5
Habits Of The Most Creative People
How
do the most creative people work?
Bryan Cranston, Kendrick Lamar, Max Levchin,
and other creatively supercharged folks share their methods.
What
do a startup king, a social network innovator, a hip hop prince, perhaps the
best actor on television, and two absolutely hilarious dudes have in common?
They're all among the Most Creative People--and we can learn quite a
bit from the way they work.
Max Levchin: Always be asking questions
We talked to PayPal founder Max
Levchin
about how he keeps snagging startup ideas. Turns out it's a lot about
controlling chaos in ways we've discussed about why ideas come at random and why you need to document everything.
Levchin's
method is like this: He talks to tons of random creative people, asks them
questions about their craft, takes extensive notes of their quandaries, and
then compiles--and reviews--all of his research. What comes out of it?
Companies--like his new mobile payment solution Affirm--and loads of paper. Dude
has a crate of 200 legal pads sitting in his garage.
The
director of online operations for Facebook India, Kirthiga Reddy has helped grow the social network's user
base from 8 to 71 million users over two years. What did it? A little
California import: the flat culture of Silicon Valley, so
different than the hierarchical norm in India.
"You're
not here to do just what you're told," she says. "You're here to see
gaps and to act upon them."
What's
it take to make what many consider the best rap album of the decade? Kendrick Lamar unpacked a bit of the origin of his
miraculous good kid, m.A.A.d City: he grew up in Compton,
the California city that cradled gangster rap and serves as his inspiration.
"There
are so many thoughts of being scared of failure when you're trying something
there," he said. "And that's what holds a lot of people back--when
you're stuck in this position, when you're constantly seeing negative things
and you want to do something positive but you're scared that it might not work.
I believed I could make an example for those around me--once I did and I
started seeing some type of results, it made me believe I could represent the
whole city."
Breaking
Bad
actor Bryan Cranston talked to us about pinches of poison. He says that his role is
to play the honesty police when new people come into collaborate--and any
inconsistencies are little vials of poison for the viewer, like if Walter
doesn't sleep on his side of the bed or take his seat at the kitchen table. The
audience, he says, is aware of poison, even if only implicitly.
"They
can take two or three or four pinches," he says. "But they might not
feel great. They might not be able to articulate why they're not attaching
themselves to the show. But they might say, 'Why did that happen?' Because we
lied to you."
Being
hilarious is hard work: Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele
detailed
how they turned more than 330 ideas into 82 sketches for their hit Comedy
Central show.
How
does it work? The writing team pulls apart each sketch idea, tracing the
anatomy of the funny. Then the idea goes to draft, gets notes from Key and
Peele, then a table read, and finally gets multiple pitches to the network
before the creators decide what airs. It's a long, narrowing process.
“Anyone
who’s really utilized collaboration,” Peele says, “has a philosophy like, ‘Let’s
throw it all against the wall and see what sticks.’ That’s how we do it. At a
certain point, we’re cutting scripts that we love.”
By:
Drake Baer
http://www.fastcompany.com/3009704/the-takeaway/5-habits-of-the-most-creative-people?partner=newsletter
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