2/ It is the "swipe file" used by Mad Men
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3/ They're not a repository of creativity - I almost never write down my own thoughts. They are a sort of idea junkyard, full of odds & ends
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4/ In other words, notes are a substitute for creativity. Why reinvent the wheel when u can pull off the parts from an old masterpiece?
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5/ Now I understand why my 2 criteria for what to capture are 1) interesting and 2) useful. Art and engineering. Poiesis and praxis
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6/ Either smthg inspires me to new creative heights, or saves me from having to do so. Every unit of bottleneck throughput is precious
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7/ This "recycling & reorganizing" lies at a very mysterious emergence boundary between doing and creating
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8/ I think u can become so good at reorganizing that creativity pops out, like how drawing can be taught w/ well-known perceptual tricks
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9/ This is important because reorganizing can be taught, practiced, refined, analyzed, explained (I hope), unlike pure creativity
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10/ It's like by envisioning yourself as a mere recycler, u set the stage of low expectations for real creativity to emerge (it's shy)
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the danger is when swipe file becomes a closed set. Should randomly throw out stuff, add new stuff to make it a flow.
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pair with occasional full purges of stale piles past their diminishing yield point and alternate mindful external focus periods
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I have a rule that any paragraph w/out a sentence or phrase worth a highlight, gets deleted = notes get shorter over time as I digest
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