Scott Berkun's Blog, page 71

Why you get ideas in the shower

When you are known as a writer on creativity, people send you things. Recently I was forwarded a link to AquaNotes, a waterproof notepad you can put in your shower. I've never used one, but I can tell you the science behind why people get ideas in the shower.

Technically speaking we get ideas all the time – that's what it means to be conscious. We have ideas for what to eat, say, and do in nearly every waking moment. It's quite hard to stop thinking, as anyone who has tried to practice meditation can tell you. We are hard-wired for ideas.

More germane to showers, we rarely admit how much of who we are is driven by our subconscious minds. We know our dreams, which are owned and operated by our subconscious, can be incredibly creative. But on a busy day in modern times we are bombarded with information, and our conscious mind dominates. It's only when we have quiet time, going for a walk, getting some exercise, or taking a shower, that our conscious minds quiet down enough for our sub-conscious to be heard. And that's why you get ideas in the shower. The other inputs to your mind are quiet, your body (which is connected to your brain) is relaxed, and the way is clear for the rest of your brain to bubble up interesting thoughts. (Chapter 1, 6 and 12 of The Myths of Innovation explores the science/history of, and advice on, how creativity works – sample chapters here (PDF)).

Of course there are other ways to engage the natural creativity of your sub-conscious. Taking an improv theater class is all about learning simple games that quiet your conscious brain, and let your creative instincts come through. And as everyone is different, going for a run, sharing coffee with friends, or painting a fence might provide the best kind of environment for you. Lastly, there's drugs and alcohol, substances artists have used for centuries to shift their thinking and allow other parts of the mind to have center stage. Don't kid yourself: the caffeine in your coffee does all kinds of things to how your brain functions.

But part of the mythology around ideas and showers is somehow a truly great idea will, on its own, make you rich and change the world, a fantasy I can promise has never happened. Ideas are easy to find once you understand the basics of how they work (See ideas are made of other ideas). But it's always what you do with your ideas after you get them that matters. And perhaps this Aquanote thing, which lets you leave the shower with the idea in your hand, isn't such a silly idea after all.

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Published on May 09, 2011 09:01

Quote of the month

From an interesting series in The Atlantic on first drafts, and creativity:

After the first pass, the painting is wrong—at least in that it's not complete yet. Because it's a face, I can't leave it turquoise, I can't leave it purple. I love having rights and wrongs. You have to hang in there until you get it to read correctly. I just work intuitively and start making corrections. The colors combine like words into a sentence, or notes into a chord. Then I'll rotate the painting so that a different axis is up. That allows me to reanalyze all the shapes and colors. The system seems totally mechanical and so systematized, but in fact the thing about limitations like these is that they free you to be more spontaneous and intuitive. The painting is always in a state of flux.

-Chuck Close, as told to Alex Hoyt for The Atlantic

Theres an interview with Close and singer Paul Simon here.

The series includes short articles on creative process by Paul Simon, Frank Gehry, T.C. Boyle and more.

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Published on May 05, 2011 09:00

How To Fix Email: A Radical Proposal

Professor Beth Kollo has an interesting idea about our email dominated culture, in a post called Recreating Email. What if we changed a basic rule about how it works to give us back more control? Why do we assume it has to work the way it has? She offers:

…email isn't an 'it.' It's a technological system, built by people, and it can be changed! It can! It can have different kinds of functionality. Someone at some point decided email should be able to be formatted like word processors — so now we have bold,italics, etc. So let's be creative about what's possible with email — and what we could make impossible if we wanted.

I dig it. Beth believes, as I do, that technology encodes values. A speedometer that goes up to 150 when the speed limit is 60 suggests a value different from the values of the law. Just as a 140 character text limit suggests values about what can or should be said. So there are dangerous assumptions are encoded in the design of email, and we might need a redesign to fix them.

Here's her specific proposal for fixing email:

Here's how it works: Email servers that service workplaces with actual working hours are configured so that individual users can write as much email as they want, but the server will only deliver email between 8 am and 6 pm. And only Monday through Friday. And not on holidays. That's the default setting. An individual employee doesn't configure it to do things this way. It's the default. This is key. Because defaults telegraph the institution's expectations. Defaults establish the boundaries of accepted and expected behavior.

So email only gets delivered during work hours. But let's say I have a couple close colleagues with whom I collaborate, and I want to be able to reach them at any time. In order to do that, I have to ask their permission, a kind of friend request. And they have to agree. It's a two-way handshake, like a pgp key. And it expires quarterly.

Interesting. I like the idea that there are boundaries for email. But I don't like that the organization is going to set them for everyone. First, maybe some employees are most productive at night (I often am). The defaults here make it hard for them to be effective. Second, putting rules like these in place makes it easy for other rules to follow (length limits? Emails per day?), and I don't like the idea of my employer dictating to me, or anyone, how to be effective. I suppose if it's all optional, and these are just defaults that's one thing, but IT departments tend to be heavy handed with rules and such.

I'd much rather see organizations evaluating me for my performance, but not restricting me to what means I can use to perform. Perhaps they can offer training, or provide tools I can choose to use like Rescue Time that help me get regular feedback on how I can manage my time, and my email usage. It's embarrassing how little Outlook, gmail and Thunderbird do to teach good email and information overload management tactics (they do almost nothing).

But I do like the spirit of Beth's point: email has a design. How can we change the design of email, and email applications, to better serve us?

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Published on May 03, 2011 16:21

New update on the next book

After a pre-spring hiatus, things are rolling again on book #4. First update on the book is here, and then weeks ago I let you all vote – here are the results:

As you can see 14% of you chose to take things into your own hands, and offered a write-in vote for the title. Since you took the time, I did read them all and they're listed here:

Big ideas for curious minds
Intelligent Provocations: Big ideas for curious minds
Idea Inferno
Provoke the Mind; Idea Punk; On all Cylinders; Ignite your Mind; Idea Science;
Provocative Ideas for Curious Minds
The no BS guide to…
Making Scott Talk
Provocateurs: Reclaiming curiosity
Flame On! Ignite Your Mind
Intelligent Provocations: How to communicate big ideas to the masses
Because! (and other answers)
The Power of Serendipity
Ponder this: Intelligent provocations for curious
Provocative Ideas, Curious Minds
Advanced Trolling: Intelligent provocations for curious minds
A Mind's Eye: my thoughts light fires in your cities
With Provocation: Challenge Everything
Ideas of a curious mind
The Berkun Blaze: Hot Ideas to Set Your Mind on Fire
Berkun Bag of Big Ideas
Fear me?
Steal this idea
Curious Minds Always Have Big Ideas
Its All About the Money
Poke your Brain with a Stick
Intelligent Provocations: non-polarized explosive thoughts
spark to inferno: ideas to set your mind on fire
The firebrand for your mind
only ok – tried playing off synonym of Confession?
Scott Berkun: Intelligent Provocateur
In Summation
Your Mind on Fire: Big ideas for curious minds
______ : Big ideas for curious minds
Arguendo: Intelligence, Provoked
Pyrobrainiac: Set your mind on fire
Questionable difficulty
Provocative Intelligence
Minds on Fire: Big ideas to challenge how you think
Provocation: Challenging ideas for curious minds

My team of Tim Kordik and Krista Stevens will have another update soon. Stay tuned.

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Published on May 02, 2011 13:30

Innovation by Death: A Theory

One point from the often referenced, but rarely read, Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Kuhn, is true revolutionary progress happens only when a generation dies. That's right – death drives change.

Consider how every group of people, from corporations, to universities to families, has a rank of leaders who are the old guard. Having been successful, they have much to lose by adopting change. And even the minority who are hungry and seek change, they are informed by sensibilities of the past, not the future. Their very existence in leadership roles prohibits the next generation, and the ideas of the next generation, from seeing the light of day. If change is their ultimate goal, it's likely best served by them quitting and letting the new guard take over.

Kuhn uses examples from of science, and the assumption scientists revel in change. He points out how powerful deans at the great colleges, peer journal reviewers, and the grant providers, all have their guarded theories and philosophies they will defend, literally, to their death. It's only when the next wave of younger scientists rises into power, and become the new gatekeepers, that philosophical change, and breakthroughs, tend to happen. Or are accepted.

The U.S. Senate, and all governments, are dominated by leaders born decades before the rise, and fall, of fax machines. Obama is the first president in history with an email, and not paper, centric work lifestyle. Many Fortune 500 companies are led by people whose email is printed out for them, or for whom blogs, Facebook and twitter, are, to them, toys for their grand-children.

Anyone born after the rise of the web, or the i-pad, has assumptions about the world those born earlier can never have (just as my generation has assumptions about electricity and mobile phones, my parents could never have). This child will never look at a keyboard or a mouse the same way I do. And until she rises into a position of power, power likely yielded to her by the stepping down of an old guard, that worldview will not be in a position to change the world.

In nature, death is the leading cause of life. Everything that lives depends on the death of something in order to grow. When trees fall, some become what are called nurse logs – their decay becomes the basis for the next wave of growth. By falling down and letting light shine through, the future begins.

For managers and leaders of all kinds, perhaps the best way to make progress happen is to start getting out of the way.

Also see: Innovation by Firing People

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Published on April 29, 2011 14:41

Quote of the month

"A cultivated man becomes ashamed of his property, out of new respect for his nature. Especially he hates what he has if he see that it is accidental – came to him by inheritance or gift or crime, that he feels that it is not having; it does not belong to him, has no root in him and merely lies there because no revolution or no robber takes it away. But that which a man is, does always by necessity acquire, and what the man acquires, is living property, which does not wait the beck of rulers, or mobs, or revolutions, or fires, or storm, or bankruptcies, but perpetually renews itself wherever the man breathes"

- Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-reliance

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Published on April 12, 2011 14:10

The attack of the design weenie

Zeldman wrote, in an excellent post on Vocabulary vs. Storytelling:

AFTER ALL THESE YEARS designing websites and applications, I still don't think in words like "affordance." And when my colleagues use a word like that, my mental process still clatters to a halt while I seek its meaning in a dusty corner of my brain…

Should you ask B.B. King if the lick he just played was in Lydian Mode, he could probably answer you after stopping to think about it. But after all these years playing blues guitar, B.B. King doesn't say to himself, "I'm going to switch to a Lydian scale here," he just plays blues. Scales and vocabulary are necessary when we are learning the craft behind our art. But the longer we practice, the more intuitive our work becomes. And as it becomes more intuitive, it disconnects further and further from language and constructs.

It's a good article. My singular divergence from his theme is the notion that intuition and language are mutually exclusive. They are more a set of different lenses than competitors, as you see different things depending on which you are using. Knowledge of theory can inform intuition and vice-versa – a true master likely sees value in both, as there are things you can learn from each you can't learn from the other.

However my primary reason in writing is to call out the class of people in all fields that only feel smart when they are making others feel dumb. I call them weenies, and there are plenty of design and UX weenies out there, just as there are geek weenies, marketing weenies and writing weenies. They'd rather talk than do, which biases them towards unnecessarily sophisticated language. They make lots of diagrams and offer lots of advice, preferring to be in the abstract than to offer their own specific ideas.

Even in cases where they are great designers, they can fall into weenie mode. Their ego blinds them into thinking their talent gives them the license to bludgeon others with theories and names the other person couldn't possibly know. And the corollary is they assume anyone who doesn't know the exactly facts and theories they know couldn't possibly be a good designer. Task analysis, kerning, information architecture, composition, Paul Rand, contextual inquiry, Dieter Rams… anything said with disdain for those who don't understand says more about the person speaking than the person listening.

True designers, or experts of any kind, should be ambassadors for their ideas and their craft. An expert has to know that most of the world is ignorant of their expertise, and the only way for great design, or UX, or whatever, to be more valued in the world is if the experts make the ignorant feel good about learning what they don't know. Big words and fancy concepts are intimidating by design and any designer who uses them under the guise of teaching / inspiring / motivating should know better. All they are likely doing is intimidating the other person out of the conversation. This strokes a weenie's ego as they think it's a victory, but in truth there is no progress.

If you really want to change the world, don't be a weenie. Be a teacher. Be kind in helping people overcome their ignorance. If you're so talented, you shouldn't be surprised or angry at how stupid everyone else is. Make it fun and safe for them to learn. And in your professional circles, don't bet on vocabulary or name dropping, bet on your ideas. A sketch of a good idea doesn't need $10 words or 20 layer Venn diagrams to be understood. If you don't have the confidence to let your ideas stand tall, and you dismiss the discipline of learning to communicate your ideas well, theory and intimidation are not going to save you from yourself.

Q: What UX / design jargon to you think is most abused, unnecessary or counterproductive?

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Published on April 11, 2011 08:45

Video of the month: best minute you will have

If you've wondered where I've been all this time I haven't been posting, it's safe to say I've wondered why I don't make things like this instead of all the other things I do.

Purely mad, absurd and wonderful. Have the sound on.

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Published on April 04, 2011 09:05

Why you should be weird

They told Van Gogh he used too much paint, and Englebart that the mouse was pointless. Galileo and Copernicus were called heretics for seeing the world for what it was. Dylan and Guthrie were told they couldn't sing and that they had nothing to say. DaVinci's helicopters and Tesla's radio waves stayed in notebooks for years, as the ideas were too weird for ordinary minds to understand.

Most great ideas seem weird at first. Our minds are used to the old world, the old judgments and the old reasons. Few have the imagination and self-reliance to see a new world when its first shown to us. This doesn't mean being weird, or having a weird idea guarantees you anything. Most ideas, weird, cool or reasonable, fail to take hold. Yet it is certain the first time you hear an idea that will eventually change everything it will seem weird to you. And the first time you pitch a great idea, you'll be told by even smart and successful people, that you and your idea are weird. This is to be expected. Many great ideas need second chances to show how great they are.

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Published on March 19, 2011 11:10

(POSTPONED) Speaking at Town Hall Seattle, March 9th

Update.2: I'm forced to postpone the lecture. Sorry to do this but unavoidable for personal reasons. The Town folks are cool and we'll reschedule.

Updated: Only a few days to go – Hope to see you there. Leave a comment – I'll be buying drinks for a pre-show party. Venue tbd.

For all you locals, I have some great news. It's been hard to find big public venues to speak at here in Seattle, but I finally scored a big one.

On Wed March 9th, 7:30pm, I'll be speaking at Town Hall Seattle on Creativity and Innovation. It's going to be fun, and I'll be working on new material for the talk. First 50 people who show up will get a free copy of the paperback edition of The Myths of Innovation.

Leave a comment if you're a fan and you're coming. I might set up a pre-show happy hour, with drinks on me.

Town Hall Listing here, or go straight to ticketing at brownbag (it's $5 and goes to supporting Town Hall)

How do creativity and innovation happen?
How do you know if a new idea will succeed or fail? It's easy (even for experts) to get it wrong, relying too much on wishful thinking and a romanticized understanding of history. Based on the new edition of his bestselling book, The Myths of Innovation, creativity expert Scott Berkun will dissect misguided notions of creativity and provide simple lessons from masters like Picasso, Da Vinci, and Edison, with crossover insights from the latest in art and technology. The first 50 people to attend will get a free copy of The Myths of Innovation. Presented by the Town Hall Center for Civic Life, with Elliott Bay Book Company. Series media sponsorship provided by PubliCola. Series supported by The Boeing Company Charitable Trust and the RealNetworks Foundation.

At Town Hall Seattle, 1119 8th Avenue, Seattle, WA (map), get tickets