Posts from the “Creativity” Category

49 things to do if you’re staying home due to Coronavirus…by Neil Pasricha

Posted on March 13, 2020

Click this link to follow Neil’s blog Have you heard of the Dracula Sneeze? It’s one example of social distancing being recommended these days along with conference cancellations, work from home policies, and school closures. In many places it’s all adding up to more home time, family time, kid time, and together time. If you have a break, how do you embrace it? Today I’m sharing 49 things to do if you’re staying home due to Coronavirus: 49. Build an amazing couch cushion fort 48. Organize the Tupperware drawer 47. Finally scroll through your Camera Roll to pick out a dozen favorites to print for a photo wall 46. Make a lightbulb vase 45. Garden 44. Start a Reading Challenge with your kids (some ideas here) 43. Read The Story of Us at Wait But Why 42. Do a 7-minute workout…

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Categories: Creativity, Modern life

Original Thinkers – Stand up & Wave!

Posted on November 25, 2019

TED Talks always inform and engage. It just goes to show there re so many interesting, unique people willing to stand up and have their say – and we all benefit from listening. How do creative people come up with great ideas? Organizational psychologist Adam Grant studies “originals”: thinkers who dream up new ideas and take action to put them into the world. In this talk, learn three unexpected habits of originals — including embracing failure. “The greatest originals are the ones who fail the most, because they’re the ones who try the most,” Grant says. “You need a lot of bad ideas in order to get a few good ones.” I’m not wild about the idea of frequently failing but I do admit…

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Categories: Creativity, Modern life

Making Sense of Shapes & Abstractions

Posted on July 30, 2018

I’d forgotten how much I enjoy TED Talks. In my never-ending quest for inspiration (and yes, as a way to not work on projects that have stalled), I look at a lot of pictures, always searching for that illusive ‘something’ that will help me when I blog. I’m a compulsive downloader of images from Pexels, Pixabay and Unsplash. Some pictures inspire me, some as simply beautiful and some are quite surprising for many reasons. Here is the description of a funny, thought-provoking talk about how we, as readers, develop unique skills – we can see a combination of lines and letters and ‘fill in the blanks’ to shape images and stories in our minds. Without realizing it, we’re fluent in the language of pictures,…

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Categories: Creativity

Creativity as a martial art

Posted on August 1, 2014

Don’t you just love this? David Allen is the creator/author of Getting Things Done – Five Steps that Apply Order to Chaos. Well, if things in the world and in our lives aren’t chaotic, I don’t know how else to characterize them! Scroll down and there’s a video of David Allen speaking about stress free productivity. Life is messy. We need to examine what we do and change our behaviours (where have we heard this before?). Allow the world into your psyche but manage the inputs (the overwhelming stickiness and mess) so that you can find the time to be creative, recognize opportunity, make the psychological space to think. He calls it ‘psychic bandwidth’. Great advice for writers and multi-taskers!

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Categories: Creativity, Modern life

Tagged: David Allen

June 23, 2014 – TED Talks: Julie Burstein

Posted on June 23, 2014

Radio host Julie Burstein talks with creative people for a living — and shares four lessons about how to create in the face of challenge, self-doubt and loss. Hear insights from filmmaker Mira Nair, writer Richard Ford, sculptor Richard Serra and photographer Joel Meyerowitz. Note: Remember, we have to consider what’s happening close to home, too.

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Categories: Creativity, Generosity, Modern life

Tagged: generosity, giving, Julie Burstein, TED Talks