💡Curious Friday : How to start your career again, secrets of great timings and more.
Episode - 11
Today at a Glance :
Quote : Risk of comfortable inaction.
Article : For a more creative process, follow these 5 steps.
Tweet : How to start your career again and optimize for foundational building experience.
Podcast : Secrets of Great Timings
One Quote
“There are risks and costs to action. But they are far less than the long range risks of comfortable inaction.” - John F. Kennedy
A body in motion tends to stay in motion; a body at rest tends to stay at rest.
Develop a bias for action.
One Article
Nearly every idea follows a similar creative process and this article will explain to you how to become creative and produce more ideas by following 5 simple steps that could impact amazing results in your life. Nearly every problem in our life can be sorted by either - ignoring the problems or simply working to sort this problem by innovative and creative ideas.
Anyone can be creative and follow creative thinking but all it takes is courage and continuous practice to do the same. Creative thinking is not a process, but it is an event. Creative thinking can easily be achieved by working hard, perseverance, grit and consistent practice on anything to achieve a better output.
A Quick Story :
In the 1870s, newspapers and printers faced a very huge and costly problem. Photography was a new and exciting medium at the time. Readers wanted to see more pictures, but nobody could figure out how to print images quickly and cheaply.
The man who invented a solution to this problem was named Frederic Eugene Ives. He went on to become a trailblazer in the field of photography and held over 70 patents by the end of his career. His story of creative thinking just elaborates how he follows the 5 steps to be creative.
A Flash of Insight
Ives got his start as a printer’s apprentice in Ithaca, New York. After two years of learning the ins and outs of the printing process, he began managing the photographic laboratory at nearby Cornell University. Ives said - “I went to bed one night in a state of brain fog over the problem, and the instant I woke in the morning saw before me, apparently projected on the ceiling, the completely worked out process and equipment in operation.”
Ives quickly translated his vision into reality and patented his printing approach in 1881. He spent the remainder of the decade improving upon it. By 1885, he had developed a simplified process that delivered even better results. The Ives Process, as it came to be known, reduced the cost of printing images by 15x and remained the standard printing technique for the next 80 years.
Alright so let’s get started with the steps that we can learn from Ives’s creative process.
The stages of creative process :
Gather new material : The first step of the creative process is learning. First, you learn and then you gather some materials required to complete the process of creativity. 1). Explore newer things and learn those which insights curiosity inside you. Learning new materials that are specifically relatable to your task makes you more creative.
Thoroughly work over the materials in your mind : During this stage or process, you examine what you’ve learned so far by looking at the facts at different angles and perspectives and experiment with them by fitting various ideas together.
Step away from the problem : Problems when stuck become the limitations for our creative thinking. So, put all the problems directly away from your mind and go do something that excites and energizes you to be more creative.
Let your ideas return to you : With the continuous process of hard work and thinking on the ideas, at some point, those same ideas will turn back to you like a flash of insight and renewed energy.
Shape and develop your ideas based on feedback : Now since you’ve developed an idea, the next and most important step is to show this idea to the world, submit or discuss it with people, accept the criticisms if any and then shape it accordingly.
So, those were the most important 5 steps for a creative process to arise with full force.
Conclusion :
The creative process is a connection that connects your old ideas with the new and oversimplified version of your ideas. It happens by bridging the gap of your old ideas and connecting with the new and innovative ones.
.Being creative isn't about being the first (or only) person to think of an idea. More often, creativity is about connecting ideas.
One Tweet
On the above thread, Sahil shared some ideas on how to start your career again and how to optimize for foundational building experience.
One of the most valuable threads I’ve ever found yet.
This is a must read thread and you never want to miss this one.
One Podcast
Marc Andreessen: The 6 Secrets of Great Timing
Short podcast (<45 minutes) that punches way above its weight. So many tactical insights on startup building, with a focus on the importance of timing.
When to launch that first product; when to ramp up scale; when to make the move into a new market; when to pivot—timing is everything.
Listen to it on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
That’s it for today’s episode.
I hope that this has made your day just a little better and if you’ve learned something valuable and new today, then it’ll make my day.
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