The Most Successful Creative People Constantly Say 'No'

[applegrove]

The Most Successful Creative People Constantly Say 'No'

by Kevin Aston, Medium at Business Insider

http://www.businessinsider.com/successful-creative-people-say-no-2015-1

"SNIP...............



The professor contacted 275 creative people. A third of them said “no.” Their reason was lack of time. A third said nothing. We can assume their reason for not even saying “no” was also lack of time and possibly lack of a secretary.

Time is the raw material of creation. Wipe away the magic and myth of creating and all that remains is work: the work of becoming expert through study and practice, the work of finding solutions to problems and problems with those solutions, the work of trial and error, the work of thinking and perfecting, the work of creating.

Creating consumes. It is all day, every day. It knows neither weekends nor vacations. It is not when we feel like it. It is habit, compulsion, obsession, vocation. The common thread that links creators is how they spend their time.

No matter what you read, no matter what they claim, nearly all creators spend nearly all their time on the work of creation. There are few overnight successes and many up-all-night successes.

......

“No” makes us aloof, boring, impolite, unfriendly, selfish, anti-social, uncaring, lonely and an arsenal of other insults. But “no” is the button that keeps us on.

Read more: https://medium.com/@kevin_ashton/creative-people-say-no-bad7c34842a2#ixzz3c3JFkxl3


...............SNIP"

[GreatGazoo]

1. thank you

reads like profound poetry

[Xipe Totec]

2. tl;dr nt.

[applegrove]

3. ?

[Xipe Totec]

7. A joke on being too busy.

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/TL;DR

[applegrove]

10. I'm guilty of that these days. Now I know I am not alone on that too.

[alittlelark]

4. Most, if not all are INTP's

We do not like being disrupted while creating 'in our head'.

[R. Daneel Olivaw]

6. INJF...

[awoke_in_2003]

5. My wife must be really creative...

[Javaman]

8. No way.

sorry, couldn't resist.

[phantom power]

9. there are behavior traits I frequently see in highly creative / prolific people

Many of them seem to need less sleep. Or, get less sleep whether they need it or not.
They often spend relatively little time reading fiction, or watching TV, etc.
They multi-task, like watching presentation videos or reading manuals, while on the treadmill.
They often have recurring issues with balancing social/family and work.

They're almost all high energy, even if it is in a quiet way that a casual observer might not notice.

It reminds me of a great article on Einstein, which pointed out that his best work was when he was young, intense, and maybe a bit of a jerk. Those whimsical photos we all know of Einstein with his grey hair and tongue sticking out were taken when his best work was behind him.