Creativity, Collaboration, and Coffeehouses

This is starting to become familiar...

Please check out another guest post, and this time, on not one but two terrific blogs:  Groupon Grassroots, and Chicago Ideas Week.

Not many places will you find tomes tying together Vincent Van Gogh, Bruce Springsteen, and the wonderful independent coffeehouses of Chicago.

Check out "How to turn coffee into creativity," and hopefully we'll see some of you at our Chicago Ideas Week lab on Monday October 8.

5 Ways to Make Writing Easier …Before You Even Start Writing

Today the Twist Blog can be found at this blog!  Orbit Media is a web design and development company made up of very nice and very smart people who were kind enough to ask me to guest blog for them.  Check em out.

And be inspired (or at least helped) by my 5 tips to make writing easier.

Why Labor Day could be the best and most meaningful holiday of the year (or should be)

Anyone out there know why we celebrate Labor Day?

According to the United State Department of Labor website, it’s “…a  creation of the labor movement and is dedicated to the social and economic achievements of American workers. It constitutes a yearly national tribute to the contributions workers have made to the strength, prosperity, and well-being of our country.”

So initially, it was a crucial recognition and reminder of the importance of the laborers of this country, created in a time when they weren’t valued much more than a horse. 

The first Labor Day was celebrated in 1882.  Crowds gathered, speeches were made, parades where marched in and watched by thousands.

Things are different now.  The reason Labor Day is celebrated is because most of us get a day away from laboring. 

Which is a pretty great reason to celebrate.

I recently had a debate with a friend about which is better:

•Work at a time-consuming job that takes you away from your family, is not all that enjoyable or fulfilling, but financially rewarding, which allows you nice things to live in and drive and wear, and nice, vacations and a comfortable, potentially early retirement.

•Or a little more flexible, pretty fulfilling, still hard-working but not crushing job, where you have more control over your life but need to stretch to make ends meet, get less nice cars and houses and few if any vacations, driving and staying in motels along the way, and working later and longer into your life.

The answer? 

Whichever you think is better, of course. 

We all make our own choices. We all have different things we want to get out of work.  And we all work differently. 

I ascribe to the theories laid out in Rework, one of my personal bibles.  I’ve seen co-author Jason Fried speak and I’m buying everything he’s selling.  Which, basically, is “Build it, and they will come.”

When it comes to work, one thing is undeniable and unarguable:  We all need to work.  Which means we all need time away from work. 

So the fact that there’s a day expressly designed for us to not work is pretty awesome and should be celebrated.

Hope you did absolutely nothing but not work yesterday.

Want to create brilliant ideas? Go away.

Imagine living in a place where nothing exists except for what immediately surrounds you.

Your property is on a dirt road, with neighbors pockmarked every half-mile or so.  In winter, you have to plow yourself out or dig in for the long haul.

When you drive up the dirt road to your house and step out of your car, the silence is deafening.  The stones at your feet crunch like someone’s eating potato chips in your ears. The constant hum of nothing rushes into your ears like a backdraft, but you soon adjust to the peace and breathe in unaffected, unpolluted, unbelievable air.

Your dogs have the run of acres of the land.  Your garden produces a bounty of fresh rhubarb and strawberries and other good stuff.  “Your lake,” while open to others, is a short hike away and as beautiful and secluded a place as there is on Earth.

I stayed at a place like that over the weekend, in Southern Vermont. 

It was heaven.

And it was a great place to let my thoughts ramble and do a little extracurricular cranial sightseeing, landing in places that they ordinarily might not ever get to.

As you read this, you may be in your office or in transit, eating or drinking, surveying and surfing.  Wherever you are, you’re likely surrounded by people and machines and lots of artificial things that make noises and smells.  

There’s an energy to it that’s infectious.  It’s what keeps us going.

So for a few minutes, stop.

Get yourself to a place where those things don’t exist.  I bet it isn’t that far. 

Get out of town, or stay local.  Find a nook or cranny in your house or apartment or office or neighborhood where you can be assaulted by silence.  I bet you can find it.  Bring a pad of paper and something with which you can write or draw. 

See what happens to your mind and body when everything slows down. Watch how creativity creeps up from behind and smoothes into your lap.

If you can’t get to Southern Vermont, find your version of it. Surround yourself with nothing but potential ideas. 

It may not sound deafeningly silent, but it'll still sound pretty good.

Can a monologue can stop a bullet?

Depends on how you look at the world.

You can take the cynical stance and point out how ineffective Tony was, fancy feet aside, in preventing the Jets and Sharks from rumbling.  Riff and Bernardo are living proof. Well, not living, really, but you get the point.

Or, you could side with Hallie Gordon, who’s partnering with great organizations like Facing History And Ourselves and Steppenwolf Theatre, mounting an uphill battle to use the arts to help stop the killings of young Chicagoans.  It’s called “Now is the Time,” and it sends artists into gang-plagued Chicago public schools to at least try to start stemming the violence. 

You can say it’s a preposterous goal filled with ignorant ambition, given the extremely deep-rooted challenges facing many of the people involved in the cycles of violence.  As Chris Jones wrote in the Chicago Tribune, “…isn't some artistic response to this crisis going to be marginal at best…?”

Or, you could believe in the kind of effect that Now is the Time hopes to bring to troubled neighborhoods in need of radical change. While accomplishing that isn’t as easy as bringing in actors or dancers, it’s a different way of thinking.   And changing actions starts with changing thinking.

If nothing else, as Chris Jones also points out, anytime kids are involved in artistic pursuits, they’re off the streets and out of danger.  So for those few minutes, you could say the arts is actively fighting gangs and crimes.

You never know how someone could be affected by one monologue or one plie’ or one aria.  It could stop one bullet. 

It’s worth a try.  

Michael Jordan, Gene Kranz, and harnessing the power of optimism to create success

Last year at Chicago Ideas Week, I hosted a panel titled “Is this economy killing creativity or inspiring it?”  Five panelists discussed the challenges of staying fiercely creative in a less-than-encouraging economic climate.  They all agreed on one thing:

When life gives you lemons, creative people make limoncello.

It’s important to know that these weren’t all super-creative, off-the-charts right brainers.  Along with the owner of an amazing home and garden store (Sprout Home), a clothes designer, and an online entrpreneur, we also had the President of a superhot Chicago ad agency (commonground) and a senior marketing manager for a large packaged goods brand.

I was inspired by their optimism and conviction to take on the challenge of overcoming obstacles, regardless of the climate.  It reminded me of one of my favorite Michael Jordan quotes:

“If you run into a wall, don't turn around and give up. Figure out how to climb it, go through it, or work around it.”

I flashed back to that panel when I read an article in yesterday’s Sunday Chicago Tribune about young adults who have graduated college and instead of facing the promise of a great future as in previous generations, are facing enormous obstacles. 

It spoke of “…a historic recalibration among expectations of every generation of Americans” and  continued, “As Europeans are being gripped by dream-crushing austerity, hopes are also being downsized here in ways not seen since the Great Depression…”

Wow.

Wowzer wow wow.  A historic recalibration?  Dream-crushing austerity?

How would that make you feel if you were sending a child to college in the Fall?  Knowing you’re about to spend thousands and in some cases hundreds of thousands of dollars to prepare her for…shredded dreams and crushing austerity?

Well, that would be me, and since I’ve written a post about why I believe college is still worth every penny, I can think of no better person than Apollo 13’s Mission Control Director Gene Kranz to answer the question.  One of the most memorable moments in film.

I think Mr. Kranz would agree with our panelists, and with Michael Jordan, and with anyone in this country and in this world who would argue that there’s always a creative answer for any situation, challenge, or hardship. It starts with enthusiasm and belief.  And above all, a fervent, almost blindless optimism.

And when you get around that wall, a nice cold of limoncello will be waiting on the other side.

18 month olds are deciding your digital future.

The other day, a friend of mine and her son were leaving their house but the son wouldn’t walk out the door because he had misplaced his phone.  Like you and me, he couldn’t imagine going anywhere without his iphone.

He’s four years old.

It wasn’t a working iphone; it was a deactivated phone that his mom wasn’t using anymore.   You know, the old kind that couldn't tell you how to get to Buffalo Wild Wings; you had to type it in manually.  But it worked just fine for pretend conversations. 

And his ipad works just fine too.  A real one.

That four-year-old is part of the generation-to-be-named-later that’s come after the digital natives.  He and his iphone-holding, ipad-swiping, Nook and Kindle-reading buddies, who the New York Times suggests calling touchsceen natives. Call them what you want, but call them powerful; at ages from six months to three or four years, they’re deciding their generation’s digital future.  Here’s how.

You can tsk-tsk and shake your head at the use of digital products by babies who can’t yet walk or talk, but you can’t stop their continued exploration and use of digital products.  Just try to learn from them and maybe even join them.    

And when the next uber-cool digital product comes out, you can join the latest tech adopters, and do what they do:  drool all over it.