[dark_star]

Software development is creative work. Creative insight can come anywhere, any time. Better ideas can make difficult things easy. And make the impossible– possible.

So the most important thing on a software team (or really any team creating high technology products or services) is an environment where team members feel safe to be themselves– psychologically safe, where they can try out new things, make mistakes, fail, and not be punished or belittled. Say their ideas and have them improved by others, not criticized. It's an environment where team members take care of themselves so they can be creative– sleep enough, exercise enough, be with friends and family enough, play enough.

You have to be at your keyboard or lab bench or whatever enough to make things. But if you are there too much your creativity plummets. This is what I try to get across to my teams.

[Multicomp]

> You have to be at your keyboard or lab bench or whatever enough to make things. But if you are there too much your creativity plummets.

I agree, one of the ideas that I started applying from the book "steal like an artist" involved having an analog and a digital desk for work.

You have creative ideas and brainstorm at the analog desk, then document, iterate, and refine your ideas at the digital desk.

[jcpst]

It seems that no matter what ideas I come up with for capturing creative moments, it becomes vastly simpler if I just use pencil and paper. But I have started finding ways to capture with tech in a low-friction way.

One of them is using the Voiceliner app during times where it's not convenient to write things down. It also forces me to express my idea in natural language.

[jjzhiyuan]

Can't agree more :)

[rjbwork]

Just FYI, you're being downvoted because generally on HN you should just upvote if you have a contentless agreement comment to post, AKA a "this"-style post.