soledad penadés

Review

This book is not a list of instant life-hacks but a more abstract compendium of advice on how to reorganise our lives in order to give room to our creative side. It has quite a few interesting ideas that I liked (noted down below). You probably won't make any sense of my notes only, it's best if you get the book :-)

(I "heard" about this book in Leigh Reyes' blog post: Coming up with great ideas).

Notes

• Prolific + Brilliant + Healthy = producing great work consistently and in a sustainable way
• Garbage in, garbage out
• In effective creating there are peaks and troughs
• If I hadn't been here, this wouldn't exist (← very rare)
• Many ideas never get past the moment of conception because they aren't acted upon
• The process often takes us to new and unexpected places in our work
• The human mind craves resolution of unresolved patterns
• Why you work must be aligned with what you work on
• Strategies:
  • Project strategy: why? who? what? when? where?
  • Creative strategy: how?
• A lifetime of mediocrity is a high price to pay for safety
• We must practice taking risks / If we don't stretch ourselves, we don't grow
• Be expectant, but without expectations
• Project: 4-6 questions with problems to solve in order to complete the project successfully
• Your mind is a wonderful servant but a terrible master → PRIORITISE
• The Big 3 -- list of 3 projects that are missing a creative breakthrough
• Cluster similar/related tasks.
• What is inspiring you?
• Buffers--or quick energy-building activities. They are not slacking
• Weekly / Monthly / Quarterly planning
• Study plan - quarterly:
  • Where are we lacking information for the next three months? (25%)
  • What am I curious about right now? (50%)
  • What would be good for me? (25%)
• Stimulus queue - list of items to experience/read/study
• Surprise can be an indicator of an entrenched belief that needs to be challenged
• Indexed notebook:
  • First page: two columns, headers = "stimuli queue" and "ideas"
  • Then under each column, title and page of the notebook item
  • Maybe items could be numbered too (just in case there's more than one item per page)
• Take notes --but review them the next day (~10 minutes)
• Play: take a walk, visit a museum, serve others, attend an uncomfortable event
• My value is determined by what I create, not for how much time I spend creating it
• Establish IDEA TIME - 1h/wk. Thinking about one item from the big 3. Focused. Ask questions--this puts the brain into solutions mode rather than "how" mode.
• Establish UNNECESSARY CREATING TIME (eg. painting, landscaping, gardening, etc) ~ 1h
  • experience the FLOW ~~ getting lost in the work
• Checkpoints: review/plan on
  • Focus (challenges, big 3, cluster)
  • Relationships
  • Energy
  • Stimuli (study times for each week/what to study for the next months, recorded stimuli, purposeful experiences...)
  • Hours (plan when and about what)
  • Weekly ~20 min
  • Monthly ~1 hour at the end of the month
  • Quarterly ~1 day or 1h/day in 1 week - Analyse the past-plan for the future
• Dream a bit ~ 30 min in quarterly planning writing things that seem beyond my reach at the present. Things that would "blow my mind" if they happened.