Saturday Deep Dive: John Cleese on Creativity

Today's dive into the deeper archive takes us back to Nov. 4, 2009, when we discussed John Cleese's TED talk on creativity. This is the one that goes into a fascinating description on the Dunning-Kruger effect.

Highlights:

• He is a huge proponent of using his subconscious as has been discussed here earlier.
• Interruptions are dangerous for creative thought.
• We don't know where we get ideas from, but we know we don't get them from our laptops.
• Getting into the right mood for creativity involves creating an oasis for your "tortoise mind" to come out and play.
• Creating an oasis involves setting boundaries of space (to block interruptions and eliminate distractions) and boundaries of time.
• "To know how good you are at something requires exactly the same skills as it does to be good at that thing. Which means if you're absolutely hopeless at something, you lack exactly the skills that you need to know that you're absolutely hopeless at it."

Discuss it under the original thread.