Cultivating a state of mind where new ideas are born (2023)

Just read the beginning but I feel like there are obvious counter examples. Basically lots of academic environments. I personally (and somewhat sadly) did my best work in grad school, thanks entirely to the environment. All of us in the lab I studied in benefitted from being around each other every day. From what I’ve seen, this is very common throughout history in academia.

Maybe it’s pressure that kills ideas, or competition, or premature desire to commercialize, or just the kind of people that become founders; it’s definitely not co-working in and of itself.

Should add I agree that solitary reflection is important, just not that being surrounded by like minded people is detrimental.

Probably not enough data on this yet since it's a new unlock, but I think it's perfectly possible to do great work today without interfacing with other humans directly. Some weird off-spectrum people (the kind this article is talking about) might even prefer to or work better this way.

Owl in owl's way I in mine Can't get to sleep

Wind from the sea Butterflies in embankment weeds Never resting (1915) Taneda Santoka

It's called a shower.

This is so true. I've had some inventive ideas during certain phases of being a hobbyist and very small business owner. Sometimes I'd share them prematurely. Just killed the momentum, and I'd look back and say, "what happened?"

Ever hear the very early Talking Heads song, "Artists Only" - David Byrne remarks,

"pretty soon now, I will be bitter, pretty soon now, I will be a quitter. You... can't... see... it... til it's finished"

My father knew this too, intuitively. He did some really nice, not-for-profit, practical projects on a very low budget. He'd like to comment during those fruitful years, "now, that's a pregnant idea" - the point being, perhaps, that you want to allow the idea to develop way past the fertilization stage, before releasing it into the world. The British have a term, "half-baked idea" that may run along the same lines.

What a nice essay. Thank you, author! It's hard to imagine these insights being hatched by interactions on social media, where everyone is a critic, and always so cock-sure that their biases are so correct.

Of course, our educational system is loaded the the dialectic-style interaction style, where there is a dogma that the truth can be arrived at by negation of opinions through a Socratic question-and-answer dialogue, but that often often goes nowhere. In my most productive R&D experiences, where I was often the only guy in the lab who had various consultants milking the billable hours, the best bosses would give plenty of space for diving into trying this or that, because they respected that intuition needs to run free. Then, the numbers and other results would validate the assumptions or instincts. But just point-blank instinctively shooting down every new idea... often goes nowhere - and happens so often. Too often.

Thanks again.

Why is there always a self-imposed need to extract something from ourselves instead of just being? I really hate this in the modern world. Maybe one of the worst defining traits of industrial times.