Being creative
requires the cultivation of a balance of skills -- including the ability to
learn and memorize -- as well as the ability to free oneself from that
knowledge and from habitual ways of thinking in order to imagine possibilities
that have never been dreamed of before.
For Gertrude Stein,
it was being in her car, looking at cows.
She made a habit of writing for just thirty minutes a day, driving
around a farm and stopping at different cows until she found the one that most
inspired her.
We need new and
unusual experiences to think differently.
Today, Americans
spend an average of eleven hours each day interacting with digital devices, and
the average smartphone user checks his or her device every six and a half
minutes (that's 150 times a day).
