RC#009: The Myth of Originality
Hey friends,
Hope you had an amazing weekend!
In this week’s edition I’m going to cover:
The Myth of Originality
The Secret of Life in the words of Steve Jobs
Applying KonMari to your creative spaces
Announcing Creative Workouts
Let’s dive right into it.
The Myth of Originality
Originality is undetected plagiarism.
One of the most flattering compliments you can get as a creative is that your work is "original". But, is it really? Can someone actually create something from scratch without any influence or inspiration whatsoever?
I think you can't.
In my opinion, all the "original" things were already created a long time ago. Ever since, we've been just tweaking and combining those "original" elements or components with each other to create new stuff.
As Kirby Ferguson likes to say: "Everything is a remix". Every new idea is a combination of two or more old ideas.
Ideas are living, sexual organisms. They get together, have idea sex, and create new, unique idea babies.
That's why the myth of originality is so dangerous - it makes you believe you have to create something new literally out of nothing.
To help you wrap your head around this idea, I compiled this list of resources that I've found extremely valuable:
Steal Like an Artist by Austin Kleon | Book, TED Talk, Talk at Google
Everything Is a Remix by Kirby Ferguson | Film (highly recommended), TED Talk
Networked Knowledge and Combinatorial Creativity (blog post) by Maria Popova
Combinational Creativity (blog post) by Anne-Laure Le Cunff
The Secret of Life
Regardless of what you think about Steve Jobs, we can probably agree that he was a great thinker. And much of his wisdom wasn't only applicable to business, design or technology - it was applicable to life.
In an 1994 interview conducted by the Santa Clara Valley Historical Association, Steve shared one of the most profound insights I've ever come across:
Life can be much broader once you discover one simple fact, and that is, everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you. And you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use. The minute that you understand that you can poke life and actually something will, you know if you push in, something will pop out the other side, that you can change it, you can mold it. That’s maybe the most important thing – is to shake off this erroneous notion that life is there and you’re just gonna live in it, versus embrace it, change it, improve it, make your mark upon it.
With his words, Steve encourages you to be bold, to question assumptions, and to start creating. Not just a business, or a product, or a piece of art - he wants you to create your own rules and your own life.
Whether you've seen or heard this before, I strongly recommend you check out this beautiful, animated version of the interview that Aaron created last week. With his playful and elegant drawings, Aaron makes Steve's profound reflection resonate even more.
Applying KonMari to your digital spaces
The environments you move, live and work in have a huge influence on your emotions, your behaviors and, not surprisingly, your creativity.
I knew about the importance of your environment when you’re trying to build or break habits, but I hadn’t apply this insight to creativity. I only started paying attention to it a few weeks ago when I began reading this book.
Since then, I’ve been considering the idea of deep cleaning my messy digital environments (email, social media accounts, note-taking apps, etc) in order to streamline my creative process and produce better outputs.
Today I was lucky enough to stumble upon this blog post by Nate Kadlac where he explores how to apply the famous KonMari method to tidy up your digital spaces and stay creatively sharp.
I found Nate’s thoughts and suggestions extremely helpful and will very likely start this process in the next couple of weeks.
In addition to the useful advice, the post exhibits some beautiful gems like this one:
Creativity is something to be cared for and nurtured. It’s sacred, fun, playful, and requires a bit of darkness to manifest itself into something useful. Creativity can be found in the spaces of our minds that have been dormant, waiting to be woken up from its slumber. It might require a spark, ignited by an idea or object that unconsciously captures our imagination.
Which reminded me of a another beautiful quote I came across last month:
The mind is not a vessel to be filled but a fire to be kindled.
Even if you don’t need a digital cleanup as desperately as I do (as of today I have more than 4500 unread emails), I highly recommend you check it out.
Creative Workouts
Sir Ken Robinson used to say that schools kill creativity. But I think he might have gone a little too far. I don’t think they kill it. They just atrophy it.
Creativity is like a muscle - if you don’t exercise it hard and often enough, it shrinks and loses strength. That’s good news, though. Because it means it’s not all lost. With consistent effort, you can increase your creative strength and build the muscle back.
Next week I’m going to start creating a short, free resource to help you put the reps in and level up your creative game.
I don’t have a clear deadline yet, but will definitely keep you posted.
I hope you found value in this edition of Rational Creatives. If you did, and know someone who could also benefit from it, please share this email with them.
If you have any feedback, suggestion or just want to say hi, shoot me a DM on Twitter. I’d love to hear from you.
Cheers,
Daniel