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by snowwrestler
3135 days ago
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Creativity rarely happens on a schedule. Therefore, to plan for optimal creativity means to plan for the ability to engage it whenever it happens. Practically speaking, this means a few things: - You need enough slack in your to-do list to allow you to delay or put off tasks if you suddenly get an idea that you want to explore. - You need a way to capture and explore ideas at any time. This is why a lot of people carry little notebooks in their pocket. I prefer to use my mobile phone. - You need a way to reference previous ideas, as creativity often takes the form of updates, modifications, or combinations of previous thoughts. Again, the notebook or mobile phone can do this for you. - You need a way to take action on ideas--to start making them real. A lot of creative ideas sound great at first but fall apart when you try to actually build them. To the extent GTD can help you do those things, it can help you be creative. But there is nothing inherently creative about a particular system of organization. |
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"There is a muse, but he’s not going to come fluttering down into your writing room and scatter creative fairy-dust all over your typewriter or computer. He lives in the ground. He’s a basement kind of guy. You have to descend to his level, and once you get down there you have to furnish an apartment for him to live in. You have to do all the grunt labor, in other words, while the muse sits and smokes cigars and admires his bowling trophies and pretends to ignore you. Do you think it’s fair? I think it’s fair. He may not be much to look at, that muse-guy, and he may not be much of a conversationalist, but he’s got inspiration. It’s right that you should do all the work and burn all the mid-night oil, because the guy with the cigar and the little wings has got a bag of magic. There’s stuff in there that can change your life. Believe me, I know."
I think most on Hacker News would agree with this sentiment. If you aren't putting in the work how can you expect the muse to give you inspiration? You must lay the framework of creativity in your mind in order for it to strike. It is like the medium of an agar plate you use to grow critters in a lab, only in your mind you must create this medium by hard work and laying the framework. Sure inspiration strikes at times with or without this work, but (for me) it reliably strikes when I put in the work.
GTD is almost meta to this. It is just a system to keep your plate free to do your important work and prioritize your important work. It eliminates the mental clutter so you can focus on what is important. Many other productivity and self help systems all go down that same path. But it doesn't get at the core discipline of being regular and scheduled that is almost a requirement as a professional.