🤯Unknown Unknowns #92 - The Creative Experiment

Mar 20, 2023

I’d like to sum up all the ideas I’ve had recently about creativity and suggest a way forward. Like any creative endeavor, it’s an experiment. I haven’t figured out creativity, but here's what I've come up with so far. I would love to hear your thoughts and follow your journeys.

Here's my methodology for unlocking your creativity:

Have an ideation habit:
- Journal every day. Journaling allows you to bypass your filter.
- Write a mini-essay (~100 words) a day
- An idea list every day - ten ideas on a topic
- Whiteboard ideas
  - What ideas do you get from essays, books, and podcasts that you consume?
  - What ideas do you disagree with?
  - What are the ideas that you come across that remind you of your life?
  - What ideas do want to think about further?
Figure out what you need permission from. When we procrastinate, self-sabotage, or sandbag, we are subconsciously asking for permission. You need to understand what’s blocking you before you take action.
- Exercises:
  - Journaling,
  - Meditating
  - 5 whys
  - Samskaric inquiry
Do things
- Say yes to everything
- A 100-day challenge
  - A longer commitment forces you to iterate in order to find a method that works for you.
- Push past your comfort zone. You can be public or private.
Reflect:
- Do you have autonomy, mastery, purpose?
- Are you bored, mimetic, repetitive?
- Don't worry about being good. How much do are you enjoying what you do?

I think if you follow these four steps, creativity will come.

Discoveries:

I recently discovered StudioBinder’s series, The Director’s Chair. This YouTube series compiles interviews with movie directors, showing how they write and direct movies. I was really interested in how Quentin Tarantino, Wes Anderson, and David Fincher talked about their creative process.

1️⃣ Quentin Tarantino

I worked in a video store in Manhattan Beach California, a place called Video Archives.
Our specialty was foreign films, classics, TV shows, you know, this oddball stuff.
I had like the shelf and every week I would do a new theme.
“The films of Michael Parks,” “the films of Andre DeToth,” you know. That store was my one source of artistic expression.

2️⃣ Wes Anderson

Q: Are you feeling after all these years that there is a theme or a sense of what a Wes Anderson movie is?
A: There`s that an outside perception. It's probably better for me if it stays in outside perception because the more I think about it the more confused I get. I, you know, I have the choice of saying, here are things that people can say: "That's like what you've done before."
And I can actively, aggressively avoid them and steer away from them or I can say, "What do I want to do?"
How what would I like it to be?"
And accept that there's might be some very clear threads and things that are going to connect my movies together.
I have tended to say, I think I would rather just do what I love.

3️⃣ David Fincher

I want to know what every motherfucker in the room does so that when somebody says to me, we can't do that.
It's like, oh yeah, well, Fincher will do that. The dropdown plate, if you just do it, you know.
I never want to be the guy who was victimized by other people's laziness.

You know, when you're talking to Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, you're not talking about use this synthesizer or this drum machine or whatever.
You're talking about "I need a feeling" happening here.

Quote of the Week:

“If men had postponed the search for knowledge and beauty until they were secure, the search would never have begun.” — C.S. Lewis

You can find more of my writing at chr.iswong.com.

Questions, suggestions, complaints? Email me at chris@iswong.com. Feedback welcome.

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Leaving you in peace,

Chris