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Book now proof-read :-)

“Once I thought I was wrong, but I was mistaken.”
Unknown

A short while after I made the second version of “Organizing Creativity” available, Dylan Damian contacted me and offered to proof-read the book. It was a nice moment — people have called me strange (or stupid) for offering something  for free I worked on for months (years, actually), but I believe that when something is useful and you burn for it, you should make it available. And given that I never intended to earn money with it, why not offer it in a donationware format. If you like it, you pay what you like, if you do not like it, you should not pay for it.

But frankly, I would have never thought that someone would offer to proofread what I have written and send me the corrections. I did this for 22 essays two weeks ago, I know how much work it is. So I would like to say:

Thank you very much Dylan for your proof-reading. :-)

BTW, the paperback-color print version of the uncorrected book arrived today. I will set up a new version (proof-read, version 2-2) and make it available in a few days. Still, it will take awhile until it is available. And I am still working on the ePub book (I have formatted it anew by changing the tables to bullet points, but the within book links will take a while).

Until this is done, have fun with the corrected PDF version.

“Organizing Creativity” (2nd Edition) is available!

There is a very fine line between “hobby” and “mental illness.”
Dave Barry, “Things That It Took Me 50 Years to Learn”

Note: This is a sticky posting that stays on top of the blog for a while.

The second edition of Organizing Creativity is finally available:

oc2coverClick on the image to download the PDF file (about 10 MB — note that the images are downscaled to save some bandwidth)

Continue reading →

Release Date for Organizing Creativity II: Sunday, March, 25, 2012.

“Writing a book is an adventure: to begin with it is a toy and amusement; then it becomes a master, and than it becomes a tyrant; and the last phase is just as you are about to be reconciled to your servitude – you kill the monster and fling him to the public.”
Winston Churchill

I am currently doing the “finishing touches” on the second edition of “Organizing Creativity”. It will be available on this site on Sunday (fingers crossed! ;-) ).

All in all, I am very happy about the second edition. It took a huge chunk of time, but I think it was worth it (and I am very, very happy when the work is done).

It currently looks like this:

oc2-cover-preview

and has the following description:

Creativity, deliberately creating something that is new and useful, is more than just one idea.

Whether in art, science, or for private creative projects, a good idea needs countless other ideas. An idea for a plot needs ideas for characters, settings, and dialogues, an idea for a study needs ideas for dependent variables, instructions, materials. And even private projects need to be fleshed out.

To deal with these ideas and to actually realize the projects, creativity needs an unlikely ally — organization.

In this book, we look at creativity, organization, ways to organize creativity by mastering the topic, generating ideas, capturing ideas, collecting ideas, realizing creative projects, and archiving ideas, and at tools, general tips, and resources.

This book aims to enlarge your options when working in  science (incl. engineering and commercial projects), art, or on private projects to improve the chance of realizing creative projects. The focus is on creating the infrastructure for having ideas and realizing them.

More information on www.organizingcreativity.com

Until it is online, I have pulled the draft version and the links to the PDF of the first version. BTW, I have met my goal of staying below 400 pages (more or less, it has 400 pages) and reduced the word count (less long-windedness).

More on Sunday.

Stack Exchange — A great place to get answers to questions

“There are Lupines out there.”
“This may sound like a really stupid question, but is this a problem?”
“Considering they want to kill us, um, YES!”
MacGregor and Jonathan

stackexchangeA few different people recommended Stack Exchange recently. It is a very interesting “network of 82 question and answer sites” (including cooking, statistics, photography, and yes, also personal productivity). What makes it different from typical FAQ sites and forums is that it is community driven, allows you to edit your questions (and answers), and it uses voting to get the most helpful/best answers to the top. Very useful to quickly get a good answer to a question that bugs you — I used the predecessor site StackOverflow to solve programming questions and opening up this principle to different topics when enough experts are available is a really great idea.

So, if you are learning something (or if you have acquired substantial knowledge and want to contribute), I highly recommend Stack Exchange.