If you think about your daily newspaper it does not have a choice. The number of pages is set by the amount of advertising space they sell. Each day, though, has varying amounts of news - some days, very little happens. But it would be no good the journalists filling up the first few pages and then printing a notice on all the others saying “if we’d been able to think of anything to write we would have put it here”. No matter how little is going on around them and no matter how much space they have to fill, newspapers simply have to fill the space allocated to them - plus they simply MUST do it before a specified time. The only way they can achieve this is to have a system.

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How to have a Constant Stream of Blogging Ideas

right. the design constraints of daily publishing call content to be generated. although, i’d argue that this differs from “having ideas.” it’s proven that pressure or circumstance can produce excellent work and use creative/critical thinking. this is all forced though. backing away from system-generation and focusing on means to a conclusion is something i wish people would focus a little more on.

it’s incredibly hard to be very self-aware. not that we aren’t capable, i just find that it’s very hard to be honest and not as pre-occupied with life to achieve a certain level of awareness.