I came to Flow, by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, thinking that I already knew what it was. A fairly dense, though canonical and oft-cited academic work on the psychology of the “flow state”: that rare, almost reverent state of creativity in which the practitioner is totally immersed in what they’re doing. In this “flow state,” as I…

I recently finished reading The Practice: Shipping Creative Work: the latest book from Seth Godin. In case you haven’t heard of Godin, he’s the marketing guru that famously publishes short thought-provoking blogs daily, and sends those blog posts as emails. In the book, Godin sets up the idea of creativity as a deliberate practice, one…

I picked up John Cleese’s newest book, Creativity: a short and cheerful guide, on a whim. I’ve started blogging about creativity, so it seems like a handy thing to read a book about the topic from a master comedian, right? The subtitle “a short and cheerful guide” does not overpromise. At just over 100 pages,…

I’m a huge fan of Pixar films, and six years ago, while heavily pregnant with my second son, I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to visit their studio. The campus is incredible; secluded and beautiful, with a good balance of small spaces to encourage focus, and large common areas to foster collaboration and…