36 Comments
User's avatar
Varsha Shah's avatar

Utterly brilliant. So much on creativity is cliched - this is the opposite. Every creative idea I’ve had can be traced to one of these points - not that I would have been able to articulate it like this or known how to recreate it. I do now thanks to this list . Many thanks for the great posts as always. One other way I find is rituals - coffee and a candle. Don’t know why but my writing is better when I have those by my laptop!

George Mack's avatar

Coffee and a candle. The two C's.

Fereshteh Zeineddin's avatar

I love this! thanks for inspiring more creativity in the world.

David Butler's avatar

One technique I use in my writing is to allow space to explore my most outlandish ideas. The bigger, grander and more absurd the better.

George Mack's avatar

80% of the game is escaping self-imposed prisons.

Ben Levy's avatar

Wow. I usually read stuff like this hoping for a kernel of useful info, but every one of these was as much of a banger as “one”.

George Mack's avatar

Most substacks could’ve been a note. Good goal I try is to make a substack post that could’ve been 15 of them.

Tomas Loucky's avatar

Keep these coming! 💪

Niamh Donnelly's avatar

This is probably the most useful thing I’ve ever read

Jared Stivala's avatar

So is creativity and productivity two sides of a scale?

Creativity is about doing novel things to get new inputs in the brain for more diverse outputs. Productivity is about output output output. Predictable, known.

So is it one side can be maxed out but the other side suffers ?

NorthSeaFanClub's avatar

Brilliant piece, bravo.

If I was your editor, I would say, actually, we’ve got three articles:

One’s about creativity (joke and translation)

Second about play (SHM and away days)

Third about agency/permission

And a compelling mystery:

60k subscribers at the start of your journey????

Signal and Static's avatar

Absolutely love this, and resonated so much!

Patrick O'Loughlin's avatar

#2 extended to authors:

Writing a story? What's the one Core Idea you want to persuade your reader of?

Writing a persuasive essay? What's the one story you want to capture your reader with?

Patrick O'Loughlin's avatar

#2 extended to authors:

Writing a story? What's the one Core Idea you want to persuade your reader of?

Writing a persuasive essay? What's the one story you want to capture your reader with?

Bri-Bri's avatar

Surely the wealthy man has a home with parking

Harriet Beveridge's avatar

Love seeing Swedish House Mafia looking hella bored and sitting with it. I was so lucky to grow up in the 70s/80s and spend a lot of time bored out of my skull… where it was totally on you to create something.

Allan Degra's avatar

Alice Coltrane was basically a single parent for two weeks while John, in the attic, worked on what would be A Love Supreme.

Solitude.