If discovery is a lottery, the great buy lots of tickets. – Kevin Kelly

Being nimble

I used to think that nimbleness meant only that when a new opportunity arose, you could start working on it immediately. But the ability to start doesn’t mean much without the ability to simultaneously stop doing what you were before.

To be nimble, it’s more important to be able to stop doing things than to start doing them. This summer I did some of my most innovative work, and I credit it mostly to the fact that by moving to London, I was forced to stop almost everything I was doing and start from scratch. By being open to new opportunities, I was able to pounce on the best one when it came up.

> In 1998 I had the chance to talk with Steve Jobs after he’d come back and turned Apple around…’Steve,’ I said, ‘this turnaround at Apple has been impressive. But everything we know about the personal-computer business says that Apple will always have a small niche position…What’s the longer-term strategy?’ He didn’t agree or disagree with my assessment of the market. He just smiled and said, ‘I am going to wait for the next big thing.'” – [An interview with Richard Rumelt](http://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/Strategy/Strategic_Thinking/Strategys_strategist_An_interview_with_Richard_Rumelt_2039)

But when I look for advice on this, I see lots of people talking about how to *start* things more easily, but few talking about strategies for *stopping* things. Tim Ferriss’ [Four-Hour Workweek](http://ryskamp.org/brain/books/notes-from-the-4hour-workweek) is the closest I’ve come, and that’s why it’s one of my favorites.

> The world throws opportunities your way every single week. But if you’re feeling overwhelmed already, you’re not going to be able to embrace them. Keep your mind clear of these feelings of obligations so you can be open to receiving new opportunities. – David Allen, [Ready for Anything](http://www.amazon.com/Ready-Anything-Productivity-Principles-Work/dp/067003250)

In creativity, like strategy, it’s sometimes more important what you don’t do than what you do.

How Paul Krugman works

Insights from [the new Nobel laureate](http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economics/laureates/2008/):

1. Listen to the Gentiles – “Pay attention to what intelligent people are saying, even if they do not have your customs or speak your analytical language.”
2. Question the question – “In general, if people in a field have bogged down on questions that seem very hard, it is a good idea to ask whether they are really working on the right questions. Often some other question is not only easier to answer but actually more interesting!”
3. Dare to be silly – “What I believe is that the age of creative silliness is not past…If a new set of assumptions seems to yield a valuable set of insights, then never mind if they seem strange.”
4. Simplify, simplify – “Always try to express your ideas in the simplest possible model. The act of stripping down to this minimalist model will force you to get to the essence of what you are trying to say (and will also make obvious to you those situations in which you actually have nothing to say).”

[Full version here](http://www.princeton.edu/~pkrugman/howiwork.html); despite his disclaimer at top that “I don’t know anything special about life in general”, these ideas seem applicable to most creative work.

Words to watch out for

Hopefully a running list…words to watch out for in creative discussions.

* “[Insert mythical project name] will fix that” – deferring the hard work to another team or project

* “Everyone” or “no one” does something – a clear sign that there’s no data behind a claim. (via [37signals](http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/1144-watch-out-for-everyone-or-no-one))

Just throw down the paint

A few gems from John Kilduff, a painter who paints [while walking on a treadmill](http://characters.usanetwork.com/portal/characters/4616.html) (and occasionally does [other](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c6hxcr4kB4c) [things](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMJhfqcKawk&feature=user) as well):

> There’s no hanging out, thinking about “Oh, maybe I should put some paint on the canvas over in this particular area”. There’s this great urgency in the painting process about the application of the paint.

> If you’re not on a treadmill, you’re gonna take your time about putting some paint on that canvas. We gotta get the paint onto that canvas in the fastest time possible…

> On my tombstone, I want it to say “Just throw down the paint”

Violent and original in your work

I found a great quote that echoes the feeling with which I closed [my last post](http://ryskamp.org/brain/philosophy/simplicity-and-complexity):

> Be regular and orderly in your life so that you may be violent and original in your work. – Gustave Flaubert

From [Time Management for Creative People](http://wishful.fileburst.com/creativetime.pdf) (PDF)

Two dishwashers

Overheard:

> She actually stored all her dishes in two dishwashers, one for dirty dishes and the other for clean. That way she could take dishes out of the clean one to eat and put them in the other when they were dirty. When that one was full, she ran it and it became the clean one.

Situational Creativity

I’ve been sick for the past few weeks and struggling to stay creative amidst the coughing and wheezing. When you’re sick, it’s tough to just get by, much less do anything “extra” like “being creative”. All that energy to take pictures, sketch, write, and “notice things”…it just seemed like too much.

But everything flipped around when I looked at my sickness as an opportunity to observe a new experience. All of a sudden everything to do with being sick was interesting–the pills, the tissues, shopping, eating, sleeping, and more. It was a fantastic opportunity to do experiential research on “being sick”.

There are always a bunch of ideas floating around in the design community about what tools and environments you need in order to be the most creative. Whiteboards, post-it notes, video cameras, “whack-packs” and other products have had their days in the sun as “the essential creativity tools”, and they really can help. But the biggest boon for creativity is always observing and viewing every situation as a creative outlet.

Scott Adams [said it well](http://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/2006/11/nearly_funny_th.html):

> As a professional humorist, I read the news differently than you do. I’m mining it like the old guy on the beach with a metal detector. You see miles of sand and sea shells and used condoms, but I see a potential windfall of 35 cents in coins plus half an earring. That’s why my life has more meaning than yours. But my point is not to brag. I’m just saying.

So as I’m trying to be more creative in the new year, I’m quickly realizing that it can’t happen just in my idealized creative environment. It’s got to happen everywhere, at all times, in every mood, with any company, for any cause. The tools and methods to make this happen need to be very general, and universally available. Any wonder I’ve started with my [cameraphone](http://flickr.com/photos/bobman/tags/noticed), a [sketchpad](http://flickr.com/photos/bobman/tags/drawing), and writing [notes](http://ryskamp.org/brain/writing)?

Against T-shaped people

Consider this my plea for the design community to stop using the term “T-shaped people”. It’s demeaning, over-simplistic, misleading, and dangerously-influential, which combined with the prior three traits makes for trouble–that starts with “T”.

For those not familiar with the term, consider exhibit A: [IDEO](http://ideo.com). A great design firm based in Palo Alto, with a penchant for coining viral phrases of design language. They have a hold of the business press that far outweighs their tiny size, and their latest popularized term is “T-shaped people” (actually though Tom Kelley and Tim Brown talk about it like its their own invention, it [has roots back to writer David Guest in 1991](http://www.wordspy.com/words/T-shaped.asp).)

A “T-shaped person” is supposedly someone who has both deep expertise in one area (the leg of the T), plus a variety of experiences in other, often unrelated areas (the broad top of the T). This complexity supposedly allows them design super-powers, including unmatched creativity.

There are two problems with this phrase: T-shaped people don’t exist, and having T-shaped traits does not indicate design success.

Sure, plenty of people have both deep and broad experiences, including many great designers. But I’ve never met someone who is actually “shaped” this way. “Shape” is a defining term, referring to the actual form of a person. All the great designers I know (including several IDEO-ites) are much more than “T-shaped”–and they’re all shaped differently. Some do have both deep and broad experiences, but they’re a whole range of other things as well–passionate, objective, spiritual, literal, and dozens of other traits ranging all over and beyond Csikszentmihalyi’s “[ten dimensions of creativity](http://ryskamp.org/brain/books/notes-on-creativity#tendimensions)”. To refer to them as “T-shaped” ignores all these other essential parts of each designer. That is why I say that calling someone “T-shaped” is demeaning and over-simplistic. People shaped like “T”s just don’t exist.

[Unhappy Meals](http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/28/magazine/28nutritionism.t.html?ei=5090&en=a18a7f35515014c7&ex=1327640400&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=all), a recent article in The New York Times Magazine, discussed the way diets and the food industry focus on nutrients rather than on whole items of food.

> More important than mere foods, the presence or absence of these invisible substances was now generally believed to confer health benefits on their eaters. Foods by comparison were coarse, old-fashioned and decidedly unscientific things — who could say what was in them, really?

Concentrating a marketing campaign or package design on a single “special” nutrient–e.g. ginseng, hoodia, carbs–is attractive to people seeking a magic bullet for their dietary needs. This is the way food fads grow, and fade, as the ingredient du jour is disproven and people flock to the next one. The article, by the author of the recent bestseller _[The Omnivore’s Dilemma](www.amazon.com/Omnivores-Dilemma-Natural-History-Meals/dp/1594200823/bobdesigns-20/)_, concluded that the full mix of nutrients included in real foods–remember apples, carrots and tomatoes?–is the only thing that can truly satisfy our bodies’ needs. Similarly, design success comes only from the combination of a vast multitude of traits, people, and circumstances–it can’t be reduced to a single indicator.

So maybe what “T-shaped” could refer to is merely the possession of these two “nutrients”, whether or not there are other things involved. But even that would be misleading. I know all sorts of “T-shaped people”, those who are geeks by day and extreme sports nuts by night, who have PhDs in science and practice Buddhism. Some of them are creative and great designers–and many, many are not. Being “T-shaped” is simply not enough to indicate that someone is creative–it just means they might be mildly interesting at cocktail parties.

And if “T-shaped people” as a term is flawed, then its use to describe successful designers is flawed too. Real, complex, talented, experienced designers deserve more respect than this alphabetic-reductionism.

Want to find someone who is creative? Look at what they’ve created. But don’t call them “T-shaped”.

Creativity and the thoughts of others

This year I’m experimenting with creativity. It’s a broad field, but my goal is to personally create more and better products and ideas.

One thing I realized last year was how easy it was in this world of information to sit back and just take it all in. I could spend all day reading blogs, watching YouTube videos, responding to email, checking Google News. I felt tremendously informed, and proud that I was an active searcher of information, not merely taking what television delivered. But I wasn’t creating anything myself.

In trying to break that cycle, I’ve realized something: if you want to be creative, other people’s thoughts are very dangerous.

Of course it’s important to listen and learn from other people. But that process doesn’t necessarily involve me creating anything new, and its addictive nature means that once I start I’m likely to continue passively receiving. So it’s important to be intentional about what information I let inform me, and when and how I do it.

It’s especially dangerous to start my day with somebody else’s thoughts. If I don’t take the morning, the only untouched part of the day, for my own thoughts, then right from the start any original thoughts I might have had are changed by other people. Again, that may be a good thing eventually–but since this is the only time my totally unique thoughts exist, it’s worth preserving them that way for at least a little while.

What does this mean practically? For me, it means being very careful about when I check email, news, and blogs. All these things are important. In fact, they’re important enough to consume my thinking once I interact with them.

It also means especially protecting my morning. I recently saw a quote from William Blake that sounded especially wise: “Think in the morning, act in the noon, read in the evening, and sleep at night.” (In [the same article](http://finance.yahoo.com/expert/article/leadership/23188) I was surprised how many business leaders let others set their agenda through email and the news, though this may be unique to CEOs as opposed to, say, chief *innovation* officers).

This is getting more and more difficult. Two days ago I got a phone that can check my email and my blog reading. I could be reading email within seconds of waking up, still in bed. It takes real discipline for me to not do so, but it’s worth it. I managed to write this thought before reading any email–doubt it would exist had I logged in already.