That Ballmer Peak

2020-07-25 Daniel General, General Tips, Improving your Creativity, Inspiration, Music & other Art, Other Tools, Realizing Creative Projects, Tools 0

«To alcohol! The cause of — and solution to — all of life’s problems!»
Homer Simpson

There’s a great xkcd:

Image from xkcd: https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/ballmer_peak.png

And I wonder, is there something to it? On an individual level?

Is there a “sweet spot” when the fear a person experiences drops down to manageable levels, and the cognitive faculties are still intact for … rather great work? Akin to the following sketch:

A mixture on an inverted U-distribution for creating cool stuff (you have to hit the right blood-alcohol-level and not overshoot) and … well, the fear level, which drops continuously, and eventually leads to rather … unfortunate decisions.

And is this a way to go? Or should the way lead via … cognitive change and not alcohol?

Just wondering.

This is a private blog showing my opinions. If you have an issue with what I write here, either don’t read it or talk to me directly. Don’t waste your time — or mine — dragging my employer into matters where they hold no authority.

The institution I work for, or rather the people officially representing it, have already distanced themselves from this blog. I find this unnecessary, as I’ve clearly stated in the «About this Blog» section that this is a personal blog.

Frankly, I have nothing but contempt for those who lack the backbone to address their concerns directly and instead resort to passive-aggressive tattling to others. Such behavior strikes me as not only cowardly, but also spineless, gutless, and wholly unprincipled. Moreover, these efforts are as pathetic as they are futile.

That said, I might listen if you present compelling arguments and evidence, as constructive feedback is always welcome. Who knows? We might even both gain something valuable from the interaction.

A comment for those seeking to use this site for personal gain: Given the increase in requests, let me be clear. I write on this blog because I want to. It’s my hobby, my playground. Sometimes people point me to interesting products/services and I write about them. But any request regarding ads or sponsored placements ends up the trash without a reply. And if you think something would be of interest, differentiate yourself from the spammers by referring to a posting — in an intelligent way. (I get enough auto-generated mails to identify them immediately.)

BTW, posts can get updated after I published them if I spot spelling errors (not a native speaker) or think a different wording might improve precision and clarity.

This blog is not focused on a single topic, or method. As long as it is relevant to improving creativity (or allowing it in the first place), it's fair game.
Some postings on this blog deal with freedom, as I think that we need freedom of thought, of speech, of association, etc. pp. to solve mankind's problems. Thus, some postings may seem a bit remote when it comes to organizing creativity. Freedom is, however, the bedrock of creativity.
The heterogeneity of the postings can make reading this blog a bit cumbersome, at least if you are only interested in one topic. You can either use the search function (above), or use the categories or the tags to narrow down the postings you see.

ORGANIZING CREATIVITY

How to generate, capture, and collect ideas to realize creative projects.

That Ballmer Peak