Collections by Hamza Khan

An idea is a combination of other ideas.

• Say it five times out loud. Say it to your cat. Yell it out your car window at strangers waiting for the bus. Every amazing creative thing you’ve ever seen or idea you’ve ever heard can be broken down into smaller ideas that existed before. An automobile? An engine and wheels. A telephone? Electricity and sound. Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups? Peanut butter and chocolate. All great creative ideas, inventions, and theories are composed of other ideas. Why should you care?
• Because if you want to be a creator instead of a consumer, you must view existing ideas as fuel for your mind. You must stop seeing them as objects or functional things — they are combinations of ingredients waiting to be reused

Source: Myths of innovation

Filter out fewer ideas

• One way to think of creative people is that they have more control over their fears — or less fear of embarrassment. They’re not necessarily smarter or more capable of coming up with good ideas, they simply filter out fewer ideas than the rest of us.
• Creativity has more to do with being fearless than intelligent or any other adjective superficially associated with it. This explains why many people feel more creative when drinking, on drugs, or late at night: these are all times when their inhibitions are lower, or at least altered, and they allow themselves to see more combinations of things than they do normally. Environment Creativity is personal.
• No book or expert can dictate how you can be more creative. You have to spend time paying attention to yourself: when do ideas come easiest to you? Are you alone? With friends? In a bar? At the beach? Are there times of day when you’re most relaxed? Is there music playing? Start paying attention to your rhythms and then construct your creative activities around them. To get all Emersonian on you, this is called self-knowledge:[189] you can’t be

Source: Myths of innovation

It's only fair to share...