A Battle Against the Forces of Destruction or Why The Swiffer Won’t Do For Me

Posted on December 2, 2011 by joana galarza johnson

My top 3 favorite books about Creativity: Mihalyi Csikzentmihalyi’s Creativity Arthur Koestler’s The Act of Creation Twyla Tharp’s  The Creative Habit.   I recently discovered Jonah Lehrer (my favorite pop-science writer) is writing a book about this pet topic of mine.  I’m very excited about this–  Imagine: How Creativity Works  hits bookstores next Spring.  I mentioned the [...]

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Ordered Attention Allows Creative Insight

Posted on October 25, 2010 by joana galarza johnson

My eight-year old has the gift of ordered attention. Yesterday, he sat on a little red chair in front of his old laptop for an hour designing Lego systems. He wears headphones to keep sounds to himself, but mostly to keep distractions out. My little boy doesn’t really need those headphones.  When he works alone [...]

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Constraints that Increase Creativity, Part 3: Grant Quotidian Business Less Mental Space

Posted on October 11, 2010 by joana galarza johnson

For five days I’m writing about constraints that serve as kindling for Creation. Yesterday I wrote Keep Your Perfect Idea. Highly Creative people work to the ebb and flow of mental energy, not according to a preset to-do list. James D. Watson, co-discoverer of the structure of DNA, did not even schedule weekend work breaks. [...]

Filed under: Constraints, Constraints that Increase Creativity, Making Time | Tagged: , , , | 1 Comment »

  • Creating Brains is a blog about the year I spent test-driving lessons left by thoughtful Creators of the past, current Neuroscience studies, Creativity Theory and insights from contemporary highly Creative people on how to live the Creative Life—from Scientists, Architects, Writers and Humanitarians. Creating Brains hit the net on the first day of Spring, March 2010. Here, I recount my daily adventures in pursuit of a highly Creative Life for myself and my growing young family of five children.
    I’m busy working on a book length project. So from May to September 2011 I”ll post on Fridays only. To read new posts at their freshest subscribe by e-mail (see below).
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  • 12 Quotes I Love:

    1. Take thought of the seed from which you spring. You were not born to live as brutes. --Dante Alighieri

    2. Let us endeavor so to live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry. --Mark Twain

    3. I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious. --Albert Einstein

    4. The faculty of imagination lifted me when I was sinking. I am thankful to God, who gave me this faculty; and it is for me a part of my religion to defend this gift and to profit by its possession. --Charlotte Bronte

    5. The pursuit of truth and beauty is a sphere of activity in which we are permitted to remain children all our lives. --Albert Einstein

    6. Twenty years from now, you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover. --Mark Twain

    7. Talent in cheaper than table salt. What separates the talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work. --Stephen King

    8. He who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead; his eyes are closed. --Albert Einstein

    9. Art is an attempt to integrate evil. --Simone de Beauvoir

    10. All the world is full of suffering. It is also full of overcoming. --Helen Keller

    11. The most important things are the hardest things to say. They are the things you get ashamed of because words diminish your feelings - words shrink things that seem timeless when they are in your head to no more than living size when they are brought out. --Stephen King

    12. I have learned that success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has had to overcome while trying to succeed. --Booker T.Washington

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