Round Hole for a Square Peg

This is taking me forever to write on and get through, perhaps because I'm re-reading the Tamuli and managed to squeeze in Bringing Home the Birkin, a book club book swap.

Topic 3 was Motivation. I did write something on this, but can't find it. I'm sadly not motivated enough to re-write it (or to re-read it so I know what I'd say), so it's being skipped out on.

The fourth topic in :59 is Creativity. I wonder how the author decided how to order these. Happiness - Persuasion - Motivation - Creativity - Attraction - Stress - Relationships - Decision Making - Parenting - Personality strike me as a strange order of presentation. Then again, who am I to judge given that I like to start days with curries, meals with desserts and once had gazpacho in lieu of petit fours. The Creativity chapter didn't do much for me, possibly because I did badly at the lateral thinking riddles (eg. Add one non-diagonal line to the following to solve the equation: I0 I0 II equals I0.50).

The chapter began with the argument against brainstorming, which was essentially a variant of the diffusion of responsibility argument. Instead, allowing your subconscious more leeway was recommended. Short of napping at your desk and scribbling ideas everytime a ringing phone wakes you, there aren't many ways to frequently allow your dreams to speak to you, though narcoleptics must have this down pat. The socially acceptable alternative was to picture a generic stereotype whose characteristics were desirable. For example, a professor if you need to be academic, punks if you needed to be creative and anarchic (are punks creative? I'd argue that it's another form of conformity), etc. The next step is to write a few lines about their traits. Apparently, simply thinking about these traits are enough to drive your subconscious to emulate them. If the hubs behaves well I intend to try this out based on the generic traits of women building careers in the oldest industry in the world.

Another socially workable practice is having a splash of green around, but not red. I have a chilli plant at my desk, does this mean I'm unreliably creative? There was also suggestions of using broken-pattern posters. I remember seeing loads of these when I was younger. An example would be of repeated black block arrows pointing down, with one random green arrow pointing up. I associate this with dentists and doctors' waiting rooms, not quite the most stimulatng surroundings. All in all, it wasn't one I felt particularly strongly about.

I'm now at Decision Making with nothing in between urging me to write other than a vague sense that ideas are being recycled. This was a lousy idea.