The Accidental Creative - Todd Henry [FRESH Technique]

The Accidental Creative explains how you can unearth and carefully manage your creative potential. The book explains how everyone has that "creativity potential" and the tools to unleash that dormant possibility by a technique to stay FRESH (focus, relationships, energy, stimuli and hour)

The book starts off with Three Assassins of Creativity:

1. Dissonance

2. Fear

3. Expectation Escalation

Now, let's look at each of the keys to creative insights:

Focus : A lack of focus comes from two key factors : unhealthy assumptions and ping. The former arises because our brains are preconditioned to predict what's going to happen based off of past experiences and the latter is the sudden and uncontrollable urge to divert your focus and respond to those pings of social media. In order to parry them off, we must do three things:

           - define your work

           - refine your work

           - cluster your similar tasks together

Relationship : To build strong relationships, there are three main strategies:

             - start a circle (friends and colleagues)

             - head to heads (one-on-one meetings)

             - establishing a core team (long-term student-teacher relationships)

Energy : Though the brain is only 2% of our total body weight, it uses 20% of the available total energy. Ergo, if we're tired or low on energy, we won't be able to function properly. Author Tony Schwartz says we're most productive when switching between periods of high focus and intermittent rest. Also, every month, "prune away" the least effective and the most energy draining activity in your life.

Stimuli : To help you effectively manage your challenging, relevant and diverse stimuli, there are three things you should do:

            - cultivate (while making study plans, allocate 25% to the areas relevant to your job where you lack information, 25% to your blind spots and the stuff that will benefit you in the wider sense, and remaining 50% to your passion.)

             - process (take notes on your insights, review and extrapolate a pattern there.)

             - experience (get out there, live a little)

Hours : Apart from putting in efforts to your passion everyday, the author recommends incorporating fun activities to your routine.