I’m not a regular listener of This American Life (with Ira Glass), but his radio show clearly resonates with many people.  I came across this interview with Glass somewhere in my information streams and I found it quite intriguing.

Watch this video clip and then we’ll discuss it after:

This clip is part of a series of videos  where he discusses the creative process and how to develop your skills as a writer or storyteller.  Glass makes the excellent point about the importance of taste:  the ability to discern good quality work from poor quality work.  He plays some of his earlier radio work and dissects it briefly during this video.  He’s critical of his older work, even after eight years of working in radio (he’s been in the field for much, much longer, I think).  I think that anyone who’s trying to improve their work over time feels the same way about their older work.

He brings up another excellent point that many of us don’t recognize.  The process of honing your craft and producing sub-standard work is OK.  In fact, it’s normal, as long as two things hold true:

• you’re trying hard
• you recognize that your work doesn’t meet your own high standards

This is where the importance of taste is invaluable.  If you are able to judge the quality of your work reasonably fairly and realize that it’s not where you want it to be, then that’s OK.  The process of despising your own work is normal, according to Glass.  It’s a natural stage of the process of creative development.  Glass counsels the viewer to have some patience with themselves and realize this is going to happen to most creative people.  Dedication, coupled with the ability to evaluate the quality of your work against high standards, can carry you through if you can just keep trying.

I don’t know about you, but I felt a bit better about myself and my writing after I watched this video.

Here’s a thought about creativity and innovation:

I had a raspberry flavored beer for the first time while on my trip to the Netherlands (not necessarily the one that I have pictured to the left).  It was delicious – I’d never tasted anything like it in my life.  It was like carbonated raspberry juice without any trace of beer taste.  We do not have fruit-flavored beers in my part of the world unless it’s a microbrewery product or else it’s an import.  Our beers usually taste like… well, what we think beer tastes like in Canada.

If I was a brewer or marketer and I really, really liked this beverage, I’d be asking a ton of questions about this beer:  who makes it, where is it made, who drinks it, are there any other beers like it, etc.

This is one of the values of travel, either for business or for pleasure:  discovering new things either by chance or on purpose.  You can’t help but discover new things while traveling in a foreign country.

In my readings, and my own practical experience, on creativity and innovation you really need to expose yourself to new things to help generate better new ideas.  By nature I’m a creature of habit in many ways.  However, I try to learn new things, experiment with doing old things differently (ex:  cleaning a room, organizing books or files, driving from point A to B, etc.)

One of the problems that I have with trying to be efficient all the time is that when you arrive at the best or optimal solution you assume that it will always be the optimal solution.  When other conditions change, sometimes there’s a new optimal solution.  Or, in the case of travel, sometimes you discover something new that changes your way of thinking about what’s best, efficient, or optimal.

If I hadn’t come on this trip and tried a different beverage, I wouldn’t have written this post.

Food for thought.

Image by MontageMan

I’m starting a new creative pursuit whereby I take photos with funny, useful, or otherwise interesting captions.  Right now I’m storing them on TwitPic right here.

The idea is most definitely inspired by “cartoons on the back of business cards” creator Hugh MacLeod and his Gaping Void blog.  Here’s a sample of a recent cartoon by Hugh.

The great thing, for me, about this idea is that it requires no artistic talent at all.

My goal is to make this a daily exercise.

P.S.  So far Hugh shows no signs of wanting to sue me for idea infringement, which is a good sign.

Once again I try my hand at short video.  The results are a bit better this time (I think). 

This video post is about problem solving and creative thinking.

I hope you find this interesting – would love to hear any feedback that you have in the comments section.

Here’s another link to another TED video.  This one is about spaghetti sauce types, as presented by Malcolm Gladwell.  Interesting listening, as always.

I’ve categorized this entry under creativity because I think there’s a valid point here about creativity and innovation.  Sometimes new ideas come from careful analysis of existing data or else from asking the right questions.  It’s a good story.

Taken from a 2004 TED talk, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi talks about flow, creativity and happiness.  I’ve written about Csikszentmihalyi before:  his work is fascinating and illuminating.  I reviewed his book Flow here.

Here’s the video:  it’s definitely worth checking out.