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  • On What is Possible and Impossible

    4:16 pm on June 21, 2012 | 1 comments Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , motivation,

    When you start out on a career in the arts you have no idea what you are doing. This is great. Peo­ple who know what they are doing, know the rules and they know what is pos­si­ble and what is impos­si­ble. You do not, and you should not. The rules on what is pos­si­ble and impos­si­ble in the arts are made by poe­ple who have not tested the bounds of the pos­si­ble by going beyond them. And you can. If you don’t know it’s impos­si­ble, its eas­ier to do. And because no nobody has done it before, they haven’t made up rules to stop any­one doing that par­tic­u­lar thing again.”

    - Neil Gaiman, 2012 Com­mence­ment Speech at the Uni­ver­sity of the Arts

    Neil Gaiman Addresses the Uni­ver­sity of the Arts Class of 2012 from The Uni­ver­sity of the Arts (Phl) on Vimeo.

     
  • On Understanding the Learning/Thinking Process

    7:23 pm on May 21, 2012 | 0 comments Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , , motivation,

    There has been a theme of learn­ing and cre­ativ­ity in my last cou­ple of posts, and I thought I would sit down and share the way that I have been approach­ing the top­ics as I go through the process of under­stand­ing how I learn and chang­ing the way I think about think­ing. The process for the last cou­ple of months has largely been very unstruc­tured, full of trial and error, experimentational, and gut-driven. How­ever, what I have come to under­stand about my own learn­ing and think­ing process can be syn­the­sized in the fol­lowed illustration:

    Let me break it down for you.  When I embarked on this jour­ney at the begin­ning of 2012, I set out with the intent of break­ing my lin­ear process of learning. Along the way, I came across three con­cepts, of which I drew best prac­tices from and found a happy in-between the three as illus­trated above.

    Diver­gent vs. Con­ver­gent Thinking 

    When I was try­ing to under­stand a problem, I was going about it in a con­ver­gent way. I would look at my pos­si­ble options and from there, con­verge my options into a con­clu­sive solu­tion. I could attest that my back­ground in account­ing and finance really honed this type of think­ing and learn­ing over years. How­ever, what hap­pened is that I started tack­ling prob­lems with a lim­ited amount of tools in my toolkit.

    I then came across a design-thinking con­cept by Tim Brown in his book, Change by Design on diver­gent and con­ver­gent think­ing. I found that I lacked the abil­ity to think diver­gently, to cre­ate choice, to uncover new insights, to think lat­er­ally and to see mul­ti­ple answers. This approach meant that when­ever I approached a prob­lem, I now start­ing my process by ask­ing: “What if”? I real­ized that in order to ask this ques­tion, I had to expand my learn­ing into other fields, be unre­lent­ingly curi­ous about best prac­tices and con­tinue to build up my toolkit. I cur­rently find myself in learn­ing furi­ously at the inter­sec­tion of tech­nol­ogy, design and devel­op­ment. Ulti­mately, the optional process would be to nav­i­gate the ten­sion and exchange between these two ways of think­ing, through con­tin­u­ously mak­ing choices and elim­i­nat­ing them as needed.

    Fixed Vs. Growth Mindsets

    ‘Two Mind­sets,’ Stan­ford, mag­a­zine arti­cle, 2007

    Data Source: Carol Dweck: ‘Mind­set: The New Psy­chol­ogy of Suc­cess’, 2006. Design: Nigel Holmes

    I stum­bled across this info­graphic in one of Brain Picking’s early May posts and related to both sides of the info­graphic. On one side, a Fixed Mind­set leads to a deter­min­is­tic view of the world, and on the side, a Growth Mind­set that leads to a greater sense of free will. I’m not a fan on how the Fixed Mind­set is por­trayed with rather neg­a­tive con­no­ta­tion, but I do like the break­down of cat­e­gories, which is more impor­tant to me at the moment. In this approach, I would argue that sim­pli­fi­ca­tion of the mind­sets should instead be a spec­trum instead of a split path, as the con­tin­u­ous move­ment between under­stand­ing effort, chal­lenge, crit­i­cism con­stantly changes. My main take­away from Mind­sets, is really hon­ing in on the cat­e­gories on which I felt needed improve­ment to improve my moti­va­tion and productivity.

    The biggest break­through for me in the last cou­ple of months is in the cat­e­gory of Effort. I dis­cov­ered that I never saw effort on a path to mas­tery as I used to believe that peo­ple were nat­u­rally talented/ inclined to be bet­ter in cer­tain areas than oth­ers. I have come to real­ize though, that tal­ent is over­rated. When peo­ple ask me how I have been learn­ing so much these days, I tell them: I hus­tle. Alot. 

    Oppos­able Mind 

     In order to prop­erly extract lessons from the two con­cepts I men­tioned above, I found notion of the “oppos­able mind” extremely help­ful in under­stand­ing how to cre­ate a bal­ance in my thinking/learning. I first dis­cov­ered this book on Acu­men Fund’s Fel­lows read­ing list and picked up a copy myself. The book presents the con­cept of an “inte­gra­tive thinker”, some­one who has “the pre­dis­po­si­tion and capac­ity to hold two dia­met­ri­cally oppos­ing ideas in their heads. And then with­out pan­ick­ing or sim­ply set­tling for one alter­na­tive or the other, they’re able to pro­duce a syn­the­sis that is supe­rior to either oppos­ing idea.” The above graphic is the gist of the book, start­ing with the ques­tion of think­ing how you think.

    My biggest take­away from this book is an under­stand­ing of how I nur­ture my own imag­i­na­tion and how I cre­ate bal­ance to turn my curios­ity into tan­gi­ble out­comes. This under­stand­ing then links back full cir­cle into the orig­i­nal two con­cepts of Diver­gent vs. Con­ver­gent Think­ing as well as Fixed vs. Growth Mindsets.

     
  • What it Means to Dream

    12:11 pm on May 9, 2012 | 0 comments Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , motivation, ,

    Be not afeard; the isle is full of noises,

    Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not.

    Some­times a thou­sand twan­gling instruments

    Will hum about mine ears, and some­time voices

    That, if I then had waked after long sleep,

    Will make me sleep again: and then, in dreaming,

    The clouds methought would open and show riches

    Ready to drop upon me that, when I waked,

    I cried to dream again.

    - Shake­speare, The Tem­pest. Act III Scene II

     
  • (No)Where // (Now)Here

    11:59 am on November 28, 2011 | 2 comments Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , motivation, ,

    Just dis­cov­ered an incred­i­ble pho­tog­ra­pher and his web­site: 365q.ca. Thought I would share a cou­ple of my favourite pic­tures I find inspir­ing. Enjoy!

     
  • Aspirational Writing

    6:54 pm on August 13, 2011 | 1 comments Permalink | Reply
    Tags: motivation, ,

     

    Writing

    You write in order to change the world…. The world changes accord­ing to the way peo­ple see it, and if you alter, even by a mil­lime­ter, the way peo­ple look at real­ity, then you can change it.” –James Baldwin

     
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