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Here are a few excerpts from a book I recently read, "The Creativity Leap: Unleash Curiosity, Improvisation, and Intuition at Work," by Natalie Nixon.

Wonder is our capacity to exercise awe, pause, dream, and ask audacious blue-sky-thinking questions. Rigor is our capacity to exercise discipline and deep skills, to pay attention to detail, and to spend time on task for mastery. Both are necessary for creativity to thrive. In fact, I define creativity as the ability to toggle between wonder and rigor in order to solve problems and deliver novel value. And I see inquiry, improvisation, and intuition as the practices that increase those capacities.

 

Making it Personal

 

Earlier this month, I wrote about how ending racism will take people looking beyond personal manifestations of racial hate to seeing and rooting out structural injustices.  But the reverse is true too.

 

But What is the Solution

Pick a controversial topic - say gun control, or climate change - and you will not lack for commentary, laments, and outrage from your civically engaged friends.  And justifiable too, since by definition if we're talking about controversial topics then we're talking about subjects that are of critical global importance, cut deep to our hearts, and engender heated debate.  

 

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Here are a couple of excerpts from a book I recently read, "Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know," by Adam Grant.

Two decades ago my colleague Phil Tetlock discovered something peculiar.  As we think and talk, we often slip into the mindsets of three different professions: preachers, prosecutors, and politicians. In each of these modes, we take on a particular identity and use a distinct set of tools.  We go into preacher mode when our sacred beliefs are in jeopardy: we deliver sermons to protect and promote our ideals.  We enter prosecutor mode when we recognize flaws in other people's reasoning: we marshal arguments to prove them wrong and win our case.  We shift into politician mode when we're seeking to win over an audience: we campaign and lobby for the approval of our constituents.  The risk is that we become so wrapped up in preaching that we're right, prosecuting others who are wrong, and politicking for support that we don't bother to rethink our own views...But being a scientist is not just a profession. It’s a frame of mind—a mode of thinking that differs from preaching, prosecuting, and politicking. We move into scientist mode when we’re searching for the truth: we run experiments to test hypotheses and discover knowledge. Scientific tools aren’t reserved for people with white coats and beakers, and using them doesn’t require toiling away for years with a microscope and a petri dish. Hypotheses have as much of a place in our lives as they do in the lab. Experiments can inform our daily decisions. That makes me wonder: is it possible to train people in other fields to think more like scientists, and if so, do they end up making smarter choices?

When we pursue happiness, we often start by changing our surroundings. We expect to find bliss in a warmer climate or a friendlier dorm, but any joy that those choices bring about is typically temporary.  In a series of studies, students who changed their environments by adjusting their living arrangements or course schedules quickly returned to their baseline levels of happiness.  As Ernest Hemingway wrote, "Yo can't get away from yourself by moving from one place to another."  Meanwhile, students who changed their actions by joining a new club, adjusting their study habits, or starting a new project experienced lasting gains in happiness.  Our happiness often depends more on what we do than where we are.  It's our actions - not our surroundings - that bring us meaning and belonging.

My Own Devices

 

Today's post is of the genre of documenting daily minutiae for posterity.  Which is about what tech I and my family use.  Amongst the five of us, we have:

 

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Here are a few excerpts from a book I recently read, "The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York," by Robert Caro.

The whole life of Robert Moses, in fact, has been a drama of the interplay of power and personality.

Cycling Through My Emotions

 

It has taken a COVID-induced shift from never biking to biking all the time to reveal that I have such a love-hate relationship with the activity.  There are days it takes me back to a more innocent time, when I hadn't a care in the world and it felt so good - physically and emotionally - to feel the wind in my face and get excited that I was going somewhere.  And then there are other days when it is such a slog: when it's cold and windy out, when it's rush hour and I have dodge cars and potholes and snow piles, or when I hit a slight incline that feels like an impossible uphill because I'm gassed from the heaviness of life.

 

What It'll Take to End Racism

 

We talk about race and racism all the time, and yet the simple question lingers not only unresolved but unaddressed: how do we actually end racism?  I lack the wisdom and space to bite off that whole question but wanted to nibble at one corner of it by considering the interplay between the personal and structural aspects of racism.

 

Into the Lives of Women

 

In honor of Women's History Month, here are some biographies or autobiographies I've read recently, representing a wide range of women throughout history and into the present.

All You Can Ever Know (Chung)

Beauty in the Broken Places: A Memoir of Love, Faith, and Resilience (Pataki)

Brave (McGowan)

Option B: Facing Adversity, Building Resilience, and Finding Joy (Sandberg)

Sick: A Memoir (Khakpour)

Small Fry: A Memoir (Jobs)

The Woman Who Would Be King: Hatshepsut's Rise to Power in Ancient Egypt (Cooney)

What Made Maddy Run: The Secret Struggles and Tragic Death of an All-American Teen (Fagan)    

Who Thought This Was a Good Idea?: And Other Questions You Should Have Answers to When You Work in the White House (Mastromonaco)

With All Due Respect: Defending America with Grit and Grace (Haley)

Wolfpack: How to Come Together, Unleash Our Power, and Change the Game (Wambach)