“The only way to stay creative is to oppose the wear and tear of existence with techniques that organize time, space, and activity to your advantage. It means developing schedules to protect your time and avoid distraction, arranging your surroundings to heighten concentration, cutting out meaningless chores that soak up psychic energy, and devoting the energy thus saved to what you really care about.”

Like his previous book Flow, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi attempts here to get at what it means to spend your life in a meaningful way. This time, his focus is on creativity: what it is, how it works, and what we can do to live a more satisfying and creative life. A daunting and ambiguous task, to be sure.

To study creativity, Csikszentmihalyi starts by defining what ‘creativity’ is: to be sure, many people are brilliant and interesting, but leave no lasting impact on their culture or society. Many are personally creative in our everyday lives. Perhaps we build a custom headboard for our bedroom or think of a faster way to do the dishes. Both of these forms of creativity are important, but the type of creativity that this book is primarily concerned with is the type that pushes a person to advance a domain, whether it be science or the arts, and has a lasting impact on the culture.The Leonardos, Edisons, Picassos, or Einsteins of any given field.

With the help of a team of graduate research assistants, Csikszentmihalyi conducted extensive interviews with a wide range of creative people. The men and women he interviewed are from all types of different professions, from sculptors and businessmen to scientists and social reformers. Each participant was at least 60 years old coming to so coming to the end of their distinguished career. A few that were asked declined to participate, citing the ability to turn down frivolous research studies as the key to their continued success.

What follows is a nuanced study of what creativity is and how it feels to practice it. Some of the people who I felt had the most interesting quotations were Madeline L’Engel, Hilde Domin, and Jonas Salk. Each came from a less than optimal background and in the beginning showed no evidence of their later eminence but nonetheless eventually reached the pinnacle of their respective professions. In the end, there is no ‘secret’ formula to creativity, but the book ends with a few simple suggestions that mostly work to cultivate a sense of curiosity and critical thinking.

Further Links:
My review of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s previous book Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience.
A summary of the Creative Personality, written by the author for Psychology Today.
A 15 page abstract of the author’s research: “In order to want to introduce novelty into a domain, a person should first of all be dissatisfied with the status quo. It has been said that Einstein explained why he spent so much time developing a new physics by saying that he could not understand the old physics. Greater sensitivity, naivety, arrogance, impatience, and higher intellectual standards have all been adduced as reasons why some people are unable to accept the conventional wisdom in a domain and feel the need to break out of it.”
Quotes and Anecdotes: The Process of Cultural Evolution ; A Definition of Creativity ; Anticipation and Commitment: The Story of Motorola ; Being a Good Ancestor ; and The Axemaker’s Gift.
Buy on Amazon: Creativity: The Psychology of Discovery and Invention

Stuff of Interest:
spectra
false consciousness
perpetual motion machine–a physical impossibilty “Oh ye seekers after perpetual motion, how many vain chimeras have you pursued? Go and take your place with the alchemists.”— Leonardo da Vinci, 1494
Lorenzo Ghiberti, Gates of Paradise
convergent and divergent thinking–Convergent thinking is measured by IQ tests, and it involves solving well-defined, rational problems that have one correct answer. Divergent thinking leads to no agreed-upon solution. It involves fluency, or the ability to generate a great quantity of ideas; flexibility, or the ability to switch from one perspective to another; and originality in picking unusual associations of ideas.
peripatetic method
the poetry of Anthony Hedcht and Hilde Domin
Vivaldi concerto
deficit motives–“Wilson has been a ceaseless worker all his life. A painful childhood instilled a certain amount of insecurity in him, which he decided to overcome with a relentless drive modeled on an idealized Southern heritage long on pride, sacrifice, and discipline. These were what the current psychological jargon calls deficit motives, based on efforts to compensate for undesirable early experiences.
Road to Damascus–An important point in someone’s life where a great change, or reversal, of ideas or beliefs occurs. Based on the conversion of St. Paul to Christianity.
centrifugal and centripetal forces–centrifugal forces move away from a center while centripetal forces move toward a center.

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“To a naturalist nothing is indifferent; the humble moss that creeps upon the stone is equally interesting as the lofty pine which so beautifully adorns the valley or the mountain: but to a naturalist who is reading in the face of rocks the annals of a former world, the mossy covering which obstructs his view, and renders indistinguishable the different species of stone, is no less than a serious subject of regret.”

-James Hutton

Basin and Range is the first book of John McPhee’s mighty five-book collection The Annals of the Former World. Each book, written between 1978 and 1998 and then later revised and updated, covers some facet of the geology of North America. Basin and Range is primarily concerned with the story of how the vast age of the earth has been measured (but scarcely comprehended), and the nature of plate tectonics–what it is, who figured it out, and how.

McPhee’s writing is a joy to read. From paragraph to paragraph, his subjects range from the minute to the cosmic in scale. He lingers on specific bits of knowledge and explains all that needs further elaborating with the exuberance of a passionate teacher. He somehow makes rocks interesting. Here he is describing the geological event that eventually made Nevada so hot and arid: “As the developing Sierra made its skyward climb–as it went on up past ten and twelve and fourteen thousand feet–it became so predominant that it cut off the incoming Pacific rain, cast a rain shadow (as the phenomenon is called) over lush, warm Floridian and verdant Nevada. Cut it off and kept it dry.”

In the conclusion, McPhee writes that “if by some fiat I had to restrict all this writing to one sentence, this is the one I would choose: The summit of Mt. Everest is marine limestone.” The earth is ANCIENT and in a state of eternal recomposition. That’s all you need to know, but it’s fun to read everything he has to say.

Further Links:
Video of a playa lake advance in Black Rock Desert, Nevada
Quotes and Anecdotes: The Naked Ambition of Langford Hastings and The Blind Man and the Elephant.
Buy on Amazon: Annals of the Former World

Stuff of Interest:
playa lake –Playa lakes are round hollows in the ground in the Southern High Plains of the United States. They are ephemeral, meaning that they are only present at certain times of the year. The temporal nature of playa lakes led to confusion on the part of early European explorers, some of whom described the region as a desert and others a land of millions of small lakes. Most playas fill with water only after spring rainstorms when freshwater collects in the round depressions of the otherwise flat landscape of West Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Colorado, and Kansas. There are also a few saltwater-filled playas. These are fed by water from underlying aquifers, which brings salt with it as it percolates up through the soil. As the water evaporates, the salt is left behind in the increasingly salty playas. There are many theories as to the origin of playas, but the most widely accepted are that playas are either carved by wind or formed by land subsidence (they are sinkholes).
sill
proscenium arch
adsorb–(of a solid) hold (molecules of a gas or liquid or solute) as a thin film on the outside surface or on internal surfaces within the material.
Iapetus Ocean–an ocean that no longer exists! How crazy is that?
The Pikeville Cut-Through
James Hutton
Kit Carson
James Ussher
Lansford Hastings
Plate Tectonics

Major Lithospheric Plates and Some Minor Ones

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Commitment to a goal and to the rules it entails is much easier when the choices are few and clear.

This book examines the ways in which people derive meaning from their lives. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s conclusion is delightfully ambiguous: that it doesn’t matter what we do that makes a particular activity fulfilling, but rather how we do it. He calls this state of concentration flow–the sweet spot between anxiety and competence wherein a person confronts a challenge that tests the limits of their abilities. A similar intensity of focus can be seen among the most successful practitioners of a whole range of disciplines, from poets and scientists to rock climbers and surgeons.

In Mihaly’s estimation, A flow experience requires nine components in order to be rewarding: 1.) There are clear goals every step of the way. 2.) There is immediate feedback to one’s actions; 3.) There is a balance between challenges and skills; 4.) Action and awareness are merged; 5.) Distractions are excluded from consciousness; 6.) There is no worry of failure; 7.) Self-consciousness disappears; 8.) The sense of time becomes distorted; and 9.) The activity becomes autotelic  (Done for the joy of the experience they provide rather than for the final outcome.)

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi has over 50 years experience as a professor and research psychologist. His writing is both well in formed and thoughtful–his insights flow breezily off the page and his wisdom is easily apparent. For example, here’s an extraordinarily insightful quote from him on his Wikipedia page: “Repression is not the way to virtue. When people restrain themselves out of fear, their lives are by necessity diminished. Only through freely chosen discipline can life be enjoyed and still kept within the bounds of reason.”

Further Links:
A good video introduction to the author and his life work.
The author’s TED talk on flow.
What the professionals are saying: The LA Times Review
Quotes and Anecdotes: The Autotelic Personality, The Effects of Family on the Autotelic Personality, How to Keep Love Fresh, The Difficulties of Solitude, and Wasting Time.
Buy on Amazon: Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience (Harper Perennial Modern Classics)

Stuff of Interest:
flow–“the state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter; the experience itself is so enjoyable that people will do it even at great cost, for the sheer sake of doing it.”
optimal experience–“Contrary to what we usually believe, moments like these, the best moments in our lives are not the passive, receptive, relaxing times—although such experiences can also be enjoyable, if we have worked hard to attain them. The best moments usually occur when a person’s body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile. Optimal experience is thus something that we make happen.”
Phenomenology–the study of structures of consciousness as experienced from the first-person point of view. The central structure of an experience is its intentionality, its being directed toward something, as it is an experience of or about some object.
epiphenomen—is a secondary phenomenon that occurs alongside or in parallel to a primary phenomenon. Closely related to ’cause and effect’.
dialectal–relating to the logical discussion of ideas and opinions.
invidious–likely to arouse or incur resentment or anger in others.
anomie–lack of the usual social or ethical standards in an individual or group.
Diogenes looking for an honest man with his lamp
Ignatius of Loyola
Ignaz Semmelweiz
Necker cube
Kubla Kahn, Samuel Coleridge
Antonio Gramsci
Altius, citius, fortius (higher, faster, stronger)
“Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty” –Thomas Jefferson

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This book looks at human evolution with a special emphasis on the ways our bodies aren’t adapted to the modern world. It defines dysevolution as the mismatch of present day culture and circumstances interacting with the human body in a harmful way. Cultural evolution happens at an exponentially faster pace compared to biological evolution and so our bodies haven’t caught up to modern living or diets. Because of this, many of today’s most common ailments are caused by the way we live. Cancer, diabetes, heart disease, myopia, and tooth decay are all discussed, among others.

Further Links:
Ozzy TEDMED: The Prince of Darkness’ genome is examined.
What the professionals had to say: The Washington Post review.
Buy on Amazon: The Story of the Human Body: Evolution, Health, and Disease

Stuff of Interest:
Pangloss— The professor in Candide, who is an eternal optimist.
mellifluous—sweet or musical; pleasant to hear.
nascent— just coming into existence and beginning to display signs of future potential.
yaws—the nonvenereal precursor of syphilis, still common in tropical countries.
Sahelanthropus tchadensis—6 to 7 million year old ancestor of humanity.
australopith—4 million year old ancestor of humanity.
phenotypic plasticity—the capacity for bodies to adjust their observable characteristics (their phenotype) in response to environmental stresses. (Example: children who exercise more from an early age develop thicker bones, just as children raised in hot climates develop more sweat glands).

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This book explores the shortcomings in medicine when it comes to preparing patients for death. Is the goal to extend life as far out as possible or to make sure that a person’s last days as well spent as possible? In Dr. Gawande’s view, doctors are more like mechanics charged with fixing problems in a deteriorating old car rather than caretakers whose job is to help maintain a patient’s dignity and quality of life until their last day. He sees this as misguided and this book is a plea to his profession to do better.

Dr. Gawande interviews hospice care professionals and other doctors, and examines different treatment options for people entering old age or diagnosed with a terminal illness. He also weaves patient’s stories and his own experience into the narrative, such as is own father’s decline and his experiences delivering devastating news of terminal illness to patients. Being Mortal is a thoughtful examination of what is important in life and how to make the final days of those near death as full of life as possible.

Further Links:
Frontline: Being Mortal—PBS television companion to the book.
‘Letting Go: What should medicine do when it can’t save your life?’ Dr. Gawande’s New Yorker essay that inspired the book.
What the professionals had to say: The Guardian review.
Buy on Amazon: Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End

Stuff of Interest:
tachycardic—a heart rate higher than normal, typically 100 bpm or more.
cutaneous mechanoreceptors—nerves and sensory receptors
skein—a tangled or complicated arrangement, state, or situation.
Lewis Thomas, physician-writer— quoted as being skeptical of the efficacy of hospital care in 1937: “If being in a hospital bed made a difference, it was mostly the difference produced by warmth, shelter, and food, and attentive, friendly care, and the matchless skill of the nurses in providing these things. Whether you survived or not depended on the natural history of the disease itself. Medicine made little or no difference.”
Hill Burton Act, 1946—Federal law that provided massive government funding for hospital construction. Within twenty years, over 9,000 medical facilities were built across the country.
Park Place—The first assisted living facility, opened in Portland in 1983 by Karen Brown Wilson.
Eden Alternative—a senior living alternative that has lots of pets, greenery, and few residents that receive personalized care. Designed to pursue the idea that a life worth living can be created, in this case, by focusing on food, homemaking, and community.
‘The Median Isn’t the Message‘, by Stephen J. Gould—Essay by the renowned scientist that Dr. Gawunde appreciates, but disagrees with its blind optimism.
Nelene Fox—woman who died from breast cancer but whose estate won an $89 million settlement posthumously from her insurance company for withholding coverage for experimental treatment that was later deemed ineffective.
‘Four Models of the Physician-Patient Relationship‘, by Ezekiel J. Emanuel and Linda L. Emanuel—a scholarly article describing the power dynamic between physicians and patients. Summarized here.

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“People think they don’t understand math, but it’s all about how you explain it to them. If you ask a drunkard what number is larger, 2/3 or 3/5, he won’t be able to tell you. But if you rephrase the question: what is better, 2 bottles of vodka for 3 people or 3 bottles of vodka for 5 people, he will tell you right away: 2 bottles for 3 people, of course.”

-Israel Gelfand

Edward Frenkel does a good job highlighting the pivotal importance of math. He asserts that instead of being a dull academic subject, it’s a universal language, free from bias, that can make apparent the deeper mysteries of the universe. If only it was taught different in schools.

Frenkel is a professor of mathematics at UC Berkeley. Even though he is under fifty, he has had a rich and distinguished career that traces back to the Soviet Union of the 1980’s, when Communist oppression was in full force. His story is my favorite part of this book, and his struggle just to get a decent education as a Jew facing blatant bureaucratic discrimination made me more appreciative of the freedoms I enjoy. indeed, this oppression was a source of strength for him, going on to say that, “In this environment, mathematics and theoretical physics were oases of freedom. Through communist apparatchiks wanted to control every aspect of life, these areas were just too abstract and difficult for them to understand.” Mathematics set him free, and his passion for the subject is infectious because he’s also a clear and thoughtful writer.

Further Links:
Slate piece by the author, illuminating the political importance of a mathematically literate society.
Farnam Street review, more in depth than my own.
What the professionals had to say: The New York Times review.
Buy from Amazon: Love and Math: The Heart of Hidden Reality

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The point of this book is tough to describe. The author is so persuasive that he could probably convince me of anything, his examples are so wide ranging and his conclusions far fetched but airtight. One way Robert Wright states his hypothesis is that Francis Crick is wrongly credited with discovering the secret to life in DNA. John von Neumannn is a better candidate for that distinction with his discovery of game theory.

He posits that overall, human history has been trending toward greater cooperation and connectivity. As ideas and industry spread, more people become dependent on one another and their tribal circle expands, allowing even greater cooperation. This all sounds very utopian and rosy, and this book was written pre-9/11, but the more Wright expands his argument, the more you realize he isn’t crazy or stupid. If nothing else, this book is an incredibly persuasive example of revisionist history. I don’t mean that because it’s false, but it does make you rethink what you thought you knew. My favorite digression is the part about barbarians, “we were all once barbarians”.

Further Links:
Robert Wright’s TED Talk on non-zero-sumness: He’s certainly a better writer than public speaker.

The Nerdist Podcast with Jon Favreau: Good throughout, at around 1:06 Favreau has a thought that elucidates the theme of this book very well.  I wonder if he’s read it.
This book is on Bill Clinton’s list of favorite books. Lists of imminent people’s favorite books are always interesting, here’s Teddy Roosevelt’s.
Buy on Amazon: Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny

Stuff of Interest:
teleological—an attempt to describe why something happened, instead of simply noting its existence.
Lewis Henry Morgan, John Stuart Mill, and Margaret Mead: notable people with differing views of the directionality of history (does it follow a path or not?).
Hobson’s Choice— ‘Take it of leave it’ a choice in which only one option is offered.
Jericho—The history of this city is incredible. I thought it was a Biblical myth but is in fact real as Cincinnati (another place I’ve never been).
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“Man naturally desires not only to be loved, but to be lovely.”

                                       —Adam Smith

Russ Roberts is an academic economist best known as the host of the EconTalk podcast, wherein he interviews people knowledgeable in public policy and economics. This book is his exploration of what Adam Smith had to say about living a good life. Roberts thinks it’s a shame that Smith is thought of as an economist before a moral philosopher, and seeks to remind readers through this book of the power of Smith’s moral wisdom. He focuses primarily on Smith’s book The Theory of Moral Sentiments rather than the work Smith is best known for, The Wealth of Nations, which unfortunately is commonly used to legitimize the power of venal self-interest.

How Adam Smith Could Change Your Life explores the idea of acting like you have someone, some ‘indifferent spectator’, judging your actions. Something like a conscience. The importance of introspection is also examined, along with some reasons why self-knowledge is so difficult, the corrosive pitfalls of seeking out fame, how empathy with someone is easier in good times than in bad, and how tempting but dangerous it is to make exceptions in some circumstances. “Smith admits there can be some extenuating circumstances that make the rules of justice more flexible. But he suggests that such an approach to justice is a very slippery slope. He urges us to follow the rules of justice with complete steadfastness; the more we do so, the more commendable and dependable we are.

I also enjoyed P.J. O’Rourke’s On The Wealth of Nations: Books That Changed the World. It is less insightful, but hilarious. My favorite line was, “Money has no intrinsic value. Any baby who’s eaten a nickel could tell you so.”

Further Links:

School of Life’s video profile on Adam Smith, along with his write-up in The Philosopher’s Mail.
Part 1 of a 6 part series of interviews with Dan Klein that inspired the book.
What the professionals had to say: The Wall Street Journal book review.
Buy from Amazon: How Adam Smith Can Change Your Life: An Unexpected Guide to Human Nature and Happiness.

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“Trauma is an indivisible part of human existence. It takes many forms but spares no one.”

The Trauma of Everyday Life is about the parallels between ancient Buddhism and modern day psychotherapy. Buddhism and psychotherapy are remarkably similar in their approach to soothing the pain of existence, this book is an exploration of their methods and dogma. Even though one is a religion and the other strives to be modern and secular, both attempt to soothe the anxieties of life by examining personal problems and repeated behaviors. They both start by acknowledging that trauma is inevitable and attempt to figure out what to deal with it.

Simply acknowledging that trauma is unavoidable is therapeutic. Throughout this book, Mark Epstein talks about the life and teachings of Buddha and his experience as a therapist, helping others through the trauma of existence.

In line with this book, Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny summarizes the importance of Buddhism this way: “In the spiritual realm, India gave us Buddhism, the first major religion to stress tolerance and nonviolence, the only major religion to spread far and wide without conquest, and arguably the major religion whose founding doctrines (unembellished by later additions) most readily survive the modifying force of modern science.”

Further Links:

School of Life video summary of the Buddha and his principals.
BBC documentary on Freud and the origins of psychotherapy and mass psychology: The Century of the Self.
Buy from Amazon: The Trauma of Everyday Life

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It’s really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them.

—Steve Jobs

This book is about how technology is driven forward by small companies while larger firms often become bloated and obsolete. Even though the companies with the most money and employees might make a discovery it’s oftentimes not in their best interest to make a business off of this new technology.

Oftentimes, innovations aren’t immediately profitable and their utility isn’t immediately apparent. The book heavily influenced Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos and many other technology entrepreneurs of the past couple decades. This is why newer technology companies are so segmented and have divisions in so many different products, both mature and developing. Google is in effect run more like a conglomeration of many smaller business (advertising, search, maps, flying cars) than a single entity.

Giant companies have a tough time competing with smaller, more flexible companies. I found this quote from the book I’m currently reading, Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny” by Robert Wright, to do a good job putting this phenomenon into a larger historical context:

When a civilization such as Rome dominates its neighbors, it typically possesses some sort of cultural edge: better weapons, say, or better economic organization. Yet this dominance is hard to maintain precisely because these valuable memes tend naturally to spread beyond its borders, empowering its rivals. In the case of Rome, the barbarian-empowering memes included military strategy. But the exact memes will differ from case to case. As the historian Mark Elvin has observed, the diffusion of Chinese iron-making technology to the Mongols during the thirteenth century would come back to haunt China. Elvin was among the first to clearly see that this is a general dynamic in history: the very advancement of advanced societies can bring the seeds of their destruction. As Elman Service put the matter: “The precocious developing society broadcasts its seeds, so to speak, outside its own area, and some of them root and grow vigorously in new soil, sometimes becoming stronger than the parent stock, finally to dominate both their environments.”

Companies, just like countries, face growing pains from competition.

Further links:
MIT Summary
Farnam Street: “Escape The Innovator’s Dilemma”
Clayton Christensen Talks About The Innovator’s Dilemma
Buy from Amazon:The Innovator’s Dilemma: The Revolutionary Book That Will Change the Way You Do Business

Interesting anecdotes and new vocabulary:

The first hard drive
Bernoulli’s Principal: The physical law that liquid flows faster the less constricted it is.
Joseph Schumpter ‘creative destruction’: “the process of industrial mutation that incessantly revolutionizes the economic structure from within, incessantly destroying the old one, incessantly creating a new one.”
Early retail innovators: John Wanamaker, George Hartford (A&P), Frank Woolworth, W.T. Grant, General Wood (Sears), Michael Cullen (supermarkets), and Eugene Ferkauf.
locus—Latin for ‘place’ SEE: locus of control
collocated—to be placed side by side.
Technology: as used in this book, means the processes by which an organization transforms labor, capital, materials, and information into products and services of greater value.
Sustaining Technology: Radically or incrementally improving the performance of existing products along the dimensions of performance that mainstream customers in major markets value.
Disruptive Technology: A completely different kind of technology that typically takes a while to catch on and match the performance of the previous technologies in place but eventually comes to dominate the market.
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