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Comment by evac | Hacker News Reader

If we're talking about habit of highly successful people, I would agree it's persistence. But if we're talking specifically about highly creative and innovative people, then we may have to measure them with a slightly different set of metrics, for which solitude may be a more relevant habit than persistence.

Though I can't say whether solitude is THE number one habit, I would agree it's one of the best habits to have for generating insights and ideas.

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Not so much, I’m talking about pure poundage of production: code, pots, designs, sculpture. Iteration is the only way to make something better.

Anecdote:

One semester, a professor decided to split his ceramics class up into two sections and see which would create better pots. One half would be graded on their final pot, which would be judged in terms of creativity and technical skill. The other half would be judged in terms of poundage of “acceptable” pots. 50 lbs would be a “C” 65 would be an “B” and 90 would be an “A.”

At the end of the semester, the best pots out of the entire class were picked from the huge number of iterations that the poundage group created.

--Source unknown.

> I’m talking about pure poundage of production

Creativity does not equal pure poundage of production.

No one said it does. The point of that anecdote, though, was to suggest that "pure poundage" is (perhaps counterintuitively) a really important factor in producing good things.

No but experience(poundage of production) and no fear of being judged on talent(anything not bad accepted) allows for grater experimentation which directly relates to creativity.

That anecdote is from a book called Art and Fear, by David Bayles and Ted Orlando. It's a short, excellent study on the exact thrust of this thread: i.e, the collision of talent and persistence and how a successful artist harnesses both of them.

On talent they say, "By definition, whatever [talent] you have is exactly what you need to produce your best work. There is probably no clearer waste of psychic energy than worrying about how much talent you have -- and probably no worry more common."

Which to me sums up the topic nicely.

I just want to point out our confusingly similar user-names. Looking through your comments, it seems we are both interested in psychology and are non-technical.

This may or may not be problematic, but I figured I'd let you know as I just noticed.

(sorry for the threadjack, no other way to contact you)

True, interesting coincidences! Since I just recently joined HN, I haven't had much opportunity to bump into non-programmers (and programmers) who are also interested in psychology. Though this is a bit off-topic, I'm glad that posting the article (The No. 1 Habit of Highly Creative People) could bring around all sorts of people. Nice to meet you!

Interesting that solitude has now largely been made obsolete by mobile devices. Moments where you might have previously spent mulling things over (such as sitting on the bus or waiting for your wife to select an item in a clothing store - true, not exactly a walk on the beach but as close as it gets for many urban dwellers on an average day) are now spent texting, checking Twitter/Facebook, etc.

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