Let the Elephant RUN. David Usher

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What do I love about: Let the elephants run?

David Usher does a fantastic job in presenting this material with great action exercises, visuals, colors and paper texture.
Research has shown that the most creative humans are children. Have you ever wondered where all those creativity go by the time they attain adulthood. I am a typical example, as a child I knew how to play by myself and I still do but it was quiet different in the early days, I would have imaginary friends and lay stories, which I acted upon. David Usher in his book Let the Elephant Run further explains the whereabouts of adult creativity.
He not only explains why we have lost touch of our creative genie but how we can reignite it and build the creative muscle. He provides action exercises and urges the readers to make scribbles as they read and to stop and make intermittent reflections. Most especially, I love how David recognizes that only a few ideas are original and we should avoid beating ourselves out when coming up with creative ideas. He calls us Hustlers and Thieves. Creativity is in us and like all other muscle, we have to work it.

What do I not love about: Let the elephants run?

Zilch.

Who should read: Let the elephants run?

Have you ever thought how uncreative you are? Have you ever wondered how to improve your creativity? Then this book is for you.

Who should not read: Let the elephants run?

I believe everyone should read this

Notes from Let the Elephants run

Action 1: Start simple

Creativity is innate, everyone has it.
Within our brain lies the key to our great competitive advantage, an advantage that has allowed us to grow from a population of 2,000 to 7 billion.
Stop looking at creativity as the lottery that someone worn at birth.
Start looking at creativity as a skill set that you can master if you invest the time to learn how.

Action 2: Start by analyzing your creative thinking

The eagles who soar through the sky are at rest and the creatures who crawl, run and creep. I know you are not thirsty. That’s bullshit. Stop lying. Lie the fuck down my darling and sleep.

Action 3: Every creative process starts with the smallest action. So just start

But, Paris was a very old city and we were young and nothing was simple there, not even poverty, nor sudden money, nor the moonlight, nor right and wrong nor the breathing of someone who lay beside you in the moonlight.
Like everything in life, you still need a bit of luck and timing.

Action 4: Look for pictures of yourself as a child. This is the person you need to find. You are still a creative being who can dream up amazing things. You are just a little rusty.

REALITY likes to beat our imagination into submission. That is the job of reality.
Mass systems of public education were developed primarily to meet the needs of the industrial revolution and, in many ways; they mirror the principles of industrial production. They emphasize linearity, conformity and standardization. One of the reasons they are not working now is that real life is organic, adaptable and diverse.
It’s much easier, faster and safer TO COPY what has been done before rather than to struggle for what is possible.
We love patterns, START messing with your patterns.
By acting on observations, we create mutation, and mutations are the basis of creativity.

Action 5: Practice breaking your patterns. Start with small things.

If you want to have amazing creative experiences, you need to open up to risk and cross your own 4th wall. Creativity demands it.
Business plans rarely survive first contact with customers. As the boxer Mike Tyson once said about his opponents prefight strategies “ Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.
Nothing is so painful to the human mind as a great and sudden change.
In this new fast-moving, ever-changing environment, creativity is not a luxury or a risk. It really is a necessity.

Action 6: Do you consider time spent on creative thinking an investment or an expence?

Talent matters, but work is what delivers you.

Action 7: Start the half hour habit

You have to risk a little crazy if you ever hope to escape the gravitational pull of the ordinary.

Action 8: Expose yourself to different ideas, people, and places

Let the pink elephant loose and see where they lead.
If you strive to dream wild pink elephants, by the time your idea has been realized you will be lucky to get an elephant. If you dream elephants, you may end up with a donkey. And, If your dream is donkey sized, you will be lucky by the end of your process to end up with the drawing of a small wet dog.
Sometimes you lead the ideas and sometimes the ideas lead you. They always take you places you didn’t expect.
Think about your own pink elephants, I know you’ve had them. Ideas that seemed too big, unwieldy, and unrealistic.
Family and Friends- This reaction does not come from a place of malice, but their doubts will fan the fires of your doubts and start building up an impossible mountain before you have even take the first step.
The quieter you become, the more you can hear.

Action 9: The next time you have to do something in front of a group of people, hold a power pose

There is no single structure that works for everyone. But for everyone there is a structure that works.
Starting seems hard but it doesn’t have to be.
To be more creative we need to open up to other lenses and other ways of seeing. The more we can see, the more ideas we can use in our creative work.

Action 10: The scariest part of the blank page is the endless blankness. Just start writing

Creativity is an action sport. We are taking ideas and putting them in motion.
You want to be original. One in a million. I get it. But don’t be fooled. Artist or entrepreneur, in my mind we are hustlers and thieves. We are an amalgamation of the ideas that surround us. There may be a few rare geniuses that can pull incredible brilliance out of the air without prior knowledge or contextual influence.
What I am really good at is knowing what I like.

Action 11: Start developing a system for filtering your collected ideas

I am a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work, the more I have of it.
To me, ideas are worth nothing unless executed.
It is important to work HARD but it is more important to work SMART.
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
Without consequences, creativity can meander forever.
We are all creative beings. We all have a vast, untapped creative capacity within us.
One of the reason to commit your creativity in public is that it raises the stakes. It increases the consequences