Secondly, the thing everyone wants to know: who thought up the chicken? Everyone makes a big mystery out of it, but if you ask me, the mystery is more about why everyone wishes it was a single person in an ah-ha moment. We get that a lot still. People want it to be dramatic. As if doing things methodically until you get a great idea is disappointing. As if coming up with a good idea should be easy.

― happy 5th birthday, subservient chicken

jacob:

I love when you are mulling over an idea, tossing around different possibilities, when suddenly everything collides and it all falls into place.

When you just feel your brain exploding with thousands of connections and jumps and thoughts all at once.

Being so overwhelmed with answers and new questions. I fucking live for that.

7.

saturday, january 24th.  ~1:15pm eastern.  from memory.

driving down the new jersey turnpike, flying past trucks transporting goods.  warehouses storing goods.  people driving from one location to another.

i thought briefly about the social science behind why humans, normally, are drawn to live in central locations like big cities.

i thought about the innovations in terms of sustainability.  people create things like really good restaurants to make food that we eat.

i thought about career changes.  i thought about going back to creating things that you can see the tangible result for.  not bi-monthly bank deposits.  not a “good job.”  actual things.  carpenters build houses.  cooks make dishes that people eat.  consumption with a tangible, measurable result.

i went back to food.  how great it must feel to see people enjoy consuming what you create to sustain themselves.  you’re not just a resource to them but you’re an enjoyable, desirable resource.

moved onto the psychology of choice.  why menus exist.  why you can’t order anything you want.  why it’s not a good idea to order anything you want.

what is behind great food?  great ingredients.  fresh, sometimes complex and sometimes simple combinations.

create a restaurant.  7 ingredients that change weekly or daily.  no menu.  customer comes in, examines ingredients and asks for a creation completely of their direction.  create to best of ability and serve.  providing ultimate choice and wreaking havoc on one’s decision standards all at the same time.  it’d probably be a flash in the pan.  new, inventive idea that was eventually over-laden with psychological strain and we’d go back to making organic hot dogs for our country’s next generation of trust fund kids hanging out in the gentrified city du jour.

And it happens all the time when I’m designing. Oops, I dumped a white paint can where color used to be. Wait. That’s nice. It’s become a part of my process. A part I can’t anticipate, or account for, but a part nonetheless.

I’ve been thinking about ways to facilitate these accidents. Make them happen more often. I haven’t come up with anything yet. Too much coffee, not enough coffee, time of day, etc. — are they really accidents, or our subconscious guiding the way?

― SimpleBits ~ Beautiful Accidents

Ze Frank: Executing > Theoretical Perfection

43folders:

the show with zefrank (2007-11-06 / “washington, ideas, brain crack”)

Ze Frank, on executing ideas even, or especially, when you can’t do them perfectly. (PNSFW)

[video via Waxy Links]

As some pals and I have been banging around ideas for new projects, I’ve been thinking a lot about Ze Frank, and realizing what a talented and brave fellow he is.

I didn’t follow The Show closely during its beloved one-year run, but I’ve enjoyed several episodes quite a lot, and, in the time since The Show ended, I’m retroactively (sporadically) been catching up on some of the little projects Ze’s pushed out over the last few years. Prolific, warm, and very engaging work.

The “brain crack” video arrived with perfect timing, because I’ve been obsessing over a similar idea. In the video above, Ze says, unblinkingly:

And the longer they wait, the more they convince themselves of how perfectly that idea should executed…But the bummer is most ideas kind of suck when you do them.

That’s inspiration that’s hard to beat.

---

Also, although most sports racers certainly will have seen it by now, Ze’s talk at TED from a few years back is a stitch.

some ideas are a lot like crusty pizza plates — the best way to get them done is to put them in the sink and let ‘em soak.

― Twitter / Jack Cheng: some ideas are a lot like …

Ideas for '09

merlin:

I asked people on the Twitter to Toot me their ideas for projects I should do in 2009. Lotta yuk-yuks, a few B-minuses, and several bits of shiny gold.

My Five Six Favorites

Remy: - redesign the concept of how a technology conference/expo should run so that they’re not such a waste of everyone’s time. Balut: Write about how successful late-bloomers with diffuse, vague, or conflicted interests managed to find their special niche. jdickerson: Write a novel or book & also write abt process to chart creativity,focus, attention, mastery, etc. Or u do one; I’ll do other Remiel: Obsess Out Loud ‘09, live-broadcast symposium: (anti-)Thought Leaders (Hodgman, Gruber, more) talk about Creating Well, Often stevewhitaker: if you’re serious: I’d love to hear a series of interviews you do with people whose work you admire/appreciate. justinlilly: I would like to see more video production. Things like wallet-guy are quite nice. I also enjoyed the video of ylnt.

By Way of Consensus

And my gut check on what people like that also interests me:

• write a book
• do more You Look Nice Today (and in different flavors)
• revive The Merlin Show
• just go do something cool

You Rock

Thanks to everybody who chimed in. I’m grateful you’d share your ideas with me. Here’s hoping we all throw down some good stuff in the aught nine.

[(Nearly) all responses below.]

I think it’s better to have ideas. You can change an idea. Changing a belief is trickier. Life should malleable and progressive; working from idea to idea permits that. Beliefs anchor you to certain points and limit growth; new ideas can’t generate. Life becomes stagnant.

― Rufus, from “Dogma” (via affremblequotes)

I don’t think creativity is coming to an end. I think creativity is increasing at an increasing rate, and always will.

Creativity is generally a combination of existing ideas. If there were only two concepts in the universe, creativity would be “What happens if we put them together?” If you add a third and fourth concept to the universe, the number of creative combinations shoots up.

The Internet allows you to check the originality of your idea quickly, so it sometimes seems that all the good ideas have been taken. But the Internet also seeds us with many more concepts than we would otherwise be exposed to. Humans are like distributed computing for creativity. The Internet and the media and our daily lives dump huge volumes of raw concepts into our heads and we process and combine things until something new feels right.

Worrying comes from predicting the future on a straight line, imagining trouble increasing at some established pace. But the real future comes in leaps and bounces, with creative solutions expanding faster than problems. I believe this is some sort of fundamental law of the universe, that solutions will always outpace problems.

Take a deep breath. You’re going to be fine. Someone, somewhere, just thought of an idea that will fix everything. And you couldn’t stop it if you tried.

― Scott Adams (via peterwknox)