creativity

There are 22 posts tagged creativity (this is page 4 of 4).

Baking ANZAC biscuits is an act of creativity.

I’m up to Week 9 of the Artist’s Way. Since I am always with myself, it is difficult to see what changes I made within myself and how the book has been helping me in an observable manner.

Some of the changes that may or may not be related to this book include:

  • Until recently, I was worried about my financial resources. Being not so busy in my freelance translation job, which is my main income stream, I would worry how awful it would be if my savings ran out. But now, my way of thinking is this: “Wow, I have enough money to survive for 2 or 3 months. That’s not bad. I could work on making something happen within this period of time!”
  • In an earlier post, I wrote that I’m interested in Argentine Tango. I had been looking for a good place to learn it, but I didn’t find anything appealing. Recently, however, I found someone looking for people who want to learn Argentine Tango on a Japanese social networking site. It’s a course for training 20 new Tango dancers (10 women and 10 men). I asked him if a beginner could join and he had no problem with that. The lesson fee is 4000 yen a month, which is… a bargain (as far as I’m concerned, it usually costs 2500 ? 3500 yen per lesson at other places). The course will start in April and I’m totally looking forward to it.
  • I improved my grappling skills. How can it be related to the Artist’s Way? I’m not sure. If that’s possible at all, then it has to be this: I’m more aware of what’s going on in sparring and I can note what to work on next time. In a way, I became more observant, at least in this martial arts context. What I like about Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and grappling is that one small mental note can improve your game, since in many cases you already have enough physical capabilities to do what you want to do unless it involves fancy, acrobatic moves.
  • I read Linchpin by Seth Godin. Is this an interesting change? To me, yes. I already was the kind of person who would enjoy reading Seth Godin’s books. I already knew about him, but it was the reading deprivation week that made me rediscover Seth Godin. I watched his 2009 TED talk video during that week. It was inspiring. So, I bought a copy of his new book Linchpin. Coincidentally, this book goes hand in hand with the Artist’s Way. One of the core messages of Linchpin is that the world needs more artists and we are artistic and creative. I will write a review of this book sometime, but I’m sure you can find what other people thought of this book else where in the mean time. Go buy it and read it. Please.

Overall, I feel more proactive, grounded, and open than before I started working on this book. I guess I haven’t experienced huge changes or coincidences yet, but I can feel them coming. I do feel that way.

But what does one do in the Artist’s Way program anyway? Here are some exercises from the book:

  • Get rid of unwanted clothes.
  • Bake something.
  • Collect rocks.
  • Take note of every spending of yours.
  • Make a vision map of your past, present, future and dreams.
  • Make specific action plans for your dreams.

So, the bottom line is… by baking ANZAC biscuits, I play Tetris of the creativity kind! You can bake ANZAC biscuits and be creative too. Woohoo!

Tap in sparring of creativity… and stand up again

In a previous post, I wrote: the most important and first thing you should learn in BJJ is to tap before you get hurt. When I reflect on lessons I learned through Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, I tend to find these lessons applicable to life in general. Tapping is one of such lessons.

Let’s say you are sparring with someone. Your opponent takes a better position and dominates you. Perhaps your opponent is more skilled. Or perhaps your opponent is bigger than you. But let’s face it: you are now caught and stuck. You get desperate and end up making a mistake. You literally give your arm away. Your opponent takes it and goes for an armlock. Here, you can and should tap before you get injured. By tapping your opponent with the other hand, you let him or her know that you accept your defeat. It’s only a spar after all. There is no reason why you should resist that armlock attempt and get your arm broken eventually.

There is nothing embarrassing about accepting your defeat. Your opponent may be much smaller than you and you may be supposed to be much stronger than you. But no one cares about it if you don’t. Good news is that with your arm safe and sound, you can train more. You’ll know what to watch out for as well. If you learn how to avoid that same move, you’ll survive. You might get caught by another move, but that’s OK. Tap first , start over again and learn how to avoid that move. That’s how you get better. If you refuse to tap for some reason and you break your arm, you won’t be able to train until it recovers. That sucks.

Now I’m up to Week 6 of the Artist’s Way. I can sense that this book has been influencing me little by little. Surprise: like every other area, I can relate the Brazilian Jiu Jitsu way of thinking to creativity. If I think about what I was like when I started walking away from the path of creativity, it is as if I was that guy who didn’t realize tapping was one of the most important parts of the game. There’s nothing wrong with tapping. Just start over and try again. In terms of creative works, you might feel your writing, drawing or dancing is nothing like your favorite artist’s works, but that’s perfectly OK. Just start over and try again. One of the reasons I ended up walking away from the path of creativity is probably because I didn’t tap?I couldn’t accept the fact that I was a beginner and eventually got my creative arm broken. But now I know tapping is important and not a big deal at the same time.

I bet what you want is the process of bringing that piece of work into existence rather than that piece itself. Suppose some magical being appears and tells you that he could give you the master pieces of yours that you are to make in the future. So, the deal is that you could have your master pieces without actually working on them. Would you take them?

I wouldn’t. I want to enjoy the journey of creating my master pieces. This time, I’ll tap as many times as necessary and say, “Thanks, and let’s do it again”.

I will dare you not to read (after you've read this post)

At noon on 17 Feb 2010, I completed a major exercise for Week 4 of the Artist’s Way: reading deprivation. This exercise is about monitoring the incoming information that you take by reading and keeping it to bare essentials. In short, no reading except for what you must absolutely read.

What you must absolutely read depends on what you do. If you are an editor, for example, you would have to be extremely creative about getting things done without reading documents to be edited. How about e-mail? E-mail seems to be an important tool for a number of people. But, given that people like Tim Ferriss and Leo Babauta have been managing their business with almost no e-mail checking, there’s no excuse for most of us who wouldn’t get thousands of e-mail a day not to cut e-mail off for a week.

I set some filters to forward potentially important e-mails to my iPhone. I had to log in to my gmail account just once, in order to read an e-mail I had to check. But that was all. I didn’t even give a glance at other e-mails and after checking that particular one, I closed it as soon as possible. Hurray for me.

What I included in my “OK list” is the following:

  • Course materials on $100 Business Forum
  • What I have written during the week
  • Text messages, which I hardly get anyway
  • Some web sites, including YouTube and TED talks (You might be surprised to hear that these sites are included in my OK list, but I’m not that addicted to them and watching videos is not reading!)

I was particularly wary of Twitter and Facebook. Although I tend to spend some time using these sites, I’m not that addicted to them. Or maybe I am, and this is exactly like drunk people say when asked if they are drunk.

Anyway, while I didn’t miss using these sites, I did have some moments I felt like sharing things with my people through Twitter and Facebook. For sharing such moments, I think these social media are highly useful. Perhaps this is a lesson I learned… or perhaps I got reminded of through this exercise: use social media wisely. Simple, but true.

If I could share with my people only one thing per week, what would I choose? That’s a good question to ask myself in order to eliminate low-quality information and to get straight to the point.

(By the way, while I would like to recommend all the TED talks I’ve watched during the last 7 days, if I had to choose one, I’d recommend Seth Godin’s 2009 talk. I’m fascinated by the notion of tribes.)

The highlight of this reading deprivation week was when I dropped by Kinokuniya Bookshop in Shinjuku, Tokyo. It’s a bookstore with 6 floors full of books. I was near that bookstore and dared to go in. It’s somewhat suicidal, but I managed to walk around the store without even taking a book in my hand. Victory was mine.

If you asked me about what I learned from this week of reading deprivation, I would say… 1) I can live without checking e-mails and 2) singing and dancing can be very good substitutes for reading. I hardly watch movies, but I did during this week. So, rediscovering movies can be another thing I got from this experience.

Would you dare to deprive yourself of reading for a week? What would you do instead of reading?

Tetris of the creativity kind

We may all have different conceptions of creativity, but I hope you agree that creativity isn’t just for artistic activities like drawing or writing. It is relevant to other areas of life. Philosophy, martial arts and cooking alike require one to see hidden connections; finding such connections is a creative act, I believe.

I  worry that I might have lost my creative self, as I grew older. I must say this worry isn’t a huge worry, though. Whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing is another issue. The fact that I don’t worry too much about it may indicate that the situation is quite fatal.

I used to draw a lot as a kid. I could spend hours and hours just drawing. As I grew older, I started to draw less frequently. Now I hardly draw. I can say I’m more playful and less mentally-constrained than the average 26 year old Japanese man, but if I compare myself with my 5 year old self, perhaps I might look like a dork who doesn’t know how to play in the eyes of my 5 year old self. But how can I compare myself with him when it seems I left him behind somewhere along the way. But I believe this: he’s not dead yet.

Now I’m playing Tetris of the creativity kind. I see there is a pile of blocks accumulated over years and years. New blocks keep coming and perhaps they will keep coming. But now I’m on my way to learn how to handle them as well as how to get rid of the old ones that I can recognize. There might be some more buried under what seems to be the bottom row, but that doesn’t worry me, because I will get rid of them. What I’m after is to rescue my creative self buried alive under these blocks.

Towards the end of 2009, I stumbled upon Julia Cameron’s book The Artist’s Way. It is a 12 week “course in discovering and recovering your creative self”. Someone on my Twitter time line mentioned this book and it caught my attention. I checked reviews on Amazon and those reviews convinced me to get a copy for myself.

A few weeks ago, again on Twitter, someone else was talking about an event at a cafe in Tokyo. I got curious about this cafe. So, I checked the cafe’s website. In addition to the information I was initially looking for, there was something unexpected and delightful. There was a link to a Facebook group dedicated to the Artist’s Way. The group was to have its first meeting at this cafe in a week or so. Without hesitation, I decided to go to the first meeting and to go through the 12 week course with people from the group. As it turned out, it was not just a group of people, but a group of amazing and interesting people. How can I not enjoy working on the book with them, really.

One obvious advantage of going through this book with others is that you are more likely to finish the course with support and encouragement (and social pressure) from them. If you want to pick up a copy of the book and do the course, I recommend you to form a group and do it together, especially if you tend to ‘get busy’ and to forget eventually about what you’ve started as I sometimes do.

Since all I have done so far is the first week of the course, I am not qualified to write a review of the book. You can read various reviews on its Amazon page if you are interested.

By the way, in the book there are some references to God and whatnot, which might put off some people. But, let me assure you that from the pages I’ve read so far, the content is good. Don’t let those references disturb you.

The book has a contract page and here’s mine…

I, Masafumi Matsumoto, understand that I am undertaking in an intensive, guided encounter with my own creativity. I commit myself to the twelve-week duration of the course. I, Masafumi Matsumoto, commit to weekly reading, daily morning pages, a weekly artist date, and the fulfillment of each week’s tasks.

I, Masafumi Matsumoto, further understand that this course will raise issues and emotions for me to deal with. I, Masafumi Matsumoto, commit myself to excellent self-care—adequate sleep, diet, exercise, and pampering—for the duration of the course.

Masafumi Matsumoto

20 January 2010