Only Connect - The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan

I think this is my goal for 2011.Stop censoring myself, stop avoiding things, stop trying to control every outcome. Allow myself to confront problems, allow myself to not get bottled up in my head, allow myself some sort of pressure valve without being self-destructive or blindingly angry.

One of the things I've notice whenever people give these self-help talks is that they never warn you about the difficulty of the transition. Because anytime you start to change your behavior the first thing you notice is that no one else seems to notice or care. And because you feel vulnerable to begin with, you feel even more vulnerable. You feel like you're opening yourself up to a world that's just going to exploit you and tear you down more. That people are going to laugh and see you for what you are. Weak. Unworthy. Unimportant. Unwanted.

So how to get past that?

I don't know, but I've got a lot of work to do to start figuring it out.

ū— — Crooked Timber

A great response to Merlin Mann's latest blast of nonsensical wisdom, "u-":

I think what makes Merlin Mann compelling is that he knows he has something important to get across about work and creativity, but what he has to convey is a kind of non-demonstrative non-formula, and trying to say it more than once puts him in the same business niche as a legion of people he rightfully despises. He is quite aware of this, so you see him constantly tuning his anti-pitch and sharpening his anti-advice to make sure he doesn’t find himself, late one night, naked on a bed in a motel in Omaha watching himself deliver an infomercial. It’s the problem of trying to teach something that needs to be shown, or of trying to theorize a craft — the way that critics of postwar critical theory used to say that the trouble with those guys was that they had succeeded in unifying theory and practice, in theory. His advice is excellent, but the act of delivering and listening to it subverts the point of the message, or is an example of the problem that needs solving.

For my part, what I see in Merlin's work is the understanding that the good stuff doesn't come from linear, logical overthinking. It requires the ability to dive into the contradictory state of simultaneously taking things very seriously and not seriously at all without worrying about the fact that that's exactly what you're doing.

Penn and Teller interview - Telegraph

A nice interview:

“Doing beautiful things is its own reward,” [Teller] says, when I ask what enjoyment he can still derive from a trick he has pulled off many thousands of times before. “If you do something that you’re proud of, that someone else understands, that is a thing of beauty that wasn’t there before – you can’t beat that.” He gulps suddenly, like a snake trying to swallow an egg, and when he speaks again his voice has a wobble to it.

“There is that great line in Sunday in the Park with George,” he says, referring to Stephen Sondheim’s 1984 musical about Georges Seurat, “ 'Look, I made a hat where there never was a hat’.” He falls silent again and, as unexpectedly as those coins turn to fish, big fat tears start rolling down his cheeks. “I can’t say that line without choking up, because it states, in profoundly poetic terms, what I have always wanted to do with my life. It’s so simple and so funny, but boy it hits me deep.”

Me On Creative Failure - lonelysandwich

Adam Lisagor on Creative Failure

High Stakes Innovation : The Frontal Cortex

This is interesting, but it also assumes that the BP engineers do nothing but happy path all day long:

I imagine the poor engineers trying to fix this catastrophe back at HQ are working around the clock, swilling coffee by the gallon and trying to stay focused amid all the pressure. Their bosses are probably driving them crazy, demanding instant solutions to a seemingly impossible puzzle. And so the engineers drink more coffee. They pull yet another all-nighter. After all, a problem this difficult requires every ounce of their conscious attention.

This post is about why those poor BP engineers should take a break. They should step away from the dry-erase board and go for a walk. They should take a long shower. They should think about anything but the thousands of barrels of toxic black sludge oozing from the pipe.

Get better

[Kung Fu Grippe]

43 Folders on Creativity

Merlin Mann returns with more good advice on writing and creativity. His invocation of the "lizard brain" as an obstacle to doing good work, or getting better, his similar to when David Milch talks about how we internalize and anticipate the criticism of others -- that nasty inner critic that exists to remind you of how stupid or worthless you are. It's all ego and dialectic until you can overcome anxiety and just flow.

Obsession + Topic + Voice

Merlin Mann and John Gruber have incredibly smart things to say about how to be creative.

• Find your obsession - the thing that your friends want you to shut up about
  
• Imagine your ideal audience - your first, best reader - or ideal self
  
• Do not try to replicate the success of others
• Be better at what you do than 80% of everyone else
• Be the go-to person for whatever your obsession is - what happened, what it means, what you should think about it
  
• Value and Opportunity are greater than pursuit of page views and ad dollars
• Give your stuff away for free
  

Listen to their SxSW talk.

Merlin also had this excellent talk on how to stop spinning your wheels and just get started with whatever it is you want to do.

Also, this talk called Inbox Zero on how to manage your email.