Guest Thinkers — February 22, 2011

7 Ways to Unleash Your Creativity

nOver at Design Sojourn, there’s a great list of 7 ways to unlock your inner creativity. Many of the ideas have been adapted from or inspired by IDEO, one of the most innovative industrial design firms in the world:

(1) Set up a dedicated workspace;

(2) Know your “peak period” of creativity flow;

(3) Have a creative community by your side;

(4) Master the art of story-telling;

(5) Read as much as you can about new ideas and new technologies;

(6) Work in other media to work your creative brain cells;

(7) Document your ideas in a notebook or with post-it notes.

Of course, nobody is expected to master all seven of these creativity techniques: “You don’t need all of them to work at once, you just need tonidentify some of the ways that bests fits your comfort level and try it.”

[image: Brainstorming at IDEO]

a computer generated image of a human brain.

Thinking

The great free will debate featuring Michio Kaku and Steven Pinker

Who — or what — really controls your mind?

Building destroyed by the Halifax Explosion. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.

The Past

The largest accidental explosion of all time

More than a century ago, Halifax suffered an accidental blast one-fifth the size of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

a collage of photos of a man with a hat and a book.

High Culture

6 great books with wildly unreliable narrators

Dive into the twisted truths and concealed realities told by literature’s most unreliable narrators.

a group of five matches on a pink background.

The Well

Signs you’re burned out — and how to bounce back

If you don’t feel better after the weekend, the “burnout paradox” could explain why.

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7 min

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with

Laurie Santos

Starts With A Bang

The trick to instantly identifying JWST images

If you can identify a foreground star, the spike patterns are a dead giveaway as to whether it’s a JWST image or any other observatory.

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