I like to think of myself as a pretty creative guy. Whether or not it’s always gold, I at least get a lot of stuff done. It wasn’t always like this though. There used to be a lot more starts and stops, and the overall quality of my work was much much lower. In fact, I find it a little embarrassing even to go back and read some older material on my site.

Anyway, I use Furl, which is an awesome online bookmarking service (similar to del.icio.us). And each day, when I open it up, I get to see the top-ranked bookmarks of other users. It’s pretty cool. I’m always surprised to find the continuing popularity of articles about “thinking like a genius” or becoming more creative. Some of them have some decent ideas, but I thought I’d take a few moments to write down some of my own thoughts on the subject.

Do you have trouble getting started with ideas? It’s not that you don’t have ideas (because everybody everywhere has ideas), it’s that you don’t know where to get started. Or else, once you get started, you really easily get distracted and then move onto something else, without ever finishing anything. A lot of people will tell you that you’re not disciplined enough, and leave it at that. Me, I just think it means you need to figure out a working process that works for you. Everybody’s is different. Here’s mine:

Right now I’m working on a sample chapter for a book proposal. The chapter is on the Apocalypse. As you may have noticed, I’ve been on sort of a kick the past few days writing about this. I’ve tried in the past to sit down, open up Microsoft Word and just kick out a chapter for a book. Inevitably, it fails. Why? Because ideas are simply too big sometimes to be puked out all at once.

So how do you get around this? It’s pretty simple actually. First off, I assemble an army of things to read. You can’t drive without gas in the car. And I read a ton of stuff. In regards to the Apocalypse, I’ve been hitting it from all different cultural and contextual angles. While I’m reading I have my own set of ideas that I’m chasing after, but I try not to hold onto them too closely. I let myself get filled up with the things I read. At some mysterious point, I find that an interesting concept has formed in my head. Maybe it was in an article I read - a quote, a paragraph - or maye it’s something I synthesized from several articles juxtaposed with one another.

The trick is to be able to recognize when you reach a boiling point, even if it’s a small one, and then go write about it. If possible, illustrate and support it using what you just read. This will serve the dual purpose of helping increase your ability to remember what you read. Don’t worry about putting together a masterpiece. What you’re doing is just capturing an idea. It doesn’t need to be perfect. It just needs to capture some the essence of something important. Don’t worry, cause we’ll come back to it later. Then, once this impulse has been satiated, go back to reading furiously. By this time, you’ll find that the guiding principles which you’ve been reading by have been subtly or drastically changed by what you wrote. Don’t worry about this. Follow it. If nothing else, use a bookmarking service like Furl, and come back to it. It’s not going anywhere (Furl also saves a personal copy of any site bookmarked onto its server - so it will never go away).

Eventually, you’ll find that you reach another boiling point while you’re reading. When you do, go back to your blog or whatever and try to put it in words again. And just keep continuing this process. Before you know it, you’ll have a great big series of puzzle pieces. What you can do now is go back into your old work and read them. You’ll realize that through the creative process you’ve been following, your ideas have changed and developed. Good. Don’t try to cling to ideas when they aren’t working. Let them change when they need to change. You will always come up with something better later on. I guarantee it. The great thing about writing seems to be that you at least never get WORSE at it.

For me, this process works because I tend to deal with extremely complex and sometimes abstract cultural concepts. It would be a nightmare if I felt like I had to be able to explain every single little detail all at once. It would be an insurmountable obstacle. So instead I use this technique to divide and conquer.

I once heard a good technique from scientist Richard Feynman. He said something to the effect of: the trick to seeming like you’re a genius is to always have about a dozen or so problems that you’re working on in your head. Then, when you come across new information and theories, try to apply each one of your “pet problems” to it. Sooner or later, you’re going to find a good match and make an excellent breakthrough.

I use this technique in my own work process. In a sense, I also try to embrace what other people would call ADD. While I’m busy reading on the Apocalypse or whatever, I don’t let myself be limited by that. If I come across something during that search which is interesting but not necessarily relevant, I will take the time to read and process it. It may seem counter-productive, but it’s really not. Actually, your mind has a funny way of connecting things together while you’re not even paying attention. So let it have it’s fun. It may not explicitly come out in the writing you do, but on some level it’s fertilizing or cross-pollinating your ideas. It’s breathing new life and new possibilities into what you’re studying that you would have never ever considered had you just done a straight and narrow exploration of the topic. Always try to connect diverse fields of study. You’ll never be let down by it. And, like I said before, if you reach a boiling point while reading this off-topic stuff, go ahead and write it down. Even if it doesn’t fit in with the rest of what you’re doing. I guarantee that at some point it will. Everything you study informs everything else. Everything ultimately connects. It’s inevitable. You just have to ride it out.