Creation happens in silence

https://josem.co/creation-happens-in-silence/

by josem • 3 years ago

364 156 3 years ago

malfist3• 3 years ago

With the push to return to office where those offices are over crowded and open, makes me wonder how much these companies are strangling the creativity of their workforce.

berkle4455• 3 years ago

I find it much easier to focus at the office than at home with my family.

malfist3• 3 years ago

If that's you, then feel free to return to the office, just don't drag the rest of us who don't work like you to the office because of your family.

DoingIsLearning• 3 years ago

You are comparing the office with working ad-hoc around your family.

For remote work to work you really need to build a designated space where you go to for the 'work' part of your day. It could be a part of a bedroom, an attic, a basement, a co-op office, the point is that it must create separation and you also have to explain this separation to your family and ask them to respect it.

Just because you are remote doesn't mean you are working 'from home' there is a huge difference perhaps not in distance but in mindset.

eyear• 3 years ago

静者心多妙

malfist3• 3 years ago

Gentle reminder that hacker news is an english site, per the rules you should be responding in english so that there is benefit to the group here.

The article you're commenting on is also in english.

dboreham• 3 years ago

Google translate works though (at least I think it did...)

jmbwell2• 3 years ago

I suspect posting an arguably relevant comment in its original language was a stylistic choice more than a lapse in memory of this site’s preference for English. That said, a more complete post might indeed have included an English translation, an indicator of the source, and perhaps some other context.

swayvil3• 3 years ago

TRANSLATOR BOT ACTIVATED

calm mind that enjoys quietness can often achieve inner peace and deep perception

andsoitis2• 3 years ago

google translate says: "what a wonderful mind", so you're just saying "good post"?

layer8• 3 years ago

Also written as 靜者心多妙, this seems to be a quote from a poem by famous eighth-century Chinese poet Du Fu [0]. See in [1], where it is translated as “The serene have many marvels in the heart”. This [2] site also lists the translation “With a peaceful mind, you can create wonders”, which maybe works a bit better.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Du_Fu

[1] https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/handle/20.500.12657/2742...

[2] https://zhuanlan.zhihu.com/p/35880967

dudul• 3 years ago

No no no, I've been told many times that creation happens during lunch break at the water cooler! And hard problems are solved by gathering around The Architect at The Whiteboard. /s

Cthulhu_2• 3 years ago

I mean there's a big difference between creating something new and solving a problem.

lnsru• 3 years ago

Read this about the creative collaboration last week in an e-mail from CEO. Creative collaboration looks a bit different in open office. People hide in kitchen and labs from the noise.

darxist• 3 years ago

what about music?

djxfade• 3 years ago

I produce music in my own time. And for me it's the exact same.

proto-n• 3 years ago

Based on the title alone, you might think that this is about needing silence to be creative. But as far as I understand, the (very short) post is more about the lack of feedback while creating. "While you’re reading this, creative people are working hard now across the world on the next novel, movie, or song you’ll love, and yet, you don’t know anything about it, and they don’t know if you’ll like it either."

Also, to react to the post itself, yes to some degree, but also no? Most crative processes involve multiple people going back and forth, giving feedback along the way. Editors, teammates, talking to family, brainstorming, etc. Yeah it's not the final audience, but it's similar. A mind on its own is so so much less creative then two minds interacting.

M95D• 3 years ago

Sounds like product development, not creation (as in creative work).

taylodl• 3 years ago

Product development is creation, is it not? Sure, the medium is different and even the process may be different but product development is a creative endeavor.

Cthulhu_2• 3 years ago

Brainstorming is actually a formal process where you bounce ideas back and forth without judgment; a "yes and" state of mind, instead of checking if the ideas are viable.

cableshaft• 3 years ago

For sure. And take board game design. If your game isn't being put in front of people in a prototype state and getting feedback (and more than just your closest friends), you're likely putting yourself at a disadvantage when you put a game out there. There are conventions and playtest groups just for getting that feedback before you commit to the full project.

It'll help you identify problem areas in the game, how engaged the players are, if they find it interesting, help you with specific design problems you're having, etc. I don't think a single board game design of mine hasn't incorporated at least something from the feedback I've gotten from others, before it was pitched to publishers/released.

The same technically applies to video games as well, but that's much riskier, as if you put it out there too much too early, there's a real risk that another developer will take your idea and beat you to market with it (unless it's a narrative or content-heavy game, like a Stardew Valley or Undertale, which my games tend not to be). I've had a few of my games get cloned and put onto other platforms before I've had a chance to, for example, and I'm just a small solo developer.

I do agree that you need periods of silence, though. Sometimes very long periods.

andai4• 3 years ago

I can't remember which article it was, but Steve Pavlina said people often ask him, "ok I've written my book, now how do I sell it?" and he's like, "you dingus! You're supposed to get the audience first, and then create for them!"

So there's a spectrum, from creating in silence to creating in public, which is perhaps down to personal preference or temperament (introversion / extraversion?).

I've often seen people launch mailing lists and pre-orders for products, books, courses, of which they have not yet written a single line. So their early users get a discount in exchange for providing invaluable feedback during the development process.

rchaud• 3 years ago

I've often seen people launch mailing lists and pre-orders for products, books, courses, of which they have not yet written a single line.

I can spot these people from a mile away.

What they're doing is antithetical to the sentiment expressed in this post, which is about being creative. Not doing pre-marketing for some side hustle course or e-book.

melvinmelih• 3 years ago

You're supposed to get the audience first, and then create for them

This is certainly the smart thing to do, but there’s something about “creating something for an audience” that stops my creative juices from flowing. I guess there are too many thoughts about how this will be received and what people might think, that it stops me from creating truly great work.

xwdv• 3 years ago

Creation should require some form of bravery, blindly plunging into the unknown. Not knowing how the creation will be received until it’s actually created.

In the past decade people have been getting burnt out on all these lean startup, kickstarting fucks that just want to test for a market or audience before building out a product. The end result is we are bombarded with vaporware products, services, books, that we have to show interest in or worse put some money down before the creator decides to actually create anything. This makes people skeptical of “new” offerings. The consumer wants a product right away, not a promise. Also, the end product becomes subject to the tyranny of whatever can be tested for with pre-marketing.

The risk needs to shift back onto the creator. I’m talking big designs upfront; products coming to market ready to consume. If it does poorly, the creator just takes the hit in the form of wasted time and money. This is how things used to be, before a generation of entrepreneurs decided they wanted to be risk averse and try out a hundred half baked ideas rather than one idea really well thought out. It seems that as the skill of getting products right on the first try began to wane, “lean” processes began to grow in popularity.

TeMPOraL2• 3 years ago

I've often seen people launch mailing lists and pre-orders for products, books, courses, of which they have not yet written a single line. So their early users get a discount in exchange for providing invaluable feedback during the development process.

Or, more often, their users get nothing at all.

I steer clear of people doing this. It's one thing get other people's feedback on what's clearly communicated as just an idea, or a work in progress. It's another thing to claim you have a ready (or launching any minute now!) product/service, while all you really have is a webpage full of lies and a textbox for victims of your con artistry to leave their contact information, so you can "gauge interest" / "determine market size" (and possibly spam those e-mails later with something else). The latter I consider dishonest, and on the off chance someone doing this actually launches their thing, I'll already be biased against purchasing/subscribing.

User23• 3 years ago

Based on the title alone, you might think that this is about needing silence to be creative

On that tangent, I believe this is very much dependent on the person in question. I personally like to do knowledge work in library silence. I even find music distracting, although instrumental music without vocals is better than open office noise. On the other extreme I've heard stories that Richard Feynman liked to do physics in strip clubs. I'm not ashamed to admit that Feynman was more creative than I'm likely to ever be, but I don't think that my relative inferiority in that regard is because I'm not working from a strip club.

mrandish2• 3 years ago

because I'm not working from a strip club.

Like you, I mostly prefer creating in quiet solitude approaching sensory deprivation. However, sometimes I find it possible to coax a creative idea or concept into conscious awareness when surrounded by a familiar roar of external stimuli but only as long as I perceive that cacophony as a fairly uniform wall of noise. Personal examples include aimlessly walking alone around a massive trade show floor with booths all blaring their visual and sonic messages. For me, such noisy environments seem especially good for more "connectionist" type inspirations.

I've heard the Feynman strip club story and others like it, and always interpreted it in a similar way. It appears that environment was both familiar and comfortable for Feynman and perhaps his ideas could emerge as signal from the wall of perceptual noise.

shrimp_emoji• 3 years ago

A real artist respects the silence as it serves as the foundation of creativity!

https://youtu.be/9E62iA6KCIQ

swayvil3• 3 years ago

With silence comes clarity.

That's a well-known meditation thing.

There are lots of ways to get silence : solitude, peaceful lifestyle, concentration...

Concentration is a big one. It de-agitates your organs of perception. And it can be taken to profound levels of refinement. And then you see ... deeper.

As any scientist/engineer/artist is surely familiar.

kayodelycaon• 3 years ago

The article is actually about not knowing how a creative endeavor will be perceived. Not physical silence.

swayvil3• 3 years ago

Actually... Oh what's the point.

flat-pluto2• 3 years ago

The author says silence but means isolation - ".....isolation without any signals or external validation until it’s complete"

I'd say this is just the first stage of creating something, an MVP of sorts. After that you do need to get some feedback, iterate and improve it step-by-step to get the finished product.

josem2• 3 years ago

Hey!

Author here :)

It was more a metaphor from that moment when I was writing in fact in silence and the lack of any external input / voice telling me whether something I'm doing is good or bad but I know what you mean, perhaps using "isolation" would have made the article clearer, thanks!

flat-pluto2• 3 years ago

I also knew what you meant but it was more for those people who skip the article and comment based solely on the title.

Sidenote - if you can find the time, you should write more often. I just went through your articles and there is a lot of useful advice to be found. The projects are pretty interesting too. Cheers!

mrandish2• 3 years ago

I also reacted the same way to your write-up. As a professional creative toward the end of a multi-decade career, I interpreted it as describing the initial moment of inception, which for me, tends to come all in a rush after a long period of uninterrupted solitude. However, after the 'aha' realization my creative process turns to first capturing the now-connected pieces, then forming them into some rough first expression and bouncing that off of early collaborators for feedback. This is usually followed by an intense period of creative engagement with others as the initial idea or concept is sharpened and refined from an often messy pile of "not quite it" into something much more like its eventual self.

What you described is the often invisible first parts of creation which involve exploring the space, then posing the question or framing the problem and finally stewing on it until the seed of the thing is ready to emerge in that moment of solitude. The best collaborators and producers understand the necessity and shape of this process.

leobg2• 3 years ago

Rich Hickey says “the computer is the worst place to work“. I guess he means precisely for the reason you state. The best ideas come when there’s no input from outside.

eternalban• 3 years ago

The true silent creation is the transformation of the creative human being. Creative activity, specially if it is private, will inevitably transform character. It 'cooks' and may even become tasty. This is the actual fruit of creative effort that is entirely personal (though widely shared via interactions) and in my opinion the sole motivation for being creative beyond the pleasures involved. All else is vanity.

jmbwell2• 3 years ago

This is a concise thought expressed clearly. I fully agree that much of the work of being creative happens in silence, or more specifically, in a state of flow, in which all of the creator’s faculties and energies are directed toward the manifestation of intent. It’s a rare state even for prolific creators.

Sure there’s other work to be done, all the administration and logistics of adapting the product to the need, all the business aspects, the mechanical, what have you. But the springing to life of an idea into reality… there’s a species of this that seems to emerge in isolation.

For some, and I count myself among this group, the challenge that comes next is in releasing this ore of an idea to its audience or its destination. As soon as you publish it, it’s no longer under your control. People make what they will of it. It may not be what you intended them to make of it. But you can no longer help it. It’s everyone else’s product now.

So you can protect it and hold on to it and keep it in its isolation to maintain its reflection of the conditions that created it, or you can release it, and let it find a life of its own. Sometimes that’s scary and sometimes that’s exhilarating. Whatever it is, the moment of silence between it and its creator is something only the creator will have experienced.

revskill• 3 years ago

Same for destruction ;)

ysavir• 3 years ago

I'm not sure what the foundation for this is.

Some of the best ideas I've had have been developed with other people. Role playing games especially are all about collaborative creation. The viewpoint in the article is nothing but tunnel vision, focusing on what works for them and projecting it out into a rule.

I'd wager what the author really means is that to have control over their work, and not having to bend their ideas to develop alongside the ideas of others, requires isolation. And that's something I can relate to. But that isn't about creation, it's about control, and fulfilling your personal vision rather than prioritizing a shared vision.

wcedmisten• 3 years ago

This reminds me of Stephen King's reflections from his book "On Writing":

Write with the door closed, rewrite with the door open. Your stuff starts out being just for you, in other words, but then it goes out. Once you know what the story is and get it right — as right as you can, anyway — it belongs to anyone who wants to read it. Or criticize it.

There's always room for iterative improvement with feedback from others, but you need to first make something you believe in.

This kind of clashes with the idea of finding problems to solve for other people, but I frequently see advice to "solve your own problems" first, because you know them better than other people's problems.

leobg2• 3 years ago

Applies to coding, too, I find.

dandellion• 3 years ago

I don't fully agree with this. While it's true that 90% of everything I create happens in isolation until I publish it, I've also participated in a few Game Jams where the full creative process is very collaborative.

HPsquared• 3 years ago

I do my best work at night, offline.

EDIT: I think in knowledge work, a kind of "sow and harvest" model works well. Going around during the day collects little "seeds" of knowledge which are then synthesized (harvested) in quiet periods of deep work at night.

TeMPOraL2• 3 years ago

So do I.

If I knew how hard it is to square software work with having a family, I'd have chosen a different career track.

waynesonfire• 3 years ago

Creation happens in silence

Not according to Amazon and their 3 day return to office policy.

nicbou• 3 years ago

Not quite. A lot of it, no doubts, but I spend more and more time seeking inspiration and querying my peers. I involve other people both as a type of rubber ducking, and as a sanity test.

hinkley• 3 years ago

My experience dealing with wrongheaded coworkers is this: The more time you spend isolated working on a problem, the more sunk cost fallacy you experience when people push back on your idea.

We have a whole bunch of programming techniques that allow us to make progress and lay groundwork outside of flow state, and then when we are certain that we have the solution, jump in for brief periods and come back out to check in with the world.

Saints preserve me from people who disappear for eight hours at a time and expect me to compliment them for their echo chamber work. Software is a team sport, not a painting.

ChrisMarshallNY• 3 years ago

I enjoyed the read.

For me, it's similar.

Not sure how much it resonates with today's software development zeitgeist, however.

It seems that most software development companies believe that creation happens in large, open-plan offices, filled with chattering people.

marginalia_nu6• 3 years ago

I feel like most of my creative problem solving happens when I'm not working on the problem. There seems to be, roughly speaking, a three part process:

* A loading phase where I immerse into the problem. This requires silence and concentration. Basically staring at the problem and its various aspects for a few hours. Hmm. What if? No. But maybe. Nope. Hmm. Hmm. The problem will often seem too big to fit in my head. I can sort of fumble and grasp its outline, but I don't see it clearly.

* A background processing phase, this requires a sense of almost boredom. I need to step away from the keyboard. A disengagement from further input, from intellectual stimuli in general. I can't distract myself with entertainment either. I must be a bit bored.

* All the sudden there will be clarity, deep insight into what needs to be created. Like the microwave going bing, signalling the cooking is ready. I'll solve not only one problem, but half a dozen. The solutions come faster than I can implement them. I need to pace myself and write my ideas down before I implement them.

It's a heck of a ride.

trashymctrash• 3 years ago

Very well put. I love the metaphors, especially the "microwave going bing" :D

Just curious: Where would you put "gather input or feedback from peers" in that process?

marginalia_nu6• 3 years ago

I don't think that is part of this process. It's certainly part of engineering, but not this side of creative problem solving. This is way off in the deep end. I guess it may be part of early phase 1 in the sense of immersing myself in the problem space, but often I don't know even know what problem I'm solving. Like, not really know it.

The moment of clarity is when the question is revealed and the answer is obvious. It's a real parting of the clouds moment.

8note• 3 years ago

Part 1, and after part 3

rolenthedeep• 3 years ago

That's step 4.

Generally (for me, anyway) the insight is still pretty unformed. Peer input helps refine that idea into something more concise and actionable.

It's not always required, but it is always beneficial.

pyrolistical• 3 years ago

Yep. Same cycle https://blog.battlefy.com/how-a-principal-developer-solves-a...

thealienthing• 3 years ago

Sometimes I get that epiphany of “oh I forgot this!” Then run back to my computer to try it. Usually that wasn’t the problem but after running back two or three times I my epiphany turns out to be true

schlowmo2• 3 years ago

I really know what you mean. It almost seems like the first epiphany never gets it right one hundred percent. But oftentimes epiphany number two is a step back and the right one after that is just number one with a small twist.

vi28372• 3 years ago

Nothing new here, it is a well known problem solving method for physicists.

marginalia_nu6• 3 years ago

I'm a physicist by education, coincidentally.

whateveracct• 3 years ago

I also have this process. Sadly, it means I cannot go faster to some degree. Which becomes a pain when a manager wants Velocity.

brightball• 3 years ago

Accurate. This cycle is a big part of the reason why I don't like situations where I have developers context switching constantly. I find that this doesn't happen unless I'm absorbed in a single problem.

alt2273• 3 years ago

Completely agree.

Excuse the crudeness, but for me your 'Step 2' is to go and sit on the toilet. I have solved untold amounts of problems by stepping away from the computer and sitting on the pot for 20 mins.

marginalia_nu6• 3 years ago

That can help, or just the classic shower insight, but for me I often get even bigger dividends by stepping way away from the computer.

I've had absolute avalanches of new insights when I've been away from any sort of computer for days. It feels like the process of loading more "problem" into the working buffer interrupts or even resets these background processes to some degree.

fakedang• 3 years ago

No shame there. I figured out the answer to a question posed by a professor (which later evolved into my master's thesis), while sitting on the porcelain throne. Letting go of a few solids perhaps let's your mental obstacles loosen.

gurjeet• 3 years ago

Pacing around in the parking lot has worked for me many a times.

npteljes• 3 years ago

No shame, in fact I think this reflects on a more important part of society: on how you just can't get away from it. The toilet is the most commonly available, most socially acceptable way to just have some minutes to yourself.

mgfist• 3 years ago

For me it's always more effective to be doing something physical in the second phase. Walking, chores, showering. It helps the focus.

eshack94• 3 years ago

I'm a bit taken aback by how accurately your creative problem solving process resembles mine. I've never been able to explain it so eloquently or cohesively.

During the first phase, the "problem will often seem too big to fit in my head" is so accurate, especially while I'm still focused on understanding the problem (prior to breaking it down into more manageable pieces).

I appreciate this comment, thank you.

maegul• 3 years ago

Not to detract from your feeling, but I suspect it’s more universal than you might think, and probably stands as a significant critique of mainstream conceptions of “work” where human problem solving is treated as a machine or resource rather than a discrete process.

SamPatt2• 3 years ago

For me the issue is that there are so many pieces, I can't hold them all in my head together.

But that period of stepping away seems to allow me to combine a few pieces and then treat that new piece as a single piece, so I'm able to hold much more. (Easily noticeable when coding same program over time).

I don't think I can consciously do that. It only happens if I study and consider the problem daily for at least 4-5 days, sometimes longer.

nathias2• 3 years ago

for me its similar but I don't need boredom, I either get the insight randomly or in dreams/waking up

marginalia_nu6• 3 years ago

I think boredom is maybe the wrong thing. I can't be too engaged in something. That seems to sabotage the process. I can't play video games or watch some exciting movie (or scroll HN ;-)

Physical work can help. Or just doing something that's not too engaging.

SL61• 3 years ago

It's the same for me: the eureka moment happens when I'm not consciously thinking of the problem at all, and often I'm fully engaged in an unrelated activity.

Some places I've experienced sudden insight for a technical problem:

* playing a video game on Saturday evening

* briefly awake at 3am to use the bathroom

* shopping for tea kettles on Amazon

* reading aloud in a writer's group

The idea just pops into my head, sometimes throwing me off the task I'm actually focused on. I assume there's a subconscious portion of my brain still calculating the problem even when I don't realize it, but I can see why some people believe their insights come from a higher power.

cainxinth2• 3 years ago

It's a heck of a ride.

Funny, you conclude that way because a lot of my background processing and moments of sudden clarity happen when I go cycling after work.

andrepd2• 3 years ago

For me it's either walks in nature or in the loo.

cainxinth2• 3 years ago

I also had a moment of sudden clarity upon rereading this comment. The comma was supposed to go after 'way.'

simpsond• 3 years ago

Almost OODA like. I have a similar process. I noticed that when I started taking cat naps mid afternoon, loaded with context, a solution would find me. Walks are good too.

uptownfunk• 3 years ago

This mimics physical exercise. You lift heavy weight actively, and then you go rest, then you come back and the next (day/week/month) you can suddenly lift heavier (assuming you're getting the right nutrition/rest and avoiding toxic substances)

Similarly the brain muscles, you work them out actively, then you rest, some background magic is happening, and when you come back and revisit it, all of a sudden the problem can be easier. You can do something / solve something that all of a sudden you couldn't do previously.

The eureka/a-ha moment is a little unique to intellectual work. It's hard to find something that gives a similar rush to cracking a hard problem.

Brings back some fond memories solving USAMO/IMO problems.

ChuckMcM• 3 years ago

I, like clearly a lot of others :-), resonate with this form. For me step 2 is walking. Taking a walk for a couple of miles around the neighborhood is "just boring enough" to trigger this background processing phase.

dbcurtis• 3 years ago

You very succinctly put what creativity researchers (yes, that’s a thing) have been saying for decades.

1. Immersion in the problem. Work diligently. 2. Relax 3. Insight

spfzero• 3 years ago

Bill Lear is quoted as having described his creative process similarly. Can't find a reference to it now but I read it decades ago and never forgot it.

maccard• 3 years ago

I've found exercise works best for step 2, fwiw. I rotate weightlifting, yoga, golf and dog walking with great success.

keyle• 3 years ago

It's amusing but most people get stuck on the first phase, endlessly browsing and bookmarking, watching youtube videos, and eventually, distracted to hell, RIP creativity "it's all too hard" or "it's been solved before by people much better than me".

UncleOxidant• 3 years ago

I find that the background processing phase usually happens when I'm out on a walk or sometimes it happens when I'm sleeping - it's a cool, but kind of weird feeling when you wake up and the answer to some difficult problem is just there in your head - I've had that happen only a couple of times, more often it happens when I'm out on a walk.

eyelidlessness• 3 years ago

What you’re describing sounds a lot like what Rich Hickey described as “hammock driven development”, and I tend to agree/relate. Almost all of my big leaps doing anything happen after I’ve taken a break from the thing I’m focused on, and I often come back with not just a better solution to the task but a good sense of how a bunch of other things are interrelated to either the problem or the solution or both.

throwaway20373• 3 years ago

"hammock driven development": I am laughing out loud. Thank you. I will steal that and use it again later!

andrepd2• 3 years ago

Usually the bing/eureka phase happens in the loo for me, for some reason.

Maybe it's just when I'm stretching my legs in general, be it to get a coffee or refill the water bottle or during a walk in nature.

GenerocUsername• 3 years ago

I've experienced this repeatedly in my career yet no official business process ever even acknowledges it's existence as a tool

schlowmo2• 3 years ago

A background processing phase, this requires a sense of almost boredom.

I can relate very well to the phases of probleming solving you described. But for me it's forgetting about the problem even for a short period of time instead of boredom.

When I'm deep into the first phase I sometimes get a bit too attached to a point were the problem is the first thought that comes to my mind after waking up (well...if I'm really stuck there might be even some weird dreams about it).

In the past I started to cancel non-work-related activities until I solved the problem. But I've learned that this oftentimes just lead to frustration - when the day is over I missed out on a nice evening with friends and still haven't solved the problem.

But when I just let it go for a few hours more than once the solution came right to me when I was on my bike back home. Just when I noticed that I haven't thought about the problem for the past few hours.

Sometimes this can get a bit demanding if I then happen to be past the Ballmer Peak.

bitL• 3 years ago

I used to get the best ideas when I decided to do something completely different in the middle of a problem, e.g. walk/bike to a forest etc., allowed by WFH. Suddenly something clicked and I figured out the solution. However, most companies hate this and rather force me to struggle for a week on some tough problem instead of utilizing this shortcut. With the cultural demise of FAANG and their move towards a sweatshop-like handling of swengs I don't think there will be any top-end company that would accept this approach.

hyperthesis• 3 years ago

http://www.paulgraham.com/top.html

andreareina• 3 years ago

https://wiki.c2.com/?FeynmanAlgorithm

throwaway290• 3 years ago

Yes that's roughly how it works... The insight state is dangerous tho because it can easily turn out to be wrong later but it feels good so I often stop exploring and forget to challenge it until it's too late.

bobwaycott• 3 years ago

I have taken to calling this shower-driven development—because all my breakthrough moments always happen in the shower.

throwaway20373• 3 years ago

I have heard that writing and creating art (all forms, including music) is best after a period of boredom. I agree 100%: Nothing gets me fired up about a hard problem like a period of boredom. Many eureka ("ah-ha!") moments come to me while my brain is under-stimulated, like riding a train, washing dishes, showering, or grocery shopping.

wpietri9• 3 years ago

I am sure this is true for some people in some situations, but the sweeping arrogance of this makes me kinda mad:

any creation happens in isolation without any signals or external validation until it’s complete. [...] Any idea or creative work you can think of happens in silence. [...] This isolation happens in all fields: movies, music, literature, or product development.

This is just factually false.

A really obvious counterexample is improvisational theater. The creation happens as a team activity in front of an audience. It's absolutely rich with signals. There's nary a pause, let alone silence. The same is obviously true with musical improvisation. And the creation of recorded music can also be deeply collaborative. [1]

If you talk with stand-up comedians about their process, they get ideas from all over, but workshopping material with live audiences is a vital part of the process of creation. Movies have storyboards and read-throughs and dailies and reshoots and intense cross-disciplinary collaboration and iteration. [2] Literature has writing groups and readings and editors and friends who read drafts.

In product development, we have prototypes and user tests and continuous release and instrumentation and cross-functional teams and short-cycle processes, all of which can drive creativity if we choose.

Do some people need silence to create? Sure. Bless them. For those that experience periods of silence, can that be a struggle? Definitely. But the notion of a noble solo genius high on his mountain creating great things is more myth than reality, and it can be a harmful one because it makes a lot of people think they can't be creative, when instead they just need a richer environment.

[1] E.g.: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M607TcuKf78

[2] E.g.: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-features/maki...

alt2273• 3 years ago

Do some people need silence to create? Sure. Bless them.

I would disagree and say your example is pretty much the only one which works this way, because the process and result requires multiple people to be expressive together.

Maybe dance and musical performance might fit the same rough description, but in those the skill required is personal based, and so most of the contributers will be in silence concentrating very hard on their own part and how it fits into the restas opposed to being completely collaborative.

wpietri9• 3 years ago

your example is pretty much the only one

Which example? I gave 7.

np-2• 3 years ago

Pair programming? That’s multiple people being creative together with nothing to do with music or performance. I think there are plenty of examples of collaborative creativity.

jarjoura• 3 years ago

Great creation is never done in isolation.

However, I think there's a mismatch of definitions. Getting to a destination, and seeing the big picture usually takes a lot of minds to envision. Once you know the destination, then in most industries, it falls back on the individual to figure out how to get to that destination. That's the quiet part.

In the software industry, it's both collaborative and solo at the same time. How many projects have you worked on where someone comes in and clobbers code you've just committed and then there's merge conflicts and wasted effort trying to understand what they were doing? If that hasn't happened to you yet, you're lucky. So on the one hand, agree, you're both trying to build something together, but most likely you're both off in your corner figuring out how to contribute your part.

I do think some of the loneliest parts of creation are when you see something no one else does and you can't really explain it without building it first. The amount of effort and energy required to do that is higher than normal and the fear that it could backfire weighs on you.

wpietri9• 3 years ago

Software can be like that, but it doesn't have to be. I've been part of teams where we built entire products with pairing, frequent pair rotation, and cross-functional teams.

Loneliness is a choice we have made, but I don't think it's a very good one.

Aeolun4• 3 years ago

But the notion of a noble solo genius high on his mountain creating great things is more myth than reality

I’m not sure that’s actually true. The more I work the more I find that a single unit doing all the work is absolutely the most efficient.

Even if you can ultimately get more work done with many people working on the same thing (and some things cannot be done alone at all), the efficiency is lower.

I think that leads a lot of people towards the feeling that lone genius is most likely. I think it’s certainly more likely than any given person being part of a team that’s genius.

erulabs• 3 years ago

I notice a lot of the comments here conflate “creation” and “creative problem solving”, and I really think they’re different things. I’m an engineer - so I absolutely love sitting in a room of smart people and hashing out a solution to a hard problem - but that’s different I think than what the author is referring to.

Creation, building a wholly new thing, is a different activity than engineering or problem solving, and I agree - requires silence. Creation also implies an increase in the number of problems - maybe that’s why I tend to avoid silence… nice article - I think I’ll turn off YouTube and code in silence today!

chadlavi• 3 years ago

A ton of creation happens in conversation or collaboration with others, even if this author doesn't think so.

myheadasplode• 3 years ago

This doesn't track for me at all, and I'm wondering if I'm misunderstanding the point.

The mere presence of another person in the room, whether they're contributing and providing feedback or not, generates idea after idea for me. Some of the best ideas I've had have come from sitting in my living room watching my roommate play Rocket League, with us occasionally discussing the game. It feels so difficult and pointless and uninspiring alone that I've considered hiring an intern or apprentice just to sit there in the studio with me.

As painful as it is, any creation happens in isolation without any signals or external validation until it’s complete.

This is the exact opposite of my experience writing lyrics. We're all constantly bouncing ideas off of each other, immediately and repeatedly. Speaking the lyrics out loud to someone else to gauge how they'll be received in a song is a go-to method in my circle. And if that's just revision and not creation, well, most of my song ideas stem from random phrases spoken out loud to someone in conversation.

While you’re reading this, creative people are working hard now across the world on the next novel, movie, or song you’ll love, and yet, you don’t know anything about it, and they don’t know if you’ll like it either.

I guess this is saying that artists generally don't share half-complete ideas, which is true, but that's because audiences don't do well with filling in the gaps on their own, not because "creation happens in silence". Creation is collaborative and chaotic.

If you think I'm misreading this article please let me know! It's a real head scratcher.

edit: one exception comes to mind - I'm only inspired around others, but when there's a musical problem to be solved (e.g. how do we go from the chorus to the bridge), we all tend to retreat into our heads to work out possible ideas instead of playing them out loud for people and seeing what sticks.

pm• 3 years ago

As you rightly point out, creators don't operate in total isolation: you're constantly taking in the world around you, even in solitude. However, as you've surmised at the end of your comment, there's a difference between sparking an idea and following through on its creation (though they often work in concert).

kerkeslager2• 3 years ago

I don't think you're misreading the article: I think the author is very arrogantly extrapolating his own creative process to all of humanity's creative process.

worik• 3 years ago

Not for musicians in rock bands.

Quite the opposite.....

DanielBMarkham• 3 years ago

I wrote on this over the weekend in an essay titled "Forced Boredom"

A lot of this is standard advice for various creators. I think, however, that it's possible to optimize yourself for the process. I find in my professional life and watching others that there are creative stages which are followed by forgetting these lessons, then re-learning them all over again. Humans are complex machines.

Shameless plug: https://danielbmarkham.com/forced-boredom/

evan-buss• 3 years ago

“Our species is the only creative species, and it has only one creative instrument, the individual mind and spirit of man. Nothing was ever created by two men. There are no good collaborations, whether in music, in art, in poetry, in mathematics, in philosophy. Once the miracle of creation has taken place, the group can build and extend it, but the group never invents anything. The preciousness lies in the lonely mind of a man.” - John Steinbeck, East of Eden

bombolo2• 3 years ago

Nothing was ever created by two men

debatable.

codingdave• 3 years ago

"This isolation happens in all fields: movies, music, literature, or product development. But it’s necessary. No one will come and tell you to create something."

While a nice ideal, this feels 100% incorrect. All of those are commercial endeavors that have people coming to you telling you to create something. Some of them even come to you with pre-written requirements, scripts, etc. and tell you to create it. Or you have a contract committing you to creating a certain amount of work.

Individual periods of creative flow may be done in isolation, that is true. But the article went too far to claim that isolation is a given in creative work.

kerkeslager2• 3 years ago

It's a bit arrogant to assume that your creative process is everyone's creative process.

I sometimes need silence for periods of intense concentration, but that's really not sustainable for me and more often I need collaboration to create, bouncing ideas off other people and getting feedback and additional ideas. This doesn't work as well for really intricate sorts of creativity, but the reality is that, for me, the majority of creativity isn't that.

I particularly had to chuckle when the OP mentions music. Sure, they don't directly say it gets created in silence, but they do say it happens in isolation, which is true in some cases, but just isn't true for the vast majority of bands.

Even creation which has little to do with sound, such as novel-writing, is often done with sound and collaboration: if you read enough about writing you'll discover that many novelists seek other novelists to discuss ideas with, or you'll find that certain novels were written while listening to certain albums.

Of course, some creation does happen in silence and isolation.

pklausler• 3 years ago

I get ideas and find solutions in many environments, but never in places where I can hear people speaking, like high-density open-plan office hellscapes.

Aeolun4• 3 years ago

In silence? You haven’t gone back to the office yet have you? Creation happens in a bunch of noise and distractions.

andsoitis2• 3 years ago

Silence, in this context, is a metaphor. It’s the degree to which your attention can be focused and does not experience or react to disturbances to the void from within and from without.

unrealp• 3 years ago

Doesnt even culture develop in isolation? take for example the aspect of language. Our world has so many languages, which developed at the time when there was very little communication. If communication was very smooth, like today, only handful of languages dominate. New languages are not evolving and older ones are getting diluted. If information flows smoothly, cultural trends spread very quickly. There would be small mini-trends which never get chance to evolve. Isolation would help people evolve and refine these mini-trends, evolving as cultural trends.

I am not a isolationist. Just stating observation.

exodust• 3 years ago

"I will only know if you’ll like this article once I publish it."

I don't like it. For starters, the length is only slightly longer than a handful of tweets. Barely qualifying as an "article", it ends abruptly, without really saying anything. Almost like someone called out "dinner is ready", and because the article wasn't going anywhere, he just ended it with "we don't care".

"As painful as it is..."

Painful? How is it painful? A more interesting article would elaborate on this pain.

The irony here is that nothing has really been "created" with this piece. It's like a comment. This comment I'm writing here in painful silence, has more substance than the article in question!

drewcoo• 3 years ago

I can't think, let alone create, or even copulate, in silence.

I need that constant thrum to block out so I can focus and really put out the good stuff.

Maybe you're not everyone and should shut the f up while the rest of us enjoy the non-negative noise all around us.

challenger-derp• 3 years ago

The preference for silence may not be universal. John Von Neumann, a highly regarded scientist, appears to prefer noisy environments according to his Wikipedia entry [1]:

In Princeton, he [John Von Neumann] received complaints for regularly playing extremely loud German march music on his phonograph, which distracted those in neighboring offices, including Albert Einstein, from their work. Von Neumann did some of his best work in noisy, chaotic environments, and once admonished his wife for preparing a quiet study for him to work in. He never used it, preferring the couple's living room with its television playing loudly.

References

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_von_Neumann

shantnutiwari• 3 years ago

Thats a great article. And Im surprised how its being mis-represented here.

I agree with the author(As a blogger and fiction writer)-- you have to do your work alone, and then just put it out there. Sure you can get feedback once you have something polished (I dont but I know some peole like to), but the actual creative process has to be done by yourself. It is hard and lonely, but you have to push thru it if you want to get something done

Creation happens in silence

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