4 ms·

I generally agree with your sentiment to an extent but let me also play devil's advocate: Whittling your entire life down to process makes you almost robotic a

I generally agree with your sentiment to an extent but let me also play devil's advocate: Whittling your entire life down to process makes you almost robotic and strips you of creativity, spontaneity, and just....that je ne sais quoi of life. It's just too boring. As always, it's a balance and depends on context. Gymtime? Make it a process. Hanging out with friends? Yeah...don't schedule that in your calendar. Just go hang out with them.

moron4hire 10y ago
I fundamentally disagree that process prevents creativity in any way. On the contrary, I think creativity requires process. The idea that creativity is just something that "comes" to you is an extremely harmful myth.
- askafriend 10y ago
  I fundamentally disagree that creativity requires process. Creativity requires inspiration and the most common analogy that I think people use to drive this point home is children at play.
  - moron4hire 10y ago
    Inspiration is not something that just happens. Children at play aren't being distracted by HN or Reddit. You have to sit down and put the work in. Bad writers wait until they have an idea to start writing. Good writers know the ideas don't happen until after they've started writing.
    - askafriend 10y ago
      I agree with you in that inspiration is not something that just happens. It comes from a variety of avenues...from you doing many different things, from you going outside your comfort zone, hearing a new idea, going deeper into a subject etc. And it's probably your own responsibility to put yourself in a position where inspiration can strike (e.g. doing things!). What I meant to express is that chopping up your week into a pre-defined routine that you do every week for years under the guise of discipline is the wrong way to approach it. I think we're mis-communicating because neither of us defined what "process" means to us. Perhaps we really agree with each other.
      - zubat 10y ago
        You probably are in agreement. The point of putting in any time is that you have to develop an appreciation and sometimes new skills or techniques for whatever it is you're doing, before you can act on it in more than a cursory surface way. Hot takes based on textbook knowledge are easy and everyone can do those. Recognizing that, then the problem is just one of how and when you put in that time to go in deep on ideas, when nobody is asking you to. For a lot of folks including myself, routine helps: "I will spend two hours each day on the hard thing I don't know how to solve and have no actionables on," and usually within those two hours something happens to develop your thought process. For younger folks, deliberate engagement in "designed creativity" is something that isn't just not taught, but actively discouraged by the lack of external feedback, role models or conversations. So it's much harder than just picking up a skill by copying and subsequently making some surface changes to the copy.
  - mgkimsal 10y ago
    Given how much people schedule "play dates" for their kids, I wonder how much your point may still hold :)
  - sondr3 10y ago
    It's funny because my friends who are musicians or work with art and such all have a process to get creative. That don't sit around waiting for it, they strive towards it. I've heard and read the same from both books and online that most creative people have a process which they use to become inspired. Which is not to say that you can't just suddenly have a moment of sudden inspiration, just that they are far more rare than the creativity you work for.
  - bawigga 10y ago
    Creativity requires constraints. The constraints that surround the challenges we face force us to come up with creative solutions.
  - jwdunne 10y ago
    Creativity requires both. You have a problem to solve. You first spend time understanding the problem. This process continues until you understand the problem. You then start to turn potential solutions over in your head. Lots of research and thought required - this includes inspiration. You must feed your brain. You continue this process indefinitely until... Epiphany. A special kind of inspiration. You come across something unrelated and your mind connects it to the problem. Ideas in the shower are a typical example. The epiphany gives you a rush - out of nowhere you have the solution. Creativity is a process where inspiration is a key part. They don't have to be exclusive.
    - gcr 10y ago
      Creativity is applicable to scenarios in which there is no problem to solve. What about undirected creative play?
      - ace_of_spades 10y ago
        There is always a problem to solve and there is always process, we simply don't tend to notice it because we take it as a given (i.e., evolution/survival).
        gcr 10y ago
        What objective function is a four-year-old maximizing when pretending to be Batman with friends?
        ace_of_spades 10y ago
        I don't think a kid would be intentionally optimizing anything in this situation. So if you mean that creativity is not only a tool to be used conciously, I agree. I just mean I think it's difficult to argue that anything we humans do can be viewed as anything else but problem solving. So in the case of the kid there might be millions of direct reasons (e.g., boredom > want to solve that), but I think it would still be possible to map any of them to some form of problem > effect or cause > effect relationship. Nothing happens without a reason (without religious connotation).
CuriouslyC 10y ago
Actually, the reverse is true. Cognitive load actually reduces creativity, so by having systems in place to reduce cognitive load you free brainpower to be creative. That being said, I agree that planning too far in advance is a bad idea, mostly because like the weather, there is an element of chaos in people's lives that makes the best possible action at any given moment hard to predict farther than a few days out.
beachstartup 10y ago
> Hanging out with friends? Yeah...don't schedule that in your calendar. Just go hang out with them. this is easy to do when you're younger but after 30 becomes difficult.

moron4hire 10y ago

I fundamentally disagree that process prevents creativity in any way. On the contrary, I think creativity requires process. The idea that creativity is just something that "comes" to you is an extremely harmful myth.

askafriend 10y ago
I fundamentally disagree that creativity requires process. Creativity requires inspiration and the most common analogy that I think people use to drive this point home is children at play.
- moron4hire 10y ago
  Inspiration is not something that just happens. Children at play aren't being distracted by HN or Reddit. You have to sit down and put the work in. Bad writers wait until they have an idea to start writing. Good writers know the ideas don't happen until after they've started writing.
  - askafriend 10y ago
    I agree with you in that inspiration is not something that just happens. It comes from a variety of avenues...from you doing many different things, from you going outside your comfort zone, hearing a new idea, going deeper into a subject etc. And it's probably your own responsibility to put yourself in a position where inspiration can strike (e.g. doing things!). What I meant to express is that chopping up your week into a pre-defined routine that you do every week for years under the guise of discipline is the wrong way to approach it. I think we're mis-communicating because neither of us defined what "process" means to us. Perhaps we really agree with each other.
    - zubat 10y ago
      You probably are in agreement. The point of putting in any time is that you have to develop an appreciation and sometimes new skills or techniques for whatever it is you're doing, before you can act on it in more than a cursory surface way. Hot takes based on textbook knowledge are easy and everyone can do those. Recognizing that, then the problem is just one of how and when you put in that time to go in deep on ideas, when nobody is asking you to. For a lot of folks including myself, routine helps: "I will spend two hours each day on the hard thing I don't know how to solve and have no actionables on," and usually within those two hours something happens to develop your thought process. For younger folks, deliberate engagement in "designed creativity" is something that isn't just not taught, but actively discouraged by the lack of external feedback, role models or conversations. So it's much harder than just picking up a skill by copying and subsequently making some surface changes to the copy.
- mgkimsal 10y ago
  Given how much people schedule "play dates" for their kids, I wonder how much your point may still hold :)
- sondr3 10y ago
  It's funny because my friends who are musicians or work with art and such all have a process to get creative. That don't sit around waiting for it, they strive towards it. I've heard and read the same from both books and online that most creative people have a process which they use to become inspired. Which is not to say that you can't just suddenly have a moment of sudden inspiration, just that they are far more rare than the creativity you work for.
- bawigga 10y ago
  Creativity requires constraints. The constraints that surround the challenges we face force us to come up with creative solutions.
- jwdunne 10y ago
  Creativity requires both. You have a problem to solve. You first spend time understanding the problem. This process continues until you understand the problem. You then start to turn potential solutions over in your head. Lots of research and thought required - this includes inspiration. You must feed your brain. You continue this process indefinitely until... Epiphany. A special kind of inspiration. You come across something unrelated and your mind connects it to the problem. Ideas in the shower are a typical example. The epiphany gives you a rush - out of nowhere you have the solution. Creativity is a process where inspiration is a key part. They don't have to be exclusive.
  - gcr 10y ago
    Creativity is applicable to scenarios in which there is no problem to solve. What about undirected creative play?
    - ace_of_spades 10y ago
      There is always a problem to solve and there is always process, we simply don't tend to notice it because we take it as a given (i.e., evolution/survival).
      - gcr 10y ago
        What objective function is a four-year-old maximizing when pretending to be Batman with friends?
        ace_of_spades 10y ago
        I don't think a kid would be intentionally optimizing anything in this situation. So if you mean that creativity is not only a tool to be used conciously, I agree. I just mean I think it's difficult to argue that anything we humans do can be viewed as anything else but problem solving. So in the case of the kid there might be millions of direct reasons (e.g., boredom > want to solve that), but I think it would still be possible to map any of them to some form of problem > effect or cause > effect relationship. Nothing happens without a reason (without religious connotation).

CuriouslyC 10y ago

Actually, the reverse is true. Cognitive load actually reduces creativity, so by having systems in place to reduce cognitive load you free brainpower to be creative. That being said, I agree that planning too far in advance is a bad idea, mostly because like the weather, there is an element of chaos in people's lives that makes the best possible action at any given moment hard to predict farther than a few days out.

beachstartup 10y ago

> Hanging out with friends? Yeah...don't schedule that in your calendar. Just go hang out with them. this is easy to do when you're younger but after 30 becomes difficult.