Creativity – Sinead Huskisson

Belief Building September 2024

Are you concerned about the use of artificial intelligence?

I recently watched a clip of a bar chart being explained by an Australian academic who I follow on social media. I’ve seen him present before at an online conference. He occasionally does stand up comedy so often includes a joke when presenting and didn’t disappoint as he explained the bar chart on the screen.

But guess what? – it wasn’t him ! He had prompted AI to clone his voice, explain the bar chart and include a joke!

Read on for some thoughts on AI.
Have a good month!
Sinead

Joseph Fasano is an American writer and educator. He studied mathematics and astrophysics at Harvard University before switching to philosophy and language. He is well known for his poetry as well as other writing endeavours.

He recently offered the following poem as feedback to a student who had used AI to complete coursework.

For a Student Who Used AI to Write a Paper

Now I send it back
Into your own hands.
I hear you. I know
this life is hard now.
I know your days are precious
on this earth.
But what are you trying to be free of?
The living? The miraculous task of it?
Love is for the ones who love the work.

I saw this on social media and the discussion that followed raised some important questions (I paraphrase) – For what purpose are we trying to rush through our work? To make it easier? What are we going to do with the brain cells we haven’t used? Surely there’s satisfaction and joy in completing the work ourselves?

Oliver Burkeman in his The Imperfectionist May 2024 newsletter entitled “it’s the human connection, stupid”, argues that we don’t need to worry about AI taking over our jobs.

His view is that creativity and connection are about human to human interaction and that replacing one human with artificial intelligence will not give the remaining human the same feeling or experience.

He hopes there will always be a market for human connection and that “simulated novelists, pretend therapy and fake musicians” will never replace real people.

He’s not anti-AI and sees its use as a tool to make some of our routine tasks easier (he gives the example of transcribing spoken word to written text). However, he wants to remain like a thinking human, thinking like a human and not a human who thinks in AI prompts.

What he enjoys about his writing is the effort to do it and what he thinks readers enjoy is connecting with the effort that the writer put in to create the article, story or chapter.

I’ll end this with a quote from Oliver, “If I could press a button that generated a book chapter or a newsletter like this, so that nobody could tell the difference, I’d have eliminated all the effort involved – and also the entire point of doing it in the first place.”

“Creativity is seeing what everyone else has seen, and thinking what no one else has thought” Albert Einstein

“Using ChatGPT to complete assignments is like bringing a forklift into the weight room; you will never improve your cognitive fitness that way.” Ted Chiang in The New Yorker 31 August 2024 “Why A.I. Isn’t Going to Make Art” paraphrasing the work of Emily M Bender (thank you B for highlighting the article to me)

“The joy of creating something from nothing will never go away. AI will simply become part of the creation process just like spell check and the calculator did.” Ross Simmonds

Belief Building December 2023

I am sending this December newsletter earlier than usual.

When I heard that there was a movie being released that focused on Willy Wonka’s early life, it made me think about escapism, childhood and getting caught up in the magic of Christmas. With that theme in mind, I wanted to send this early to give us all permission to enjoy Christmas from the perspective of our younger “believer” selves.

Wishing you a festive period filled with wonder and awe !
Happy Christmas
Sinead

The combination of this time of year and the word imagination makes me think of Roald Dahl’s “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory”.

I have watched the original movie many times and the fact that everything was edible, it was possible to travel by TV, and have 3 course dinner chewing gum always astounded me, it was all so fantastical. Even the names of the sweets ( fancy a Whipple Scrumptious Fudgemallow Delight?), were so creative. I was in awe of the brilliance of it all.

I have seen the movie trailer for the new film about Willy Wonka’s early life and I’m looking forward to going to see it and just relaxing into a world of pure imagination. Why not give yourself a Christmas present of an escape to imagination, be that a trip to see Wonka or reading a far fetched novel where it’s all happy coincidences and happy endings or even allowing yourself a half hour of complete day dreaming!

Whilst we might all agree that being creative and using our imagination is beneficial for daily life, it’s not always easy to turn on the creativity switch.

Paige Grossman, author of do5ive Newsletter uses a technique called bibliomancy. If you look that word up in a dictionary, you’ll find a description such as, the following from the online Oxford dictionary, “the practice of foretelling the future by interpreting a randomly chosen passage from a book, especially the Bible.”

Paige uses this method when she is looking for inspiration or a spark of creativity.

So as I was writing this, I tried it. I picked up a book I have called “The Poetry Pharmacy” edited by William Sieghart – a gorgeous book by the way if you are looking for a gift for someone who likes words and books. As the name hints at, the book prescribes poems as balms for the heart, mind and soul. I opened on page 44 and this is what the last paragraph said “Whatever passion you have left behind you in life, whatever hobbies or activities have given you joy and meaning, pick them up again and make your life one that fits you.”

“It is better to fail in originality, than to succeed in imitation.” Herman Melville

“Live out of your imagination, not your history.” Stephen Covey

“We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams.” Originally from 1873 poem called ‘Ode’ by Arthur O’Shaughnessy but quoted by Gene Wilder as Willy Wonka in the 1971 movie.

A Happy Meal

Have you heard the advice: “When life gives you lemons, make lemonade“?

It’s advice to seek out the positive in a negative circumstance.

Throughout the pandemic, we have had lots of encouraging examples of this in practice, situations where individuals and businesses have used innovation to turn challenging events into opportunities.

Here’s a smaller scale example but it’s close to my heart.

My young nephew celebrated his birthday recently. His wish for his birthday was that he and his family would go to ‘Old McDonalds‘. He likes to eat burgers and was curious as to where they keep all the noisy farm animals.

Unfortunately before the birthday, Covid paid a visit so going anywhere to eat burgers or suss out farm animals was off limits.

My nephew was disappointed but his innovative and talented mum was at least able to deliver on the burger front. What you see in the photo is the birthday cake!

Burger for main course and dessert anyone?

One Red Paperclip

Belief, Courage, Action

One Red Paperclip is an interesting and entertaining read. The author, Kyle MacDonald, a then 25 year old Canadian, decides he wants to trade a red paperclip for something bigger and better, ideally a house!

Belief

The idea sparked from a childhood game called ‘bigger and better’, where he started with something small but tried to turn it into something ‘bigger and better’ by trading with friends and people in his neighbourhood. When Kyle was 16, he had full belief in the potential of this game. He recalled stories of a clothes peg becoming a fridge and he had heard a rumour that trades, that began with a toothpick, had culminated in a car.

Courage

Now in his mid 20s, Kyle had let his belief fade. The red paperclip hung around in Kyle’s wallet for a few weeks before he got the courage to do something with it. He procrastinated initially, feeling he needed to do more preparation before he could begin his plan. His father asked him, “what would you do if you weren’t afraid?” Finally, Kyle got the courage to take a photo of the red paperclip and upload it to Craigslist, (a classified ads website) with a message outlining his intention.

Action

To Kyle’s surprise, he got many responses. Now he had to take action, he emailed people back to find out where they were located, as he wanted to make the trade in person. For his first trade, he changed the red paperclip for a pen shaped like a fish. Around one year and fourteen trades later, Kyle had a … I won’t spoil the surprise in case you want to read the book. If you are impatient to know more about the story, Kyle recorded a TedX talk in 2015.

He believed he could do something, had the courage to give it a go and started taking action.

Who knew a red paperclip could be so inspiring?

It’s a Mess!

Do you see the picture attached to this post? Will I tell you what it is?

It is a delicious and beautiful cake.

I agree it looks a mess right now but if you have ever baked, you will know that it can be messy in the middle of the process.

I’m very pleased with how my website looks now although there were times when it was a mess! I questioned why I had even started to create a website when I was a novice at such things.

I didn’t sort the mess out by myself. I’m very grateful to many people who gave me suggestions and advice. I’m particularly grateful to Sheelah. Without Sheelah, my website would still be a WordPress mess.

Perhaps everything we do can seem messy before we get the clarity to complete it? Maybe the final outcome is all the better because we’ve survived the mess?

Nonetheless, being in the mess is challenging!

If you are in the middle of something that looks like a mess right now, here’s some suggested tips to help you through it:

Ask for help or advice from someone you trust.
Tolerate the mess as being a necessary part of the process – lots of things are messy before they take shape.
Persevere – put the mess in the oven, maybe what comes out will be better than you think.
Make a fresh start – put the mess in the bin and use what you have learnt to start again.
Buy yourself a cake (this is a good solution even if your mess is nothing to do with baking)!

Feature Image Credit: Natallia Nagorniak via Unsplash

The Fly

Have you ever watched a fly hammering itself against a glass window trying to get out? I usually get a piece of paper and guide it towards the opening to set it free but of course the fly doesn’t always cooperate. Sometimes I come back the next day and see a dead fly on the window sill.

At the start of the book, You², Price Pritchett uses the analogy of a fly beating itself to death against a window as a way of explaining that sometimes doing the same thing over and over is a waste of energy and that perhaps we should look around and find a different way.

The fly is probably doomed because it is so small relative to the size of a window, it can’t really see the big picture that there could be another option.

I can relate to the fly’s thinking that there is only one route. For many years I wanted to write blogs but thought it was impossible. I thought that to be a blogger, I needed a website.

However, unlike the fly, I have the benefit of greater perspective and a conversation with a friend led to the suggestion that I could post the blogs to LinkedIn. It would be a simple way to test how interested I really was in blogging before incurring any cost that might arise from creating a website.

I started writing and posting to LinkedIn over a year ago.

Now, I have evolved. I’m more like a spider than a fly, as I have a WEB-site!

Feature Image credit: Chris Curry via Unsplash

Diverse Teams

I have been reading “Rebel Ideas” by Matthew Syed. I agree with the main theme of the book – diverse teams are likely to be more successful as there is the benefit of different ideas, insights and perspectives.

I like this photo of stones on a beach. All the parts are different shapes, sizes and colours but put together, we can see a white seam that runs through them to make a circle.

I think this can be a good way to think about teams. The participants can be very different, yet by working together they produce valuable, beneficial, creative output.

The Artist’s Way

Creative block?

Recently I read “The Artist’s Way” by Julia Cameron (twice!) and enjoyed it (twice!).

Artist does not necessarily mean Painter, it represents anyone in pursuit of creativity, regardless of career.

Rather than being set out in chapters, the book is organised as a 12 week course.

The objective of the course is to help us rediscover our creativity. Each week focuses on a particular theme and offers practical suggestions to help us recover and discover the creative flair we might have practiced unselfconsciously as children.

In addition to the weekly exercises, 2 basic tools are recommended, “morning pages” and “the artist date”.

Writing three A4 pages everyday is a conversation with ourselves- perhaps covering thoughts we wouldn’t dare reveal to anyone else. It’s a chance to pour out hopes, dreams, fears and frustrations privately.

The Artist date, is a weekly time investment doing something by ourselves for ourselves; being in nature, listening to music or trying a new food. The date can be anything but should feel like play and not work. This is to replenish our creative resources.

If you have temporarily forgotten how to practice and enjoy your creativity, or feel an artistic block, this book is definitely worth reading!

Feature Image Credit: Seema Miah via Unsplash

Zoom In/Zoom Out

I really wanted to write something insightful to motivate us for Semester 2. I came up with what I thought was a great title, “Zoom In / Zoom Out”. However, the blog I attempted to write did not convey the message I wanted to share.
Instead, I attach a cartoon that I created. It’s inspired by Charlie Mackesy who is the author of a book called “The Boy, The Mole, The Fox and The Horse”. This is a wonderful book with a theme of resilience, gentleness and kindness, just right for the times in which we find ourselves.

Feature Image Credit: Jason Leung via Unsplash

New Year’s Resolution

Like many people, I haven’t had a good track record with keeping New Year’s Resolutions. Most years January’s well-judged intentions became February’s forgotten thoughts.

To make things simpler, a number of years ago, I decided on having a “word of the year” rather than a specific resolution. The word was to be a frame of mind for the year, rather than entail any specific target of weight loss or rooms decluttered.

The first word I chose was “acceptance” and I lived that year feeling much calmer than I had before. On occasions where I would previously had my back up or be quick to respond to provocation, I remembered “acceptance” and took more things in my stride.

The following year, my word was “resilience”. When I thought of it, I imagined a cloak of strength around me and it helped me through many challenges.

My word for 2019 was “compassion”. At every encounter, I tried to remember this. Maybe I thought a shop assistant was rude but once the “compassion” mindset kicked in, I considered that he might have been up half the night with a sick child.

2019 felt positive as I enjoyed having the standpoint of believing the best in everyone, rather than being frustrated about shortcomings. Also, I think that by believing the best, I actually experienced that. By showing compassion, I received it back.

My word for 2020 is “authentic”. I am letting my hair go grey. I changed my LinkedIn profile picture to be one where I am wearing my glasses. I have been toying with writing a blog for a few years but always talked myself out of it concerned by how others might judge it. However, this is my 5th instalment and I’m enjoying writing about themes that interest me.

I think “creativity” is going to be my word for 2021. The world is challenging us to be more creative in our approaches to problem solving and I want to rise to that challenge and think about new ways of doing things. Also, I would like to add to my creative hobbies. I have already made a start. The photo attached is my first effort at sewing!

Happy 2021!