Seven Misconceptions About Creativity and How to Harness It | Lifehacker

We’ve all been there. That enchanting, mysterious moment when the muse strikes. Creativity is intoxicating. It’s frenetic. And — not to sound crass — it’s profitable. Unfortunately, creativity is also fickle: the more you chase it, the harder it is to catch.

How to Fight Through Intellectual Discomfort | 99U

For professional athletes, facing and overcoming pain, adversity, and discomfort is all part of a day’s work. Knowledge workers, the majority of the workforce today, encounter a different type of adversity — intellectual discomfort.

Virginia Woolf on the Relationship Between Loneliness and Creativity | Brain Pickings

There is a kind of loneliness that lodges itself in the psyche and never fully leaves, a loneliness most anguishing not in solitude but in companionship and amid the crowd.

Drowning in a Sea of Information | Digital Culturist

Information overload is something that’s been plaguing me for a while. It was only recently that I decided to take the time to understand why my brain doesn’t work the way it used to.

The Principles of Quantum Team Management | First Round Review

I didn’t intend to go into computer science, and I definitely didn’t expect to become a manager. Instead, I started out thinking I’d be a laboratory scientist. In college, this led me to astronomy and physics, which prompted me to start writing software. 

The Daily Pain of Having Extreme Perception | BBC Future

At the age of six, Jack Craven started telling his mother he wanted to die. “God made a mistake when he made me,” he would say. “Why can’t I just die?” His mother, Lori Craven, says she didn’t even know that kids his age could think such things: “Can you imagine your child saying that?”

Productivity Talk with author of Getting Things Done David Allen | Blinkist

Productivity guru David Allen is the wizard behind Getting Things Done, an organizational method that has transformed the way that we work. In this interview Blinkist’s Caitlin Schiller speaks to David Allen about what he calls “clear space,” the happiness industry, and Abraham Lincoln.

Grit and Authenticity | Scientific American

Success in accomplishing your goals requires grit: passion and perseverance over a long stretch of time. Grit requires constantly moving toward toward your north star-- who you were meant to be--over the course of years, despite life's inevitable trials and tribulations.

The Akrasia Effect: Why We Don't Follow Through On What We Set Out to Do And What To Do About It | Huff Post

By the summer of 1830, Victor Hugo was facing an impossible deadline. Twelve months earlier, the famous French author had made an agreement with his publisher that he would write a new book titled, The Hunchback of Notre Dame.

The Secret of Taste: Why We Like What We Like | The Guardian

f you had asked me, when I was 10, to forecast my life as an adult, I would probably have sketched out something like this: I would be driving a Trans Am, a Corvette, or some other muscle car. My house would boast a mammoth collection of pinball machines.