2014: Twelve Habits of Creativity

Previously, I wrote about my Outreach Habit, how I pushed through difficulty, and how it changed who I am. It garnered enough interest for a follow-up post. And indeed, this year I created a spin-off of the Outreach Habit: career workshops where grad students and post-docs made concrete progress on their own careers, available here and described by a participant here. 

And the Outreach Habit was just Phase One.

Creativity is like any other skill. It can be deliberately practiced and improved. Importantly, one can’t just read about how to be creative and then be creative. People sometimes want tips and tricks (i.e. shortcuts and magic bullets), but you actually have to actually implement creative techniques yourself, figure out what works for you, and make it a habit to think creatively. The only way to build a habit is through concrete action - doing it everyday.

Creativity doesn’t “just happen.” It’s not spontaneous (though it can feel like it in the moment). It’s not waiting around to be inspired. And it's certainly not out of your control (though it is partly out of your conscious control).

With this in mind, I dedicated each month of 2014 to a different Habit of Creativity.

Creativity is simply this: Taking things that already exist and connecting them in new ways. This doesn’t just happen by itself. To do this, five basic ingredients need to be cultivated:

1) Raw material. Obviously, you can’t connect things you don’t know exist. This is why I did my 52 Books in 52 Weeks challenge in 2013- to maximize exposure to ideas.

2) Actively engaging with ideas. You can’t expect creativity to "just happen.” There are specific ways to wrestle with ideas.

3) Relationships. I personally like to be by myself and think, but adopting other people’s viewpoints is the fastest way to look at the same old boring thing in a different light.

4) A creative environment. Daily routines, schedules, work space, etc all need to be tinkered with. This will be different for different people, but trial and error is always required.

5) Deliberate skill acquisition. Skills create opportunities to access and cultivate the four ingredients above.

Each Habit of Creativity is targeted at one of the above ingredients.

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Monthly Habits of Creativity 

Just like the Outreach Habit, I strived to practice a Habit of Creativity every single day for 30-50 days, using the Mini-Habits method. When I fell off, I got back on as quickly as I could.

These targeted my specific weaknesses. If you want to develop your own Habits of Creativity, you can try mine out, but don’t adopt them wholesale. Instead, be creative...

I’m not going to explain these in detail. Instead, I’ve included links to what inspired the habit.

My 2014 Habits of Creativity:

•    January: Outreach

•    February: Read scientific papers daily

•    March: Learn to draw... using Inkscape vector graphics. Required myself to to post one new drawing everyday on Facebook. Also used this to generate all the figures for my 1-hour presentation on my thesis work. 

•    April: Empathy

•    May: Write down 10 ideas

•    June: Journal

•    July: Active recall

•    August: Learn programming in R (continued until November)

•    September: Deep work rituals

•    October: Mind mapping 

•    November: Morning ritual to promote clarity of thought and stay focused on my most important work. Includes journaling, exercise, and reading

•    December: Evening ritual dedicated to building relationships

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Interested or Skeptical?

Below are some common responses I got to my Outreach Habit, likely relevant to rest of my habits.

A common response: "Wow, that sounds like it took a lot of time. I wish I had that kind of time."

“I don’t have time” is a bullshit excuse. You just need the right plan. The Outreach Habit took 10 minutes per day.

Another common response: “Wow, you were really motivated to do that. How did you inspire yourself everyday?”

“I’m not feeling motivated” is a crutch. You don’t need inspiration to take action. Most days I did not feel motivated. Action leads to motivation, not the other way around.

Another common response: “You’re so extroverted! I wish I could do that” or… “That sounds like faking it and not being yourself..."

“I’m not that type of person” is irrelevant. You can become that type of person. I’m still an introvert, by the way. Being around others is exhausting. But that doesn’t mean I can’t reach out to others.

The best way to start the day

Today is a ridiculously busy day. I still need to prepare my lesson for teaching at 1pm, and today is one of the few days this week that harbors a continuous block of time to get lab work done. And I want to read some papers and get some planning done. And all this needs to be done before I pick up the guest I'm hosting for PhD recruitment weekend. Since I need to take him around campus tomorrow to all his interviews and events, I won't be able to do much tomorrow other than grade papers and maybe read my 5th book. Anxiety is rising.

But I'm taking a little time to slow down and gather my thoughts for this morning on this blog. I went down to the cafe, selected their newest roast, and sat down in the comfortably spacious common area. I suppose I could've looked out at the heavy snow and temperature drop from 50 to 20 degrees as a frustration and a blockade to productivity. But I'd rather gaze out of the big bright windows, see the beauty from my warm chair, and purposefully enjoy my coffee. I let my mind settle on comfort and charm of Ann Arbor and the feeling of being at home. Simultaneously, I wonder about everything else out there on this planet and all the experiences awaiting me in life.

I like slowing down at the beginning of the day. It is all too easy to see one's massive to-do list and rush straight into work. But paradoxically, this leads to less work getting done. It's hard to focus on one's work if you just think "I have to do this today," rather than "I want to do this today." It's hard to be creative unless your mind wanders a little and brings new resources to bear on the problems you're solving. And without taking some time to think, it's easy to fall into the trap of doing urgent stuff, rather than important stuff. And that is a form of procrastination far worse than delaying your work for 30 minutes.

Since sitting down, I've determined the #1 thing I need to do this morning is perform a literature search and determine the list of gene expression assays I want to design. Then, the #2 thing I need to do is plan my teaching. Also, I need to go to the gym since I won't be able to go later. Exercise is not something I'm willing to compromise on, no matter how I busy I am. That's it for this morning until my discussion section. Nothing else will enter my mind.

Taking some time to prepare the mind will cause one's most important priorities to float to the top, where they are ripe for picking.

High-Yield Practices to Prepare Your Mind
Sometimes one can get up without direction for 30 minutes and stumble upon an idea or practice that changes one's life. Not likely, however. Some default choices for what to do to gather one's thoughts for the rest of the day:

Create. 

I created this blog entry this morning. Write, build, draw, create a connection with another human being.

Focus on a simple joy. 

Just for a few minutes, nothing else in the world can get between you, your cup of coffee, and your thoughts.

Exercise.

Work hard enough to feel discomfort. Embrace the discomfort- that attitude makes you feel ready to tackle challenges for the rest of the day. Eat some protein afterwards.

Make something sparkly clean.

But don't rush it. Consider your environment's effect on your mind.

Read something unrelated to your work.

Try to learn a new idea. Or engage yourself in a new story. Important: Don't read the news.

Generate ideas.

Doesn't matter how stupid they sound. Write them down. Create. If nothing comes to you, read something first and really consider it. Anyone can become creative if they practice being creative.

Finally, after you're all done, either plan the rest of your day, or go straight into your #1 most important and most difficult task of the day. Look at it as an opportunity.

5x5 idea warm-up: grateful, proud, forgive

As I've previously reported, the Idea Habit has been by far the most fun, successful, and useful goal that I've implemented this month. Thinking back on it, I went through 3 phases. 

1. A fun phase where I was just experimenting with it. I look back and the ideas were just terrible. However, it was relatively easy to get ideas out into Evernote because I wasn't pressuring myself. 
2. A frustration phase. I started subconsciously thinking, "my idea topic and my ideas need to be really good," especially because I started sharing my ideas with other people. Thus it would sometimes take up to an hour to accomplish my habit- and most of it was just trying to come up with a good theme for my ideas. And stress just makes my ideas worse. What a waste.
3. A self-improvement phase. Out of my frustration I started thinking about the process of generating ideas so that I could make myself more efficient. I started deliberately exposing myself to inspirations, reading about creativity, and trying out new environments for creativity (various cafes, nature walks, in a push-up position, etc).

Throughout phase 3, I also started thinking about how to expand my Idea Habit to become more than just a daily exercise. Idea topics such as "How Google Glasses might affect biological laboratory research" and "top 10 animals I'd like to ride" certainly are interesting, but have rather narrow application. While the Idea Habit is worthy in its own right, I feel it has the potential to affect everything else I want to accomplish.

Thus I have just today introduced "5x5 Idea Warm-Up Time" to start off my daily idea sessions. I come up with 5 ideas for 5 idea lists, for a total of 25. These are important topics that are worth thinking about every day, but because I am thinking about them everyday, I don't pressure myself to make them really good ideas. At the same time, it just gets my idea juices flowing so I don't get stuck for an hour just trying to come up with a topic.

1) 5 things I'm grateful for (i.e. brainstorming things I can do for other people)

2) 5 things I'm proud of (i.e. what are my strengths and how can I maintain them)

3) 5 things I forgive myself for (i.e. what are my weaknesses and how can get better)

4) 5 new things I can try today that I've never done before

5) 5 things I can do today to make myself a better scientist and thinker

Again, if these ideas suck, so what? It just takes 1 good idea out of 100 to make a difference in my life. I'm going to limit this 10-15 minutes per session so that I can move on to my main idea list of the day.

Separately, I've also started coming up with 5 ideas for experiments while I'm doing my morning routine of writing out all the experiments I need to do in a day. Usually I end up doing one of them that I otherwise don't "need" to do.

Starting off with a "lite" version of whatever you need to accomplish is generally applicable. It's pretty much a combination of two eternal motivation pearls: 1) tell yourself you're going to just start your task, dedicating just 5 minutes to it and 2) break your task up into smaller chunks. Aren't feeling social but you're going to an important social event? Just start talking to someone, accept that it's going to be awkward, and give it your best shot. Feeling tired but you are committed to working out everyday? Just start doing your routine with lighter weights. Don't waste time stretching- it's just procrastination and there isn't any evidence of benefit. Just start, just start, just start.

In completely unrelated news, I donated blood this week.

This is what will happen to whoever receives my blood.

Also, I found this epic video while researching my idea list "top animals I'd like to ride." 

Water buffalo herd versus lion pride versus crocodiles. AWESOME.

Update: Tracking my Monthly Goals

I briefly mentioned at the beginning of one of my recent blog posts that May felt like it lasted the equivalent of 3 months. It's still true- when it's Tuesday, the weekend feels like it happened a week ago. Why? I couldn't really put my finger down on this until I started thinking about this blog post. I realized I'm spending far more of my waking hours fully conscious. I'm no longer shutting down my brain for hours everyday by wasting time on the Internet. I'm deliberately planning and working towards my goals and developing my habits. Therefore, it feels like I have three times as much… time. Concrete accomplishments and productivity are a natural and happy outcome, but they are almost incidental at this point.

Today is an update on the goals I established at the beginning of the month.

I had 5 goals that I established for myself this month. These are, of course, in addition to everyday work.

• Focus: An incredibly important meta-goal. I'm trying to stop myself from becoming distracted by cool-sounding goals other than the 5 I've listed here. It's way too easy to move from goal to goal because of the allure of novelty, at the expense of never fully internalizing any habit and never satisfactorily completing any goal. I have specific criteria for checking this off each day, based on how many of the following goals I finish each day and how early in the day I finish them.
• Idea habit: The most enjoyable goal so far. Each morning I spend up to 30 minutes coming up with lists of ~10 ideas, to actively develop my creativity. These can be relevant to my day or not. Some example lists.
• Wake up at 6am: This one is fantastic when I actually do it because it's a productivity bonanza. However, waking up early is not a priority when I have evening social obligations or when I'm hosting someone at my place.
• Reading habit: Keeping up with the literature is critical to any career in science, and I've been neglecting it. I try to read at least an hour each day, or read to the point that I feel like I've gained an important insight. I'm also trying to develop a systematic way to proceed through the literature, but I've made minimal progress.
• Long-term lab plan: This one didn't really work out as I hoped. I've been treating it as a two-step process. First, developing a list of experiments that would be critical for proving a case in a manuscript. Second, putting it into a calendar format with 1-3 critical experiments I could perform each day in addition to run-of-the-mill labwork. However, I haven't actually done the second part because the first part keeps on changing (ah the realities of science).

I'm using Evernote to keep track of both my "Big Rocks" for each week as well as my progress on goals.

And how have I actually been doing? This morning I'm experimenting with graphing my results and seeing if it's useful.

Yes, I used Microsoft Excel to do this. So sue me.

Clearly, I'm having bursts of productivity (at the beginning of each week, I noticed) and then I slip up as the week goes on. That's just good to keep in mind as I finish the month- I don't necessarily have a plan to correct it. Notably, I'm pretty happy that my reading/plan habits are hovering in the 60-80% range, and the idea habit is a stunning success.

Observations on how I can keep up each habit:

• Focus: When I have an idea for a self-improvement project, I just write it down in a note in Evernote and then forget about it until it's time to make next month's goals. Don't want to get distracted. Also, waking up early gives me a boost of motivation that allows me to finish all my goals early in the day.
• Idea habit: Just continue my excitement over being creative each day. Also, I want to try mixing my already-generated ideas in non-intuitive combinations. That's also one reason why I share my ideas- because maybe one of your ideas will have sex with mine have a bunch of little baby ideas.
• Wake up at 6am: Have something I'm excited to do that day. My buddy Jake mentioned this piece of wisdom: "If you don't know why you're getting up in the morning, you should just go back to sleep."
• Reading habit: I can really only accomplish this when I drag myself away from lab to a cafe somewhere and tell myself "OK you are going to read now." Perhaps I should start reserving a specific timeslot for this each day.
• Plan: Just start with the calendar. Use the calendar as my mechanism for generating experimental ideas, rather than trying to list out all experiments first and then stick them into a calendar.

Finally, I have another habit that I've picked up even though I'm not actively focusing on it. And its quite simple: try something new everyday.

Obstacles to starting a blog don't actually exist

Hello world! Today I'm discussing the common obstacles people face when trying to start up a blog (or any other side project), and why those obstacles don't actually exist. This is a continuation of my last post on the benefits of blogging. Notably, all the benefits of blogging that I listed in the previous post can be achieved in other ways. But if you're missing any of them from your life (I know I was missing, um, ALL of them before I started blogging), ask yourself if you're just being stopped by the imaginary obstacles that I discuss in this follow-up post. Furthermore, I'd like to reminding everyone that while I'm writing about blogging, none of this is specific to scribbling in the cyberdust (hat-tip to Holly). For me, blogging is an example of deliberately making a change in my life. I've applied these same ideas to learning how to chat up strangers in cafes, remembering names, fitness, and other side projects (all of these may be addressed in future posts).

For a long time I thought blogging would be cool but I had all sorts of self-doubts: "Do I have enough time? My writing skills atrophied in college by stuffing my schedule with science courses! Do I have anything novel to say? What if people judge my opinions? My prose? Am I qualified? Do I have the right topic yet? Who would want to read my blog?" I didn't feel comfortable communicating on a really deep and personal level, even to my closest friends. And because I couldn't flesh out my ideas in detail, I didn't even fully understand the benefits of blogging- I only discovered them as I progressed, which fuels the excitement. This is why it took me almost a year to get started. And that was my biggest mistake.

Obstacles preventing you from starting a blog (or delve into any new experience that requires commitment) fall into two categories:

1) Yourself. My own perceptions of what blogging would actually entail held me back for quite a while, in spite of the excitement of taking on a side project that requires new skills, new experiences, and a little bit of self-exploration.

2) Others. For a while I was worried about the response to my blog. I guess I'm naturally self-conscious. I don't want to waste anyone's time with boring stuff, after all.

Let's break it down.

Yourself:

• Mistake: thinking it's not worth it unless you do a really good job. "I shouldn't write a blog because I'm not a good writer. Because I have nothing interesting to write about." OK, this is just silly. How does one get better at writing? By writing. A more nuanced way of looking at it is that in any self-development project, there are no stakes, only possibilities. In the professional world, crappy work won't be tolerated. But if your first blog post is crap and gets 4 page views, so what? No problem, and you likely identified a few concrete weaknesses in your writing style in the process. In fact, even if 9 out of 10 of your posts are pretty blah, isn't that one really awesome post worth it? Especially if the alternative is sitting around on your butt.
• "I don't have enough time." I used to make this excuse all the time. But how much mindless crap on the Internet was I looking at everyday? Furthermore, blogging IS relaxation. It's just a better kind of relaxation than watching TV, playing video games, or wasting time on the Internet, because you don't need to wake up your brain again when you're finished. Finally, never say "I have to do X" or "I can't do Y because I'm obligated to or supposed to do X". Say "I choose Y over X." Take responsibility.



Your blog doesn't have to be 100% unique to be something special

• Thinking that you have to be novel. You don't have to be completely original when blogging. You just need to be honest and write about things that truly interest you. If you do that, you will eventually develop your own original angle. There's no way you can be novel just sitting around and thinking about it- you need to actually start writing.

Others:

• Being overly focused on what you think others do and don't want to read about. #1 you will always be able to find an audience. Don't worry about it. #2 Having an audience should be a secondary goal. Instead of asking what people will think about your blog, you should be asking what do YOU want to write about? What do YOU need to do to become a better writer? But you might ask- then why don't I just keep a diary? Well, just knowing that someone COULD read your blog should be sufficient to motivate you to make your ideas as crystal-clear as you can manage, and motivate you to keep up the habit of writing. #3 So what if your interests are… quirky? Want to blog about Magic the Gathering? No problem. It might even help you connect with others who share the same interests but are too shy or embarrassed to go around advertising it.
• Fear of being judged. See my last post. If you open up to people, they won't judge you. Maybe a few trolls on the Internet will, but just ignore the haters.
• Fear of coming off as a snob. Sure, you think that you're expert enough to post your opinions on the Internet for everyone to read, right? What a snob. But that's completely missing the point. You don't have to be an expert to blog about anything! Writing is a MEANS to learn and gain expertise. Imagine you just read something interesting. How do you retain it? You either need to talk about it, write about it, or engage with it in some other way. Furthermore, having a blog will motivate you to go find interesting things to read about in the first place. If you're blogging with the correct intent, no one will think you're a snob.

I've realized that obsessing over questions like "What will others think of my blog?" and "What if no one reads my blog?" is completely pointless because I do not have direct control over those things. It's better to focus on questions like "What skills can I develop by doing this? What do I need to do to follow through on my goal or habit? Did I successfully complete the act of writing today? What are some things that I want to learn but haven't had a chance to? What would I enjoy writing about?"

The only thing in life over which you have complete control are yourself and the activities you voluntarily choose to do. If your job sucks or life just isn't going well for you, that has almost zero impact on your ability to write a blog entry, because it's entirely on your own time and it's entirely your own choice. For side projects like getting fit, writing a blog, taking an online course on a topic you've never studied before, or learning to chat up strangers, all obstacles are imagined. So if you want to do it, just start. Remember, there are no stakes, only possibilities.

This person spent too much time worrying about pandas and 

not enough time thinking about what he would actually do for pandas.

Meta-Blog: Practicing honest self-expression makes you better at it

Time for the start of the June blog! I really can't believe it's only been a month since I started- it seriously feels like May lasted at least the equivalent of 3 months...

This week, I've decided to write a two-parter entry about... blogging. Yeah, I know it's meta and perhaps a bit self-serving, and I'm going to take some risks with this one. Furthermore, there are already lots of similar articles from other people, like this fantastic one from James Altucher. But I'm not worried about being novel, because that shouldn't stop me from writing. Just like it shouldn't stop anyone else who is interested in blogging. So today's entry will be about why one would want to blog. The next entry will be about common reasons why one would NOT want to blog (or take on any other side project for that matter), and why those reasons are all just silly.

Several of my college friends have recently started blogs:

• Scribbles in the Cyberdust: generally awesome person working in the consulting industry. Will be musing on life, relationships, and transitions.
• Greg Poulos: college roommate and computer science major who recently quit his tech start-up job to start writing novels and short stories
• The Literary Fix: humanities-expert extraordinaire writes reviews, reactions, responses to books and literature. 10X more culturally adept than I.

Our monolithic group of friends (aka Blocking Group One) had a long e-mail thread tossing around topic and name ideas for these blogs, so I threw in my two cents based on my own experience. It would seem natural that I offer my advice given my fresh experience on the topic, but I have to admit I was a little hesitant at first because I wasn't sure how it would come off. I used to fear offering advice to people because I was afraid people might interpret it as an I'm-better-than-you attitude. As cockiness or arrogance. Some of that fear was mixed in with a lack of self-confidence, which was compounded by a further fear of telling others about things I lacked confidence in. So I used to be afraid of both acknowledging my strong points and of showing my vulnerability, solely because of what other people might think. That's where blogging comes in.

Good blogging is an exercise in being honest. This is by far the most important thing one can gain from blogging. For people like me who have trouble connecting on a deep level with others, it is a wonderful stepping stone to getting comfortable sharing one's thoughts with all the other human beings who inhabit this planet. For more extroverted individuals, it is a constant exercise and reminder to trust other people and strive to make social interactions meaningful. A blog is a great way to develop honesty because it is public enough to take you out of your comfort zone and enable you to grow, but it's a solitary enough that it lets you develop your thoughts deeply without all the complexities and anxieties of face-to-face interaction. It's an interesting dichotomy.

Opening up to others is undoubtedly scary and opens you up to judgment, but like anything else it gets less scary the more you do it. Just practice expressing your opinions, just practice revealing your weaknesses and vulnerabilities, and just practice giving advice to other people in a way that really shows you care about them. Acknowledge that it will definitely be awkward at first, but have fun working at it. Soon, the questions holding you back disappear. Questions like "What if people have no interest in what I'm talking about? What if it creates conflict? What if this person doesn't like me anymore? What if my concerns or ideas are dismissed? What if I look stupid? What if I'm proven wrong?" When I started acknowledging my weaknesses and vowing to address them, both publicly on this blog and privately with my friends, did anyone judge me? Perhaps, but I didn't hear about it, nor does it really matter. In private, others have done the same and opened up to me- you'll have to take my word for it but I feel more connected to my friends than ever. Heck, because I now feel like I can open up to complete strangers (to a lesser degree than my friends, but still) I also feel more connected to the human race in general. I hope it continues to deepen my relationships. In public, other bloggers bravely share their ideas and opinions with the world, and that is a good thing.

There are many other reasons to open yourself up in a blog:

1. Find other people with similar interests. Lots of people are introverts and won't reveal their personal interests widely, leaving lots of discoveries of mutual interests up to chance. If you post a specific topic, perhaps a majority of people won't be interested in it, but you've have provided a conduit for others who are interested to find you.
2. Practice fully fleshing out your ideas. Good writing demands this. While I'm not a good writer, what matters is that I'm practicing and slowly getting better. I've never been a very detail-oriented person. This is unfortunate for my graduate studies, which require very detailed analysis of numerous experiments, papers, and ideas. I need to be able to communicate not just big ideas but also very specific logic. Now by habit whenever I'm reading a science article or designing an experiment I think about how I'm going to talk about it. You haven't fully mastered an idea until you can teach it. Also, now before I start an experiment I automatically write out all the possible outcomes and what they would tell me, and if it's not enough information then I re-design the experiment. Detailing the logic of your ideas can change what you end up deciding to do about your ideas
3. Make yourself accountable for your goals. Tell everyone what you're doing. In your heart, you will not want to disappoint anyone else. Knowing that others know your goals will make you constantly remind yourself what your goals are. This point might run contrary to some experience- I found that in the past I would tell someone else about something great I'm "planning" to do, but it was just to make myself feel better that I WASN'T doing it. But I only did this if I knew it was unlikely that this person would ask me next week how my great idea was progressing. Again, I wasn't being honest. Because you constantly blog about what you're doing, you HAVE to be honest with yourself about whether or not you're making progress on your goals.
4. Motivation to learn new things and grow yourself. No one wants to be boring. Knowing that I could choose anything happening in my life or any of topics I'm reading about on the Internet to be the subject of a PUBLIC blog entry is a fantastic incentive to try to make my life interesting and learn things I never would have touched otherwise.
5. Do more than click the "share" button. You know the drill. I do this all the time: I read something that's really cool, I share it on Facebook, and then I forget about it. I feel like I'm just observing the world happening. But a blog post is your own creation. And when you make something that's your very own, you won't forget about it.

Finally, a blog is completely unnecessary. Wait, what? That's a good thing? Yes indeed, it is. You know there are dozens of things that you could do that are completely voluntary, i.e. not in your job description. But they help you grow as a person and see another side of life. Challenge yourself.

Anyway, I hope that this blog entry didn't come off as one of those braggy it-changed-my-life-and-it-will-change-yours-too articles. If you decide call me out on it, maybe I'll go cry now. Yeah, I do cry sometimes.

Keep reading Part 2.