Watch Elizabeth Gilbert’s Your Elusive Creative Genius when you’re feeling discouraged by your lack of progress

Elizabeth Gilbert’s TED talk Your Elusive Creative Genius is one of TED’s all-time favourite talks and has been watched by millions. Elizabeth Gilbert explains that creating something good is hard and we mustn’t torture ourselves  too much in the process.  Our job is just to show up every day and do our best. That’s all we can do. The rest is up to forces outside our control.

It’s a powerful message that speaks to everyone who’s trying to do something really difficult.

“Don’t be daunted. Just do your job. Continue to show up for your piece of it, whatever that might be. If your job is to dance, do your dance. If the divine, cockeyed genius assigned to your case decides to let some sort of wonderment be glimpsed, for just one moment through your efforts, then ‘Ole!’ And if not, do your dance anyhow. And ‘Ole!’ to you, nonetheless. I believe this and I feel that we must teach it. ‘Ole!’ to you, nonetheless,just for having the sheer human love and stubbornness to keep showing up.” ~ Elizabeth Gilbert

Video collection on how to be more creative

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Daniel Pink: One Simple Story of Extraordinary Innovation

Malcolm Gladwell on the value of coming third

How can I be a more creative researcher?

Answer:  Watch Elizabeth Gilbert’s inspiring TED talk for her answer.

How can I be more innovative?

Answer:  Malcolm Gladwell explains how:

A 10-hour video course in creativity


More practical

More theoretical

John Cleese — 13-minute extract


How canI generate good ideas?

Answer:  Connect more!

Steven Johnson explains:

How can I generate a good idea?

Answer: Generate lots of ideas.

Set yourself an ideas quota.

For example, you might decide, “I will think up at least  three new ideas for my website each day for the next 30 days.”

These ideas don’t have to be brilliant; they just have to be generated. If all goes according to plan, out of that pile of 90+ website ideas you think up over the month, a couple of your ideas will be impressive and a few more will be more than good-enough!

Michael Michalko explains:

GENIUSES PRODUCE.
A distinguishing characteristic of genius is immense productivity. Thomas Edison held 1,093 patents, still the record. He guaranteed productivity by giving himself and his assistants idea quotas. His own personal quota was one minor invention every 10 days and a major invention every six months. Bach wrote a cantata every week, even when he was sick or exhausted. Mozart produced more than six hundred pieces of music. Einstein is best known for his paper on relativity, but he published 248 other papers. T. S. Elliot’s numerous drafts of “The Waste Land” constitute a jumble of good and bad passages that eventually was turned into a masterpiece. In a study of 2,036 scientists throughout history, Dean Kean Simonton of the University of California, Davis found that the most respected produced not only great works, but also more “bad” ones. Out of their massive quantity of work came quality. Geniuses produce. Period.

Here’s an interesting study that supports this productivity of ideas strategy: (I can’t find the reference to this study at the moment):

School children were asked to make clay pots. One group was told to make one pot as perfectly as they could. The other group was told to make as many pots as they could, no matter the quality.

The first group was told it would be graded on how good the one pot was. The second group was told it would be graded on the number of pots it produced.

The second group not only produced more pots, but their best pot was more likely to be better than the first group who spent all their time producing one pot.