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Josh Waitzkin talks about this. Unfortunately he doesn't seem to produce much public work anymore. This is from a Tim Ferriss Interview [1]: And a lot of what I work on with guys is creating rhythms in their life that really
are based on feeding the unconscious mind, which is the wellspring of creativity
information and then tapping it. So for example, ending the workday with high
quality focus on a certain area of complexity where you can use an insight and
then waking up first thing in the morning creating input and applying your mind
to it, journaling on it.
Not so much to do a big brainstorm, but to tap what you've been working on
unconsciously overnight. Which of course, is a principle that Hemingway wrote
about when he spoke about the two core principles in his creative writing
process, number one ending the workday with something left to write and --
Tim Ferriss: Yeah, often in mid-sentence even.
Josh Waitzkin: Right. So not doing everything he had to do. Which most people do, but they
feel this sense of guilt if they're not working. You and I have discussed this at
length, but leaving something left to write and then the second principle, release
your mind from it. Don't think about it all night. Really let go. Have a glass of
wine. Then wake up first thing in the morning and reapply your mind to it.
And it's amazing because you're basically feeding the mind complexity and then
tapping that complexity or tapping what you've done with it. This rhythm, the
large variation of it is overnight, and then you can have microbursts of it
throughout the day. Before workouts pose a question, do a workout, release
your mind after workout, return to it, and do creative bursts.
Before you go to the bathroom, before you go to lunch, before anything. And in
that way you're systematically training yourself to generate the crystallization
experience, that ah-ha moment that can happen once a month or once a year. A
lot of what I do is work on systems to help it happen once a day or four times a
day, and when we're talking about guys who run financial groups of $20 to $30
billion, for example, if they have a huge insight that can have unbelievable
value.
If you can really train people to get systematic about nurturing their creative
process, it's unbelievable what can happen and most of that work relates to
getting out of your own way. It's unloading. It's the constant practice of
subtraction, reducing friction. [1] https://fhww.files.wordpress.com/2018/07/02-josh-waitzkin.pd... |
This is an interesting way to put it. Thanks for the quote!