So I need to be sad, bored and happy to be creative | Hacker News Reader

So I need to be sad, bored and happy to be creative

i.imgur.com

475 pointsin3xes82 comments

To be really creative, you need to stop reading Hacker News frantically and go out and explore nature, other people and your own thoughts.

Yes, but what framework should I use for that? ;)

outsite.js

You could think of using the NERF framework :P

NERF: Nature Enabled Room Framework

I understand you're joking, but for those who read your comment and aren't sure, if "what framework should I use" is the first thing that pops in your head, you're doing it awfully wrong.

Absolutely. Every hacker knows its all about libraries these days. (sorry I'll stop now)

You can just join billions of other players in the F2P Massively Multiplayer Offline game called "Outside". More info here: http://www.reddit.com/r/outside

You are playing a dangerous game if you think it's F2P

Well, you can definitely pay to win, but most people have more time than money so we just grind for gear.

Tell me about it. I started that game a while back and at first I was having fun in the starting area right outside my house but soon I exhausted most of what there was to do there. I decided to try visiting one of the more populated areas but it seemed like the game was designed so that getting there without use of a vehicle would take a ridiculously long time. The game developers wanted me to pay cash for their "public transport" system which was crowded and not all that reliable so soon I was hooked and had spent a even more of my money on a vehicle of my own. As it turns out even that requires "fuel" and "maintenance".

I just play the internet minigame. It's cheap and pretty in-depth.

Typical freemium model. They reel you in with F2P and as soon as you're hooked onto food and oxygen and all that you find out it takes in app purchases to have any fun.

This is the simple take home for me. Same goes for the "N books/things all developers should read/know (about X)". You'd drive yourself daft reading all of them, and probably miss other opportunities in the meantime. HN is an interesting distraction which can sometimes inspire but can all too easily become a drag.

Actually I used to work as a rafting guide. Didn't earn a lot of money, but I had a lot of free time (in nature), and met a lot of people.

I notice that I had way more ideas then than I do now that I have settled into a 9-6 lifestyle. Sometimes that creativity starts coming back when I am on holiday for a while.

I think a "normal" office job / lifestyle is very stifling to creativity.

Might be true, but it's easy to misjudge this: in your 9-6 you have lots of time to process any interesting ideas that come your way and then move on to the next thing, whereas while you were a rafting guide you probably chewed on the same ideas for longer and at odd times, making them appear more salient and profound.

I think many of us mistake "creativity" for "having great ideas appear in our minds". That's only a part of it, and "rafting guide" is a great environment for that part. The next part - filtering and workshopping those ideas - probably works best in a more traditional work environment with some constraints and teammates.

I understand what you are saying, but in my traditional work environment (day job) I have to wait till I get home to do anything with an idea.

Why would that be misjudging it?

I would say that is part of the creative process.

I counter your anecdotal with this anecdotal: Einstein and Bukowski were plenty creative while working in an office.

Haha, okay, i'm gonna run with this.

Einstein's work was linked to the 'creative' ventures he had later on. From Wikipedia: "Much of his work at the patent office related to questions about transmission of electric signals and electrical-mechanical synchronization of time, two technical problems that show up conspicuously in the thought experiments that eventually led Einstein to his radical conclusions about the nature of light and the fundamental connection between space and time." So really his office job was promoting his creative thoughts.

Bukowski (holy cow, what a diametrically opposed example!) is not so much a creative person as a person with PTSD. What's more, he wasn't writing when he was working for the post office initially, (and incidentally he was a letter carrier, meaning being outside). He left after 3 years, but returned a decade later after a divorce (and her subsequent death). Once he was back on the job, an old flame's death prompted more writing, and over the next decade he continued to write, though one has to wonder if it was because of his office gig or in spite of it. At the end of the decade he quit so he could write full-time, which to me says that he both disliked his job and also couldn't be completely creative while working there.

So while Einstein was directly inspired by the subject matter he reviewed at his job, Bukowski was driven by more personal motivations, along with perhaps a disgust with authority and human nature in general. Hard to say those are good anecdotals to defend the idea of general creative work being at all easy while working in a typical office job.

amen... i struggle with this a lot & though its cute to think "oh but i get to write code at work & be creative!!" all of the monstrous bureaucracy is very stifling, & my creativity is definitely in spite of my job.

is this "work is play" mentality something that the new generation of office workers actually believes? Given that 9-5 (or 6) is an outdated force-fed corporate notion, people seem to just be paid in a way that is almost directly correlated with how much annoyance they will face daily. The difficulty of the work i face at a corp is laughable.... after 6 months adapting, these jobs are mostly about keeping a straight face while beefing up one of the millions of coding projects that are basically child's play for anyone competent, yet need to be done to keep corp bureaucracy running or keep people clicking for some service.

Basically, my mind reels thinking about the great things i could achieve if i were not in this chair. If you are really "into" society (a yuppie, basically) then you might think that living in the big city, decorating your room just right & going out to see an indie film after work means you're inspired & hitting creative peaks (Brooklyn is filled with people living vicariously like this). The creative geniuses of previous generations would die of laughter, given that most of them truly devoted their lives to excellence in a given field in ways that were basically pathological.

There are rare counter-cases but I appreciate you (peterwwillis) pointing out that many of these examples are a complete crock. "Did you know ______ was a banker when he/she wrote his/her first symphony?" This can mean that ______ was either extremely well-adjusted and working in off hours, or was extremely irate and doing it in spite of his/her job. The anecdote alone has an implied simultaneity that is usually grossly distorted to serve as a success story to inspire continued enslavement of bright, delusional minds.

It's not that I believe EVERYTHING in the world is a corporate conspiracy, but basically you know whether or not you have a shit job that is destroying your creative mojo, and a few flaky anecdotes cant change that... time theft, maybe. :) But even that is tough, since many companies shun remote work ("oh no the developers might complete tasks efficiently & then enjoy a sandwich instead of working"). They wouldnt keep you strapped in the (mental) electroshock chair if they didn't want to come by & press the button.

Maybe they got outside lots as well.

Another example to throw in the pot is TS Eliot. He enjoyed his day job at a bank so much he rejected friends' attempts to get him to leave it for a more "creative" post.

Ah, the fabled Outernet. I've heard a lot about it.

There's nothing on Snopes, but I'm pretty sure that "outside" is a myth.

Also known as the World Wide. You can surf out there too apparently.

So true ! Always looking for how to be happy/productive/creative and so on instead of being happy/productive/creative !

We don’t know where we get our ideas from. What we do know is that we do not get them from our laptops. – John Cleese

Orbiting the Giant Hairball (1998) was a great guide to being creative in a world structured to squash creativity: http://www.amazon.com/Orbiting-Giant-Hairball-Corporate-Surv...

Hugh McLeod's How to Be Creative manifesto (2004) is also an amazing guide http://changethis.com/manifesto/6.HowToBeCreative/pdf/6.HowT... (you can buy it too http://www.amazon.com/Ignore-Everybody-Other-Keys-Creativity...)

Welcome to the social sciences, where the facts are made up and the points don't matter...

Fwiw, these are the disciplines involved in the three studies:

-- Sadness/creativity link: a business school professor

-- Boredom/creativity link: several psychologists

-- Happiness/creativity link: several psychologists, a physician, and a neuroscientist

[We can also add "journalist" as another layer in there.]

Does anyone else find it amusing that the business school professor wants everyone to be depressed?

We'd all do well to understand and respect them far more. It is the links between the hard sciences and the fuzzy humanities where the true value lies.

All of it has true value.

Tomorrow: "Scientists find creativity studies plagued with bipolar participants"

What's it with creativity today ?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8916115

Dead.

That's sad. Now I feel creative!

"deodorant causes cancer"

"being southern causes cancer"

"being black causes cancer"

"being male causes cancer"

"fatherhood causes cancer" / "childlessness cause cancer"

"work causes cancer"/"working causes cancer"

"bras cause cancer"

"bacon causes cancer"

"burgers cause cancer"

I feel sorry for deodorant-wearing, southern, black, working fathers (or not) that cross-dress and enjoy bacon-burgers - they clearly don't stand a chance against cancer! Who knew?

@JonnieCache - Thanks for sharing! Kill or cure does a great job highlighting how research can be contradictory, as well as how research headlines are often made sensationalist.

In other news, I need to be in a quantum superposition with coding: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/216352/guys_youre_not_he....

Maybe creativity has less to do with your frame of mind, and more to do with creating opportunities to come up with novel / interesting solutions to problems. If youre angry then youre removing some internal barriers to complacency. If youre happy you feel positive about yourself and give your thoughts and pondering more worthwhile attention. If youre bored you ruminate and your mind becomes preoccupied with some track of thought.

The routine, seeing the same people, constant distraction style of living we're all so used to doesnt seem to provide us with those opportunities.

Don't listen to music[1]. But don't conform[2].

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1995698

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6909189

I had the same confusion after seeing the headlines, but after reading the respective articles, I think the point is that happiness and non-focussed dreamy state are helpful in freely exploring problems and links semi-consciously – sort of finding ideas in the back of your head – while the sadness (and anxiety) is needed to focus and keep trying to succeed in hard disciplines.

Moods correlate with states of focus and attention, and hence some states of mind are more useful in particular phases of the creative process.

I think it makes sense to some extent, as a happy person has no needs and can let their mind float aimlessly while an unhappy person wants to strive, focus and achieve to change his/her condition or to at least forget about the state of mind he/she is in.

Might I add yet another bit of input on how to be creative? John Cleese had a few words to say about being creative a while ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DMpdPrm6Ul4

One of the best bits: "Look babycakes, I don't have to make the decision until next Tuesday. And I'm not chickening out of my creative discomfort by taking a snap decision before then -- that's too easy!"

I've observed that many hacker types flinch from the megahertz, ironically enough, as a way to keep up with the speed of the systems they've built.

Killing creativity is the least of it. Many snap judgments rot the brain.

All said and done there is a definite link between creativity and mental illness :

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creativity_and_mental_illness

I think it's highly subjective. What worked for the sample space might not work for me or you. That's why I always take these type of researches as a grain of salt, and try to figure out what works for me and what doesn't.

I believes many of these claims will be debunked as the 'The Human Connectome Project' and 'The Human Brain Project' nears completion. But I think many things like creativity will always remain subjective.

The only insightful article I've ever read on creativity is from Douglas Hofstadter's Metamagical Themas – love the anagam! – column: "Variations on a theme as the essence of imagination". Anything written by Hofstadter is gold and this is no exception.

link: http://www.bgrosjean.com/files/Metamagical_Themas.pdf

The headlines, indeed, are mutually discrediting. Probably the later ones were submitted in response to the others.

All these studies suffer from inadequate efforts to properly operationalize the concept of "creativity". On the bright side, I believe that information sciences and statistics can shed a great deal more light on this particular problem in the near future.

I think it's just manifestation of huge diversity among us. Once I started to appreciate the idea that we're not the same inside, I can see some very fascinating differences in the way we operate, think, see the world, etc.

Our brains are only superficially similar - isn't it as simple as that?

EDIT: fixed (hopefully) grammar mistakes.

The validity of studies which say 'do X to get Y' is questionable. I simply skip them.

There are two kinds of people - those who are creative, and those who blog about being creative. If the ones who blogged about it actually spent time building and implementing things, they would be creative too. Whether they are sad, happy, or whatever!

to add to the list: to be more creative a broken sleep might help. Why Broken Sleep Is a Golden Time for Creativity [1]

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8574616

I have anecdotal evidence to suggest that there is something to this. It's not so much coming up with original ideas as to knocking something up fast. Your mental censor is far more inhibited when you're sleepy and you're too tired to multi task so in a weird way you're actually more focused when you're sleepy if you're a mild ADD type.

As the parent of an eleven month old baby I'm going to dispute that a lack of sleep does anything but make you reliant on caffeine, and useless at doing anything that requires actual thought.

i really think this deserves its own submission.

Were these articles written in response to each other - as you sometimes see on HN?

Seeing as the Wired article posted today was from 2010 while the original two Nautilus pieces are from this month I'd imagine it was submitted as a response.

I put the same think in an image: It's funny how all are at the same page.

http://i.imgur.com/C866csJ.png

It looks like you are using some horribly outdated OS/Browser. If I had to guess, I'd say IE7/8 on Windows XP. For reals?

That font rendering, someone save my eyes.

Perhaps... it's just a very low res screenshot... (or was that your joke anyway? ;) )

I just had to reduce the % resolution of the browser to fit both links in the same view.

could just be a barebones install.

Arch + xmonad/i3/awesome/whatever no-desktop-compositor-included-DE looks like that out of the box.

Probably other distros, too, but Arch has no font hinting/aa defaults either so the problem is usually exacerbated as compared to something like debian or ubuntu.

Nah, it's Firefox 30 on Windows 7. I just reduced the size to make the two links fit in the same view.

Maybe the lesson is that to be creative, you have to create something, and it doesn't matter what mood you're in...

Or perhaps, to be creative, you simply have to be inspired.

what you really need is time to think in order to be creative. Doesn't matter where or how you get it, just as long as you have the time to conjure it up.

feel emotions (sad, happy) and take the time to process them (boredom) to be creative?

Counter-arguing via HN, maybe?

No, but you do need OS X.

So bipolar then?

i was about posting this :)

This is exactly how meme-based science looks like.

My 2 cetns - to be creative you must suffer a lot.

Half of "good literature" would be my data-set evidences. Making models and plotting the plots I will leave to those who love doing this.

lol, nice snapshot!

a.k.a. being a typical human.

And now there are four post about creativity.

Maybe three posts and a meta-post...

As a long time HN reader, this post sticks out to me as the first time that I've seen imgur reach the front page. I wonder whether we can get a "no images" rule to prevent this place devolving into reddit?

There is almost certainly a penalty applied to imgur links. Either it was lifted in this case due to relevance or it just got that much momentum from votes.

How is it relevant that it's an image or something else? If it's good, users vote it and it gets on the front page. If it doesn't belong here as you're suggesting, it can be flagged.

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