Hi Reader!

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As a grown-up human, I am consistently amazed at how often I have to remind myself to chill the hell out, have a little more fun, and hold life just a tad more lightly. I don’t know exactly how it happens, but somehow, somewhere, the work of adulting just takes over. I have been thinking about it a lot, particularly as we have been diving deep into the creativity and curiosity work.

At some point, the grown-ups have gotten confused and started treating innovation like something that can be bullied into existence. Schedule a brainstorm. Add a whiteboard. Block out time on your calendar for “deep work.” And I am not saying that these tactics aren’t good. They are good. But they are operational tactics. And fundamentally, operational tactics are about supporting and executing conceptual things — ideally, creative things, ideas with energy, life, and human spark (says the person who loves operational tactics). 🫣

Creativity is not a vending machine. YOU are not a vending machine. You cannot insert urgency and receive insight.

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Which begs the questions

• What does creativity need?
• How do you architect the conditions that nurture creativity?

Creativity needs inputs. It needs space. It needs friction. It needs divergence, convergence, AND the tension between the two. It needs contact with other humans. It needs time away from the thing. It needs receptive human nervous systems.

The internalization of creativity as an inherent trait of an individual is relatively new, like 1950’s new. The idea that a person IS a genius, rather than a person who has been touched by genius, is fairly modern, like Romantic era modern.

I love the more ancient historical idea of the human as a vessel receiving creative inspiration. Language is so fun. The word inspiration comes from the Latin inspirare, meaning “to breathe into” or “to blow into.” I think this idea is magical both conceptually and functionally. It takes the focus from being the brilliance (that’s a lot of pressure), and instead turns it toward nurturing “the vessel” (aka YOU) to be ready to recognize, receive, and cultivate possibility and opportunity. (Note: Elizabeth Gilbert talks about this beautifully in THIS TED talk and in her book Big Magic)

So, if the work is to architect and nurture the vessel, how do you do that? Here are a few science-backed ideas to contemplate, ideas backed by enough research, lived experience, and basic human common sense to be worth taking seriously. They are also wonderfully unglamorous and actionable, which I appreciate. #survivalistarchetype​

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Pick one. Or read all three and become insufferably self-aware (my favorite genre of human 😈).

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