creativity

I’m coming to another big teaching cycle in Trainerfly and I think this short clip of David Heinemeier Hansson speaking at Stanford’s Entrepreneurship Corner is really useful to frame the mindset:

I know the point in the clip above is more about a strategy to take when you look at the “big guys”, but I really feel like the alternating cycles of “spending” and “teaching” are relevant here. We just went through a “

Jane McGonigal gives a fascinating talk about the “superpowers” cultivated by the game-playing masses (more than 500 million with another billion coming up in the next decade!). Obviously we all have the image of the gamer locked in his mother’s basement, endlessly pawing away at an electronic reward system, like a hamster. McGonigal’s takeaway is a little different though. She emphasizes the motivation, inspiration, and social purpose built into game play.

Check out this talk from 37Signals co-founder Jason Fried at TEDx Midwest, specifically at 5:13 when he starts comparing sleep and work:

It got me thinking about other “phase-based” activities, like Tai Chi or Qigong practice. Most productive practice happens when you can allow yourself to move through several stages of settling in and keep a continuous practice thread going for an hour or more. Over the last 6 years of running 3 hour-long classes back-to-back-to-back, multiple times per week, I’ve gotten a pretty good feel for these phases.