2023-06-20 12:32:55 ![[Pasted image 20230620124054.png]] From John Cleese on Creativity in Management: https://youtu.be/Pb5oIIPO62g > We all operate in two contrasting modes, which might be called open and closed. > > The open mode is more relaxed, more receptive, more exploratory, more democratic, more playful and more humorous. > > The closed mode is the tighter, more rigid, more hierarchical, more tunnel-visioned. > > Most people, unfortunately spend most of their time in the closed mode. Not that the closed mode cannot be helpful. > > If you are leaping a ravine, the moment of takeoff is a bad time for considering alternative strategies. > > When you charge the enemy machine-gun post, don’t waste energy trying to see the funny side of it. Do it in the “closed” mode. > > But the moment the action is over, try to return to the “open” mode - to open your mind again to all the feedback from our action that enables us to tell whether the action has been successful, or whether further action is need to improve on what we have done. > > In other words, we must return to the open mode, because in that mode we are the most aware, most receptive, most creative, and therefore at our most intelligent. > —https://www.gurteen.com/gurteen/gurteen.nsf/id/L004957 Conditions that are required for getting into the open mode: 1. Space - close the door, put phone on DND, etc so you won't be disturbed 2. Time - Set a definite start time and a definite end time. You need about 30 mins to settle in and wait out the anxiety that inevitably comes up. So Cleese recommends 90 mins. 3. Time. Defer taking a decision until you have to make it. Hang out in open mode as long as you can afford to. You'll get better more creative more original solutions that way. 4. Confidence. Be in play mode. What kills creativity is the feelign that you can make a mistake, can go the wrong way. 5. Humor. Fastest way from closed to open mode. And: ## [[Stay in the orbit]] > So, now you know how to get into the open mode. The only other requirement is that you keep your mind gently round the subject you're pondering. You'll daydream, of course, but you just keep bringing your mind back, just like with meditation. Because, and this is the extraordinary thing about creativity — if you just keep your mind resting against the subject in a friendly but persistent way, sooner or later you will get a reward from your unconscious. Probably in the shower later, or at breakfast the next morning, but suddenly you are rewarded out of the blue, a new thought mysteriously appears. If you've put in the pondering time first. > —John Cleese, [[Ref. John Cleese 1991 - Creativity in management (open mode vs closed mode)]]. Orbit the thing. Keep bringing mind back, like a meditation. [[Related notes]] Jung: > "He must make the emotional state the basis or starting point of the procedure. He must make himself as conscious as possible of the mood he is in, sinking himself in it without reserve and noting down on paper all the fantasies and other associations that come up. Fantasy must be allowed the freest possible play, yet not in such a manner that it leaves the orbit of its object, namely the affect." > —[[Ref. Jung 1916 - The transcendent function]], also contained in [[Ref. Chodorow (ed) 1997 - Jung on Active Imagination]] par. 167 # Novel juxtapositions > The very last thing that I can say about creativity is this. It's like humor. In a joke, the laugh comes at a moment when you connect two different frameworks of reference in a new way. > > Example. There's an old story about a woman doing a survey into sexual attitudes who stops an airline pilot and asks him, amongst other things, when he last had sexual intercourse. > > He replies, "1958." > > Now, knowing airline pilots, the researcher was surprised, and queries this. > > "Well," says the pilot, "it's only 2110 now." > > You laugh, eventually, at the moment of contact between two frameworks of reference — the way we express what year it is and the 24-hour clock. Now having an idea, a new idea, is exactly the same thing. It's connecting two hitherto separate ideas in a way that generates new meaning. > > Now. Connecting different ideas isn't difficult. You can connect moral courage with light green ... but, these new connections or juxtapositions are significant only if they generate new meaning. > > So as you play you can deliberately try inventing these random juxtapositions and then use your intuition to tell you whether any of them seem to have significance for you. That's the bit that a computer can't do. It can produce millions of new connections but it can't tell you which of them smells interesting. > > And of course, you'll produce some juxtapositions which are abolutely ridiculous, absurd. Good for you! Because Edward de Bono, who invented the notion of lateral thinking, specifically suggests...that you can try loosening up your assumptions by playing with deliberately crazy connections. He calls such absurd ideas "intermediate impossibles". And he points out that the use of an intermediate impossible is completely contrary to ordinary logical thinking in which you have to be right at each stage. It doesn't matter if the intermediate impossible is right or absurd; it can nevertheless be used as a stepping stone to another idea that is right. > > Another idea of how, when you're playing, nothing is wrong. > > So to summarize, if you really don't know how to start, or if you've got suck, start generating random connections and allow your intuition to tell you if one might lead somewhere interesting. > Jerry Seinfeld was once thinking about golf announcers whispering. He then found something in his notebook about how people whisper when they talk about tipping. "Now we make what's called a charm bracelet," Seinfeld says in this 144-second masterclass on the creative process: When you notice a commonality between two or more things, Seinfeld explains, "You say, 'Oh there's something there.' And now we make what's called a charm bracelet: You take these things and you find a way to associate them." "So that's the process: I'm thinking about this [one] thing and then remember this [other] thing, and then you go, 'Oh there's something there—let me connect those 2 things.'" > —Billy Oppenheimer 2023 on Jerry Seinfeld https://twitter.com/bpoppenheimer/status/1666237970980978693 From <iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/9p1ey7_Ekq0" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen></iframe>