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CREATIVITY | Noah Brier

What is Inspiration?

Thinking about just what inspiration means and how to become more inspirable.

October 11, 2006 | RSS | EMAIL | PRINT | 8 COMMENTS

For a while now Piers has been asking people what inspires them. We were talking about it today and I had a few thoughts that felt worth sharing.

I can't answer the inspiration question well because I'm inspired by almost everything. I read as much as I can and try to always keep my eyes and ears open. I spend every day trying to consume as much as possible with the sole purpose of filing in away for a rainy day. The other day I went to SFMOMA and was inspired by the card that went along with the Duchamp fountain. Today in a brainstorm I was inspired by the Powers of Ten video and this afternoon during a conversation I was inspired by a recent post by Scott Berkun titled "Why Innovation Efforts Fail". For those keeping score, that's one piece of art, one video and one blog entry.

Ultimately my belief is that anything can be inspiring. thoughtless acts is a book on intuitive design. It includes pictures of things like people tying a tea bag around the handle of a cup to keep it from falling in or a woman sticking a pencil in her hair. The message is that people are finding innovative solutions to problems all the time and, as a designer, all you need to do is open your eyes to be inspired by them.

So when I think about inspiration, I think about understanding that anything can be inspiration. Most of us grow up believing that learning must be boring. A teacher must stand in front of the class and teach at us or history must come through some incredibly dry textbook. That's not true, though. We get so much more out of those times when we're engaged in an activity. Look at the detective work people put into spoiling Survivor or the research they do to prepare for a fantasy football draft. By being engaged we are more inspirable.

I've mentioned it a ton of times around here, but I believe the most important lesson of the internet is as a metaphor for our brains. Both are networks. My take on inspiration is to try and feed my brain as much information as possible and then figure out how it connects when the time comes. Often the biggest innovations come from connecting the most seemingly distant ideas. In the end, though, the best I can do to work towards that is keep my senses open to all possibilities.

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COMMENTS

1Michael Surtees

Last week when I was sick for a day I spent a number of hours getting lost in all those PSFK inspiration interviews. It's kind of interesting to see what lateral urls you'll find once you start bouncing from site to site. In the same spirit as thoughtless acts, there's http://www.kk.org/streetuse/ that should be a nice time killer for some.

October 11, 2006

2nate archer

I'm the same way Noah, I love knowing about everything and find that that is an essential part of a good designer.

I find that designers who aren't curious about all the amazing things going on today lack something when it comes to creating for today's world.

made me think of this...

"Since we cannot know all that there is to be known about anything, we ought to know a little about everything." Blaise Pascal

October 11, 2006

3Loren Feldman

Inspiration is anything that drives you to do something in a physical way. Period.

It is a thought that appeals to you on the most core of levels that "inspires" you to get off your ass and try and do it.

October 11, 2006

4Jecklin

Agreed. Without action it's just another daydream...a fantasy.

Inspiration starts the motor. Love and determination is the fuel.

Love and determination for your ideal (whatever it is) will see you through the obstacles.

something like that.

October 11, 2006

5Noah Brier

I think there are two kinds of inspiration. There is certainly the one that motivates you: That's the stuff of passionate leaders. But on the other hand, there's the stuff that you bring to the table in conversations, friendships and business that helps make things happen. Those things can be anything from a conversations to a product.

At least that's my take.

October 12, 2006

6barbara

Inspiration is energizing, literally. A few days ago I was in a meeting with a group of very tired teachers and administrators, discussing their high school's recent break into small learning communities. There were a lot of problems on the table and some pretty negative energy, until one administrator mentioned she'd had time to sit in on a class in which syudents were writing personal mission statements (part of a 7 Habits program they'd adopted.) The kids had been clearly engaged and she'd found it really encouraging. Suddenly, everyone was offering positive tidbits about their own teaching and/or observation experiences and you could feel the energy in the room change. It was so obvious, we actually ended up talking about it, because one of the big goals for schools these days is to spend more time in collegial interaction about instructional practices (vs bitching about one thing or another :) It was a real 'aha' moment for this crowd to reflect on how something inspiring actually made them feel physically energized. And since, in my role as a school change consultant, getting people to think about the positive outcomes of change is one of my priorities, I was practically floating on air.

October 12, 2006

7Pam

Great article on Inspiration from the Guardian a while back:

http://arts.guardian.co.uk/features . . .

Love this quote from it: "It is not news, even though it is continually shocking to see, just how much envy insidiously corrodes our pleasure in other people's gifts and talents. What is more difficult to apprehend is just how fearful people often are of their own inspiration, of their own odd and unfounded thoughts, and therefore how prone they are to sabotage it and attack it and trivialise it. Often just by ignoring it. If to be inspired means, as Eliot said, to be even momentarily unintelligible, unrecognisable to oneself, then inspiration is akin to possession, to being taken over. And this, for some reason that is worth considering, does not come naturally to most people."

October 12, 2006

8Scott Berkun

Nice post - I've found that getting inspired is easier than staying inspired. I can go read/watch/listen to things that get me going and jazzed to take on the world, but 2 hours in, when things get really hard... that's when the difference between making things happen and just giving up is made.

Sometimes staying inspired for me means remembering why i started doing something, and holding on to that idea, or the memory of that feeling, even when I don't feel particularly motivated to finish the next paragraph, or design or, blog comment (wink), I hold on to that feeling and have faith that when I finish I'll be glad I stuck it out.

So I think inspiration isn't hard to find - but the guts to stick things out is.

October 31, 2006