Tim Brown on creativity and play | Video on TED.com

Playfulness, creativity, and imagination. Remember when it was just as much fun to play with the box as with the toy? Tim Brown in a wonderful Ted Talk you've got to see if you need to reclaim your creative freedom.

Tim Brown on creativity and play Video on TED.com

Two-Oh-One-Oh

Good Lord, it's December already and it looks as though this blog thing has been.. shall we say, sporadic?

Giving good thought to what this blog is supposed to be all about - Ideas (forget Big Ideas because those are hard to come up with, consume way too much time, and require the kind of fortitude and undivided attention I'd rather divide.), I've decided that this shall be about Littler Ideas. Manageable Ideas. Nonthreatening Ideas. Brilliant Ideas. After all, this, I claim, is the space in which they can be nurtured and grown. Besides, it's all most of us with bright dreams and full time jobs have the time or energy for.

With that being typed, I can tell you that I've also been giving lots of thought to ways in which I can bring lots of terrific Little Ideas to my personal life in order to grow a bigger and better 2010.

Whew. 2010. I think that may be the first time I've written that. (By the way, how will you pronounce that? Are you a modernist going with Twenty-ten or traditionalist sticking with Two thousand ten?)

Back to growing Little Ideas. See, I'm feeling the whole hope of a new year thing and have been inspired by various Happiness websites like, well... The Happiness Project for instance. But I'm not going to follow the project online because that probably involves more commitment than I've time for. So here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to make one tiny resolution per day in 2010, and they're going to be the kind I can complete in a single day and therefore easily keep. They're also not going to be the kind that'll set me up with a dreaded daily task in order to fulfill empty self-improvement goals. They're just going to be the kind that'll force me outside myself and get me to to live mindfully and purposefully, if even for one resolution.

The tiny, manageable, less than earth-moving resolutions are going to look like this:

Day 1: Make (from scratch) a thank you card.

Day 2: Spend time with my spouse watching one entire televised sporting event from beginning to end.

Day 3: Do 1 nice thing for someone I really can't stand.

Etc.

The challenge is to come up with 365 new little things to do in 2010. And, then, of course, write a weekly wrapup of them Right Here. See? There's the goal right there, the place where this Little Idea rolls right up into its bigger one, to regularly write throughout the coming year.

Easy, right? That's it. That's the 2010 Biggest Little Idea I could come up with.

Because fire-breathing's a lost art

I've been away too long! Vacation's very happily chewed into my time this month and I've neglected this space.

But I've dropped in to point you to an excellent post by Sunil Sebastian (the guy who Makes Things Go) on Slaying the Creativity Dragon. You know... the beast that keeps you from developing your newest idea. Or the one that's keeping me from coming up with my own blog posts.

Meanwhile, go read Sunil's tips on the best way to kick off your battle, wrestle the dragon under your bed, and come out breathing your own Great Balls of Fire. His plan for stepping through the creative process makes coming up with new ideas seem oh-so-less-intimidating!

Next: What Curiosity has done for me lately.

Next, Next: Besides a badass pirate logo and a boatload of Great Big Ideas, what makes the folks at Brains On Fire so damned cool?

It's not Schrodinger's fault. He was just Curious

I've recently come across an odd banana-yellow book shouting a single word title from the bookstore shelf. The link is here. It's called Curious?

Aren't you?

I love the bold black font of the title, love the Curious-George feel of the dust jacket.

I'll admit that I haven't yet read the book and this is by no means a review or endorsement, but I'm going to write about it anyway. There's something about the idea that resonates.

Todd Kashdan of the really-long-and-rather-ambiguously-named, Laboratory for the Study of Social Anxiety, Character Strengths, and Related Phenomena, says that the missing ingredient to living a more fulfilling life is to become more curious. And then cultivate it.

Because this sounds like such an awfully simple and zen sort of premise, and because I'm already convinced that fulfillment happens to come in two convenient forms- hatching of new thought and nurturing of new ideas- it appeals.

The Curious book is next on my reading list but meanwhile, it's the bold-font title that's prompted some thinking about the role curiosity plays in snowballing Big Ideas.

Along with apophenia, one of the quirkier and sometimes even annoying traits I'd claim is a basic curiosity which causes me to ask people a lot of questions. The two traits tag team, because to make the connections that form those Big Ideas I'm always talking about, you've got to ask a lot of questions. Every new venture or adventure I've begun has come from a single query.

What if I started a blog on cultivating all those Big Ideas my friends always seem to cook up?

The energy and impetus to continue moving forward remains as long as I engage by asking more questions:

Where do those Big Ideas come from?

What are the essential qualities of a person who continually comes up with new (ad)ventures?

How can I encourage myself and others through the "idea incubation" stage?

How do we find the energy to work through stalls and setbacks ?

I've found that as the curiosity fades, the Idea begins to die. But what kills it? According to Kashdan's book, it's when the benefits of being curious no longer outweigh the risks of pursuing an unknown path.

Kashdan talks about developing the kind of person he calls "a curious explorer",and since he's volunteering to help me out, I'm up for some personal development. His promised methods sound just right for conjuring success from the genesis of a single question.

Over the next couple of weeks while on vacation, I'll be reading and taking notes. If his promised "exercises to show you how to become what he calls a curious explorer" deliver, this will become a testing ground for developing what he hopes is a "person who's comfortable with risk and challenge", and this blog will become a place where I'll examine functioning optimally in this, our "unstable, unpredictable world".

Going in, I've got a lot of questions for Kashdan. But for you, here's one: Do you know that Curious George was not a monkey?!

Breaking Bread with your Monster Under the Bed

To continue the thoughtstream from my last post on creativity and human potential, I'm pointing you to CNN's article:

How to Fail Your Way to Success.

The message is a simple one I'd come across with through reading and studying eastern philosophies. The buddhist view seems to be, as blogger and teller of stories Communicatrix explains, to lean right into it. Move towards it, and sit down with it. Make it a cup of coffee and a poundcake if it means you can get comfortable in its presence. List what you don't like about this monster and think through each bullet point until you can feel the emotions that come with the failure, then decide, one by one, whether you can accept it.

It's ironic that for the most part, every time I've failed spectacularly while attempting something new, I've been pleased with the resulting story I get to tell. And I actually smile hard or laugh whenever I recount each one of them. What's more, I'm nearly compelled to announce my failures. Just like this: There's the time I got stuck (impaled!) on a fence between the Daytona Airport and the Speedway during race week, poised in full view of several sports network trucks with running camera equipment.

Or maybe it was more like the occasion I moved up from riding a Honda 250 to a Sportster 1200 for the very first time and actually tried using the instructor's lessons on putting only one foot down when coming to a full stop. I survived, the bike's clutch handle and exhaust pipes didn't.

These were very small and personal failures. No fortunes were lost this time, and in the end, I'm infinitely more pleased with myself for trying than I am upset with the failure.

Does this pride-in-taking-the-dare over embarassment-for-the-defeat hold true for you as well? How can we keep this feeling in mind and use it to our advantage when we're poised to take our next leap?

We'll have a hell of a story. Do you have one to tell?