Your project or the problem you are solving should always be connected to something larger—a bigger question, an overarching idea, an inspiring goal. Whenever your work begins to feel stale, you must return to the larger purpose and goal that impelled you in the first place. This bigger idea governs your smaller paths of investigation, and opens up many more such paths for you to look into. By constantly reminding yourself of your purpose, you will prevent yourself from fetishizing certain techniques or from becoming overly obsessed with trivial details. In this way you will play into the natural strengths of the human brain, which wants to look for connections on higher and higher levels.
Mastery by Robert Greene You’re the primary person responsible for the marketing of your book. Publishers don’t use marketing to cause books to sell well—they help books that are already selling well to sell even better. To use a pyromaniac analogy, publishers are accelerants, not sparks.
However, there are some publishers who are embracing the new electronic realities of publishing. O’Reilly Media is one example. Let’s take a look at its approach to publishing: Direct sales. O’Reilly sells books directly to people from its website. It doesn’t try to preserve a multi-tiered distribution model that doesn’t necessarily serve customers better. Multiple formats. O’Reilly provides ebooks in PDF, EPUB, MOBI, DAISY, and Android APK formats as well as printed-on-paper. DRM-free. O’Reilly publishes ebooks that are free of digital rights management (DRM). (More about DRM in chapter 20: “Self-Publishing Issues.”) Easy access. Customers can download their O’Reilly books in as many formats as many times for as many devices as they want. Syncing. People can sync their O’Reilly books to Dropbox (a cloud-based storage service) accounts. (More about Dropbox in chapter 5: “Tools for Writers.”) Online subscription. O’Reilly created the Safari Books Online brand, which provides online subscription access to books, videos, and interactive learning tools. Community. There is a question-and-answer forum as well as a community forum for O’Reilly customers. Conferences. O’Reilly conducts conferences around the world about the topics in its books. Multimedia. O’Reilly offers webcasts by authors as well as online educational courses and certification. O’Reilly is the way of the future: multiple formats, DRM-free, and expanding the definition of publishing to include multimedia learning, community forums, and face-to-face conferences. APE: Author, Publisher, Entrepreneur-How to Publish a Book by Guy Kawasaki, Shawn Welch They designed the machine, built it, and flew it. Their model depended not on superior technology, but on the highest number of test runs, creating an optimal learning curve. This revealed flaws to be worked on and gave them a feel for the product that could never be had in the abstract. The emphasis was not on the parts, but on the overall flying experience; not on power, but on control. Since money was a factor, supreme importance was placed on ingenuity in getting the most out of the least. The differences between the two approaches can be seen in the analogies they chose to base their designs on. The abstract thinkers opted for the ship analogy, working on the similarity of navigating an alien medium (water or air), which made them place importance on stability. The Wright brothers chose the bicycle, which emphasized the rider or pilot, the user-friendliness of the machine, and its overall functionality. Focusing on the pilot instead of the medium ended up being the right answer to the puzzle, because it led to the design of something that could be maneuvered. From that starting point, a more complex airplane could be easily evolved.
Mechanical intelligence is not a degraded form of thinking, as compared to abstract reasoning. It is in fact the source of many of our reasoning skills and creative powers. Our brain developed to its present size because of the complex operations of our hands. In working with resistant materials to create tools, our ancestors developed a pattern of thinking that transcends manual labor itself. The principles behind mechanical intelligence can be summarized as follows: whatever you are creating or designing, you must test and use it yourself. Separating out the work will make you lose touch with its functionality. Through intense labor on your part, you gain a feel for what you are creating. In doing this work, you see and feel the flaws in the design. You do not look at the parts separately but at how they interact, experiencing what you produce as a whole. What you are trying to create will not magically take off after a few creative bursts of inspiration, but must be slowly evolved through a step-by-step process as you correct the flaws. In the end, you win through superior craftsmanship, not marketing. This craftsmanship involves creating something with an elegant, simple structure, getting the most out of your materials—a high form of creativity. Mastery by Robert Greene Regardless of our patterns of behavior in the past, we can choose to act differently in the present—and that a conscious decision to not let perfectionism control us makes a huge difference in our ability to break through our limits and enjoy the creative process.
Treat your work as a refuge—an oasis of control and creative satisfaction in the midst of the bad stuff. Don’t beat yourself up if you’re not on fire creatively every day—give yourself credit if you show up for work and make even a small amount of progress. When you put down your tools for the day, you may even see your personal situation with a fresh eye. Manage Your Day-to-Day: Build Your Routine, Find Your Focus, and Sharpen Your Creative Mind (The 99U Book Series) by Jocelyn K. Glei First, it is essential to build into the creative process an initial period that is open-ended. You give yourself time to dream and wander, to start out in a loose and unfocused manner. In this period, you allow the project to associate itself with certain powerful emotions, ones that naturally come out of you as you focus on your ideas. It is always easy to tighten up your ideas later on, and to make your project increasingly realistic and rational. But if you begin with a feeling of tightness and pressure, focusing on the funding, the competition, or people’s opinions, you will stifle the associative powers of the brain and quickly turn the work into something without joy or life.
Second, it is best to have wide knowledge of your field and other fields, giving your brain more possible associations and connections. Third, to keep this process alive, you must never settle into complacency, as if your initial vision represents the endpoint. You must cultivate profound dissatisfaction with your work and the need to constantly improve your ideas, along with a sense of uncertainty—you are not exactly sure where to go next, and this uncertainty drives the creative urge and keeps it fresh. Any kind of resistance or obstacle that crosses your path should be seen as yet another chance to improve your work. Finally, you must come to embrace slowness as a virtue in itself. When it comes to creative endeavors, time is always relative. Mastery by Robert Greene |
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