The Randomness of Insight

The creative process is not linear. Nor is the way I think always linear. Sometimes the randomness of what catches my attention actually gives way to new insight, IF I don’t work it too hard! Yet I often paralyze myself with an injunction that I must write tight, logical, sequences of thought or nothing at all.

The following are some thoughts and phrases that landed on me from speakers at TED Global2009 in Oxford which continue to lobby for more attention from me.

“Your train of thought is sacred.”

“How do you observe something you can’t see?”

“democratization of intimacy”

“Nothing is built on stone; everything is built on sand. But we must build as if on stone.”

“Train your heart to see what the world has given you.”

“We are the first society to be living in a world where we don’t worship anything other than ourselves.”

“Obsessions make my life worse and my work better.”

“Make sure our ideas of success are our own.”

“Context is everything.”

Sometimes allowing for some randomness in our work is the most important thing we can do.