Hugh MacLeod from GapingVoid has a terrific blog entry with 30 tips on being creative: the long version. It humerously covers a wide gamut of ideas, from “Do the Hours” to “Ignore Everybody” to “Avoid the Watercooler Gang.” Each topic is punctuated by his hilarious — and typically very insightful — back-of-business-card drawings.
One of my favorite online authors, Paul Graham, has a new essay titled How To Do What You Love. He starts off by looking into the paradoxical combination of work and enjoyment. As children, he says, we learn that work is something we have to do, and play is something we want to do. School is something we have to do, and is basically a diluted version of work. Our parents tell us — directly or by implication — that we should enjoy school while we can, because work is much worse.
Graham points out that what our parents should be telling us at this point, is that we need to work our way through the things that we don’t enjoy in order to be able to do the things that we do enjoy. Maybe then we would start to see work as an opportunity or as a path, instead of as a dead end. This is advice I plan on heeding well while my kids are growing up.
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