires us to create something else that we hadn't thought about. For that to happen, the artist has to be ready for the unknown, dive into the unknown, allow the unknown to materialize by opening to it, and leave the predictable, the rules and the comfortable behind.
> Exploration and experimentation are at the core of creativity, and are the basis to progress, grown and evolve as an artist as complacency gets artists stagnant.
> Ugly art is necessary and teaches us invaluable lessons. We need to get comfortable with our ugly stuff and see that as a stepping stone for improvement and growth.

THINGS THAT I REALLY LIKED
Beyond the concepts mentioned above I liked some of the points that the author made. Here some of them:
> Not being a known artist is actually a blessing, as this allows to create good art. However, even professional artists benefit for the approach of obscurity: What would you create if you were invisible? How would you sing if no one were watching? What if you were unself-conscious in your art making? What risks would you take if the outcome didn’t matter?
> It is never pleasant when someone is critical of your art. The worst part: however, is when a part of you agrees with the criticism.(p. 60).
> Advice on how to keep track of our art.
> The questions to make a self-assessment of our art.
> The technique trap: No amount of technique will move you closer to expressing your deepest art. Technique is painting from the outside in, rather than the inside out" (p. 148).
> Learning that Joseph Campbell wasn't the father of the concept of the hero's journey.but Edward Burnett Tylor.
> The fact that luck is related to two habits: changing up daily routines and avoiding over-scheduling.  
> I thought that the best chapters in the book, due to their content, structure and clarity, are:   
-- 12 Three tips for artists (keep a journal, just start, and work in a series).
-- 13 Three massive mistakes even the pros make (painting paralysis, the tyranny of technique, and empty virtuosity).
-- 14 Four traps artists face where old beliefs are replaced with new ones ( the critique trap,
the imposter trap, the judgement trap, and the technique trap).
-- 15 Three invisible paradoxes ( the refusal, the perils, and he dark night of the soul).
Finally, I also liked the recaps at the end of some chapters, some of the simple exercises advised and the fact that any major point discussed in the book has a real life story attached to it. 
 
NOT SO GOOD

This is a self-published book and, unfortunately, shows terribly. The book lacks a good structure, lack of cohesiveness in structure to be precise, as repeats the same ideas na concepts over and over, ad nauseam. One  gets exhausted after the same ideas are repeated ad nauseam for nearly 200 pages.

Some of the more scientific concepts are unnecessary discussed in scientific jargon when in fact the simple explanation given at the beginning is sufficient. I thought that the description of what the hero's journey is was too long. Also, Hillis has a tendency to divert from the discourse at hand to then go back to it. 

For the rest, the book seems addressed to professional or established artists not as much to beginner artists.
 
 
 
KINDLE EDITION

The Kindle edition is well edited  except for some minor typos. Some of the ones I've noticed:
-- p. 78 short dashes should be replaced with long ones.
-- p. 155 there is the 3rd item of a list, mistake number 3, but is mistakenly labelled as mistake #1 .
-- p. 215, an hyphen is used instead of a long dash.

IN SHORT
The core of the book is as follows: start something even though that's the most difficult part. Experiment, be fearless, accept your mistakes and learn from them. Do art that reflects who you are not what other people want to see. Keep open to experimentation and the unknown as these are the keys to artistic growth. Technique serves art and it is not art per se.

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Creating the Impossible. A 90-Day Programme to get your dreams out of your head and into the world by Michael Neill (2015)

, 23 Feb 2019

Creating the Impossible is an easy-to-read soulful book, the main aim of which is to unleash your mojo to start up, follow through and finish any project, creative, business or personal. You can read this book just to get you motivated with your current project, to wisely choose one among your many projects, or even to think of a project that you haven't thought yet and create it from scratch.

The project or program is thirteen weeks long. The first week is devoted to the basic principles of creation, and the second week to help you choose the project you will be working on the remaining eleven weeks. Each week has an impossible challenge or exercise based on the principles of creation. Each chapter corresponds to a day, and each day/chapter starts with a quote and a brief essay that works as a catalyst to give you insight and get you out of your square thinking, to get inspired and take action; some days also have suggestions for different exercises or experiments. There is a day off a week just to breath, rest, refuel and look back at what you've done in the last seven days. The book can be used step by step or randomly, as a kind of biz oracle. 

THE CORE KEYS
> The ultimate formula for successful creation according to Michael Neill is:
+ Show up, i.e. be present with anything you do.
+ Begin moving in the direction you want to create what you want.
+ Things will show up as soon as you move, but things won't never show up if you don't move.
+ Respond to what it shows up: good things, bad things, new people, new side projects, new circumstances. The steps of the path will appear at the same time as you move.
+ Take a leap of faith in whatever you do.
+ Do this on a regular basis. If you do this, you will get there.
+ Our experience of life is created from inside the mind.
> The main rule for choosing a great project is asking yourself: Does the thought of it make me gasp, grin, or giggle?
> The main difficulty to carry out a project is not starting it, it is following it through to fruition as the space between the beginning and the end is a muddy land that you have to work through. And how do you do that? Just work on it, every day, consistently.
> Get out of your own way.
> Cultivate your 'inner knowing', commonly called 'intuition'.
> Have fun in whatever you do, so your project doesn't become a burden and you are fully engaged.
> Operate with an acceptance of failure. 

THE GOOD
> The book is really good at shifting your way of thinking to get you unstuck and away from your usual patterns of thought and behaviour that sabotage any project you might undertake. Neill makes you think about business, creativity and new projects from a different angle, i.e. think out of the box. Each chapter ends with a small feedback form in which you report to yourself what you did, how you did it, and in which way you showed up for your project; even if you don't fill it in, it allows you to be honest with yourself about whether you are doing much, enough or not enough to carry out your project.
> If you want a hand-on book, practical and guiding, this is exactly what you need. 
> The examples and stories that Neill uses to illustrate each entry's main point are interesting, right to the point and illustrative.
> Neill makes a brilliant distinction between effort and reward to get productivity: The ratio between your effort and the reward you get for that effort.If we get high levels of reward for each effort, we are highly productive; if we don’t, no matter how much time and energy we’re putting into the job, we aren’t. Yet typical productivity systems are based on the idea that there is always a 1:1 ratio between effort and reward, so essentially one unit of effort will bring one unit of reward. (p 31-2).
> Neill also makes a brilliant distinction between success and personal worth, or vice versa. Something that most people should remind themselves of on a daily basis:  It’s easier to just win a race than it is to win a race in order to prove you are the fastest animal in the world. We often believe that our value and worth in the world are dependent on our performance. In fact, our value and worth in the world are a given, and have nothing to do with what we do or don’t do with our life. No amount of success or failure will make us any more or less worthy of love and respect. (p. 138).
> Each chapter ends with a summary of the main points discussed in it, which makes it really handy for re-reading. 
> I started reading the book when I had already started my own project and, honestly, some of the things that Neill says resonated with me because I've  experienced them to be the case.
> Neil has an infectious way of writing and of believing that you can do anything, so that's always a great start! He's your biggest fan and cheerleader.
> Nelil's method, if meticulously followed, works. There are a few success stories in the book and among the reviewers that prove it. I think that there aren't more success stories because the two main difficulties entrepreneurs have to hurdle over are their own procrastination (something that only you can prevent from happening and this book doesn't dwell upon) and  being stuck in your mind, mindset, or blocking your creative ideas, and not knowing what to do, and this book will help you with that.
THE SO-SO
> Neil's main points are a rehash of things said by other creativity and business gurus. He relies a lot on Syd Banks, and some of the things he says are something you don't need to buy his book to learn. For example: Thoughts are things. Or also Start something, do something regularly, keep on keeping on regardless of what shows up, don't obsess about it, give it time to mature, and you will eventually get there. Anything that you didn't know already?
> Sometimes the advice is a bit to vague to be useful.
> There are too many quotes in the book.
> Each chapter finishes with an exercise for you to get your juices flowing, but some of them are a bit vague.
> You'll need a book on how to defeat procrastination because, if that is your problem, you won't find a solution here; at best, you will notice that you are procrastinating.
> Sorry, but synchronicity is not luck at all. If you want to talk about lucky coincidences that's fine, but don't call that synchronicity because it is not. 

EDITION
It would have been great having some cross references found in the Kindle format linked back and forward. E.g., I found a reference to page 35 in page 126 , but there was no hyperlink.

BONUS MINI-SEMINAR
One can access a seven-part free talk on the main ideas of the book given by Neil himself, by following the prompts in this book. I think if you got to see those seven videos, you'd realise that those are more than enough to get what Neil is saying in the book.

IN SHORT
A good encouraging book that will make you think about your project differently. You have certainly head many of the things said here elsewhere, some of them fall into the category of common sense, but Neil implements a method that will support your mental shift, win over your worst enemy -- you! and defeat your self-defeating ways of thinking, behaving and creating. Neill is your biggest supporter, and that's priceless.  


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Seeing What Others Don't: The remarkable ways we gain insights by Gary Klein (2013)

, 28 Oct 2015

What a cool book

What is insight? How does it manifest? Which things favour insight? Which things prevent insight from happening? Which forms does insight takes? How can we increase insight in our private and work life? Klein does have the answers.

Klein departs from the analysis of the a classic work on insight, Graham Wallas's The Art of thought (1926), especially  the chapter "Stages of Control", which presents a four-stage model of insight: preparation, incubation, illumination, and verification. This model is still the most common explanation of how insight work. Klein acknowledges the good points that Wallas makes, but shows the deficiencies of this system  to provide an explanation to how many real cases of insight occur.

After doing his own research Klein proposes an alternative model, which allows researchers to explain all cases, major and minor, of insight. Klein calls it the Triple Path Model. In this model each pathway has its own means of altering the beliefs that anchor the way we understand things and restructure beliefs (that is, the story we use to understand events). Klein says that Wallas wasn’t wrong, he was addressing just one of the three paths.
Klein shows that there are five different strategies for gaining insights, although most insights are a combo of at least two: 1/connections, that is connecting the dots even when not all the dots are visible, which happens by being exposed to many different ideas. 2/ Coincidences, which are sparked by the question, what is going on here?. 3/ Curiosities, which comes for the realisation that there is something seriously wrong with the story we tell ourselves. That realisation can be achieved by having an open mind or just by having a critical sceptical mind to investigate paths that others have missed. 4/ Contradictions, which lead to paradigm shifts, and 5/ Creative desperation, which is the result of accidental unplanned events, of being in the right place at the right time. Point one four and five are the most common, while 56% of the cases were the 'aha!' type and 44% were gradual insights.

Klein digs in into his own research material and bibliography to try to understand the link among the five categories of connections. The second and third part of the book are devoted to an analysis of what interferes with insights and what promotes it. 

Among the elements that interfere with insight, beyond our daily moments of  stupidity fostered by  us being on autopilot, are 1/ flawed beliefs, 2/ lack of experience, 3/ a passive stance, and 4/ a concrete reasoning style, which is exacerbated by the constrictions that some software has in the work we do, the mere nature of the Internet, and organisational guidelines, procedures, filtering methods, and the zeal to reduce uncertainty and minimise errors with leads them to the  predictability trap and the perfection trap.
The ways unearthed by Klein to foster insights are 1/Critical thinking; 2/ opening up to contradictions and using other people's perspective and views; 3/ having encounters with different kinds of people, working in a variety of areas, peppering us with new ideas.; 4/ focusing on contradictions and 5/regarding organisations, it also involves not being so focused on the war on error, loosening the control filters, and increasing organisational willpower.

Klein makes a detailed and clear exposition of how he approached this research and is honest about the sources and method he uses. He uses a naturalist approach, that is, he uses examples from people acting in the real world under natural conditions, and not from people subject to artificial lab psychological tests. I am sure the Academia, the establishment, will hit back and question his approach, but I love when people who are part of the same Academia question it and come up with new approaches and theories. Klein is a Ph.D. scientist, a respected psychologist, who has been there, done what he is supposed to do and seen that it does not always work. When he criticises lab experiments in the field of Insight, he is not using generalisations or is not saying that lab research is not good, he is saying that lab research is leading nowhere in the field and that models developed in the early 20th century are not good enough to explain how insight occurs. His critique is elegant, tamed and conciliatory. I love that true researchers are always non dogmatic. They are the ones giving us breakthroughs in Science not the others.

The examples he uses for his study come from the real world: the military, astronomy, medicine, fire fighting, scientific discoveries, the stock market, corporate world, sports, and from Klein's own personal and family life, and they are truly illustrative, and very interesting for the lay reader.

Some brilliant quotes by Klein in this book
 >> "I don’t believe insights are the same as “aha,” any more than conception is the same as orgasm."
>> Systems such as Google determine what we don’t want to see and either filter it out completely or bury it so deep, perhaps on page 25 of the search results, that we probably won’t find it. The personalised searches we get from Google, Yahoo, and others gauge our preferences and then screen out the items we’re likely to find irrelevant. Pariser argues that searches also need to show us items that are challenging and even uncomfortable. They need to expose us to other points of view. (p. 147).
>> Our insights transform us in several ways. They change how we understand, act, see, feel, and desire.
>> Intuition is the use of patterns they’ve already learned, whereas insight is the discovery of new patterns (p. 27).
>> I don’t believe the purpose of science is to do “good” science. The purpose of science is to learn more about the world, including the world of insights. We don’t want to be sloppy about it. We want to use methods that yield results worth taking seriously. We shouldn’t, however, become so fixated on the methods that we lose sight of the object of our inquiry. We shouldn’t evolve a set of methods that don’t fully capture the phenomenon we want to understand. (p. 178)

The book has two main downsides. The first, is that Klein's considerations about his naturalistic approach are repetitive and redundant at times, split in two different parts of the book. A chapter on methodology would have sufficed and, honestly, I would have expected the editor to regroup Klein's considerations in whichever part was most convenient. Regarding content, many of the considerations that Klein makes regarding how to foster insight in the corporate world and organisations are a bit 'wouldn't be nice?', because although he solutions he proposes are great, they go against how the corporate world and organisations are structured and function internally. 

This is a book really easy to read, well structured, entertaining, and with substance, and some aha moments that make any reading always special.

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