worst_cases | ORGANIZING CREATIVITY

Apr
19

2013

If you quit your PhD …

Because a fellow has failed once or twice or a dozen times, you don’t want to set him down as a failure till he’s dead or loses his courage.
George Horace Lorimer

A while ago I was dating an … impressive young woman who had quit her PhD and became a therapist (in training). What got me was not that she did quit her PhD, but that she saw it as a rare occurrence. Perhaps it’s the company I keep, but I think quitting a PhD is not that rare.

I also got the impression that she felt solely responsible for quitting her PhD. And I think this is also incorrect.

A former colleague once said that if PhD students quit, there Read More

Category: Community Aspects, Doing Science, Learning to do Science, Science Tags: creative_people, integrity, know_yourself, living_as_a_creative, PhD, think_differently, worst_cases

Apr
16

2013

Beware of data corruption devastating your Workflow Lynchpin

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Of the four project development variables – scope, cost, time and quality – quality isn’t really a free variable. The only possible values are “excellent” and “insanely excellent”, depending on whether lives are at stake.
“XP Explained” by Kent Beck

Circus Ponies Notebook (CPN) is the lynchpin in my workflow — my notes end up in CPN files which I then use to write my own works. It works great and I rely highly on it. There is a lot of information in these files, information I will not get back — either because it takes too much time & effort or because they were ideas that I will not have again.

Thus, you can imagine the kind of moment I had when I saw the following message a couple of days ago:

The error message you get when you content is gone. It goes along with a tightening of the chest, a clenching of the anal sphincter, and a frantic mental search of the number and integrity of backups.

Looking at the file itself, the information seems to have been … gone. The file size is much smaller than it should have been.

The terrible and sneaky thing here is that the notebook file opened without problems. I could add and work on the content of other pages without problems. It was only when I tried to access this page (and others) that I saw this error.

Thus, it is a hard to detect but devastating error.

At the moment, I am Read More

Category: Circus Ponies Notebook, Doing Science, Improving your Creativity, Infrastructure, Science, Tools Tags: Circus_Ponies_Notebook, digital, impact, PhD, worst_cases, writing

Apr
15

2013

Have your own Agenda

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MR JOHN SMITH
STORYTELLER OF THE [LARGE AREA]
PRESIDENTIAL MEDAL OF FREEDOM
HIS WIFE
MRS JANE SMITH
SHE WAS EVER LOYAL
Gravestone inscription of a famous author (and his wife), names anonymized

You know you have made it as a creative person when you are called “Storyteller of the [LARGE AREA]” on your gravestone and you have received the Presidential Medal of Freedom (see quote above). But what about the wife? Would a gravestone sentence like “she was ever loyal” resonate positively with you?

For me, it would be a punch in the face. Being loyal Read More

Category: Community Aspects, Doing Science, Inspiration, Learning to do Science, People, Science, Self-Improvement Tags: change_yourself, creative_people, know_yourself, living_as_a_creative, think_differently, worst_cases

Apr
8

2013

Staying on Track: Did I want to do this an hour ago?

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Remember: Nobody ever lay on their deathbed thinking “gee, I wish I had spent more time watching TV/reading blogs/at the office.”
Unknown

There’s a lot to be said for spontaneity — especially in long-term relationships. However, sometimes this spontaneity can interfere with the pursuit of longer projects, esp. if these projects show they payoffs only after long periods of work. When immediate, short-term satisfaction is pitted against deferred, long-term satisfaction, immediate satisfaction usually wins. Even if the pleasure it yields is neither as high nor as meaningful as the deferred satisfaction. To use the categories by Lazzaro, I think it’s then then usually a triumph of “easy fun” (blowing off steam, chilling out, goofing off, etc.) over “hard fun” (challenges, mastery, etc.) or “serious fun” (meaningful, good for others/world).

To use a practical example: When it comes to Read More

Category: General Tips, Improving your Creativity, Learning, Self-Improvement, Task & Time Management Tags: creative_people, impact, know_yourself, living_as_a_creative, planning, worst_cases

Apr
1

2013

Mistakes: Circles and Spirals

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“Don’t worry, I’m not making the same mistakes again.”
“No, you’re making all new ones.”
John Hammond and Dr. Ian Malcolm in “Jurassic Park 2″

I love learning from experience, esp. via. reflection. In case you ever asked yourself whether anyone else is trying to improve themselves — yup, some are, the interesting ones. Seriously, the most interesting people I know are trying to improve themselves, challenging themselves to become better. This is one reason for this site and this book.

But sometimes you look back at yourself and think that you are moving in circles — making the same mistakes again and again. It’s a bit like Anya in “Buffy – The Vampire Slayer” (without the laughs): Read More

Category: Improving your Creativity, Learning, Self-Improvement, Something to Think About Tags: change_yourself, impact, learning, worst_cases

Mar
25

2013

Happy Birthday “Organizing Creativity” 2!

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A truly good book teaches me better than to read it. I must soon lay it down, and commence living on its hint … . What I began by reading, I must finish by acting.
Henry David Thoreau

It’s been exactly a year since I made the second edition of “Organizing Creativity” available.

Happy Birthday!!!!!!!!

I wanted it to be read, so I made the double-page (spread) version available for “free” (donationware), and it seemed to have worked. More than 9800 people visited the download page in the last year and Google Analytics counts over 1800 downloads (I guess it misses some, tracking PDF downloads are a little difficult). There were also some great comments, public on Amazon, and private per eMail, — very encouraging and helpful

Not bad for a just-for-fun project.

Regarding the donationware aspect — if the reader finds it helpful there are some ways to give me money for it — this did not work that well. Only a few people bought the book as print version or the high-quality PDF version. Still, I am even more thankful to those people who bought it. I didn’t do it for the money, but it’s still nice that the work is appreciated. After all, feedback is the life-blood of an author and money is actually as honest as feedback can get. I am also very grateful to Dylan Damian and others who offered proof-reading. It helped a lot

To celebrate it’s first birthday, I have decided to make the single-page version available for “free” (also donationware). But note that the graphics are still downscaled — the PDF is great for viewing on a tablet, but not for printing. I need to leave a difference to the single-page version at Lulu.

Organizing Creativity PDF single-page version — ideal for iPad and other tablets that can display PDF files.

Organizing Creativity PDF double-page version — good if you want to read it on your computer monitor or print it with two “pages” per page (although if you want to read it on paper, buying a printed version of the book is probably easier).

Hope you like it. If you like the book and want to return the favor without paying something, recommend the book in your social networks. Perhaps your contacts like it too.

Thanks

Category: Book Information, Organizing Creativity 2nd Ed. Tags: change_yourself, Circus_Ponies_Notebook, conveying_ideas, creative_people, devonthink, digital, doing, DokuWiki, impact, InDesign, infrastructure, integrity, iOS, iPad, iPhone, know_yourself, learning, living_as_a_creative, meta, mind maps, movie, music, omnifocus, painting, paper, PhD, photography, planning, presentations, program, question, reading, Scrivener, sketching, skills, social, stimulation, task_management, tedtalk, think_differently, tool, video, worst_cases, writing

Mar
24

2013

Avoid becoming bitter

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Resentment is an extremely bitter diet, and eventually poisonous. I have no desire to make my own toxins.
Neil Kinnock

I am currently listening to the “Savage Love” podcast, which is … interesting. And given my interests (and hopefully cognizant of the dangers this entails), some of the advice he gives about sex and relationships can be applied beautifully to the area of creativity.

One piece of advice he gives often to … more heavyweight women is that they are often rejected by men of their own age until they are about 30. At this time, male coevals who are romantically and sexually interested in Read More

Category: Improving your Creativity, Learning, Self-Improvement Tags: change_yourself, creative_people, impact, integrity, know_yourself, learning, living_as_a_creative, stimulation, think_differently, worst_cases

Mar
17

2013

Synergy of Solutions, if not of Problems

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If you break your neck, if you have nothing to eat, if your house is on fire, then you got a problem. Everything else is inconvenience.
Robert Fulghum

Spiegel.de ran an article about a person who started to mix a drink as an alternative to regular eating. He eats ‘normal food’ only two times a week, otherwise he drinks a food drink (suitably called “Soylent“, but hopefully with other ingredients). It reminded me of an old idea of mine — an Energy Bar for Busy Workers: Instead of eating normal food, you simple eat an energy bar that contains all you need to eat (the idea came when I was dating a doctor who said that she had not time to eat during the day due to her busy schedule). It also reminded me that this are problems that could be dealt with with better scheduling — and that these are typical ‘first world problems’. There are other regions where the question is not ‘saving time to eat’ but ‘having something to eat in the first place’.

But I am wondering — isn’t it possible to Read More

Category: Improving your Creativity, Inspiration, People, Realizing Creative Projects, Something to Think About, The World Tags: impact, question, stimulation, think_differently, worst_cases

Mar
16

2013

Living and Killing with PowerPoint (or Keynote)

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“I love free speech. I also love ignore, mute and block.”
Posting in an online forum

Stephan List from Toolblog.de pointed to a new presentation by Don McMillan about doing an effective — and emotional — PowerPoint presentation … with a marriage proposal an example: