Unlimited Member: Harrison Winter's "Interesting People"

Earlier this year, former ad man and current 3W Unlimited Member, Harrison Winter quit his day job "to pursue more entrepreneurial projects"-- one of which is his video series on "Interesting People." Now that Winter works without the corporate structure of a "real" boss and a nine-to-five, he wanted to know how artists and people with jobs that lack an imposed structure stay inspired. 

"My goal with "Interesting People" is simply to put a spotlight on people in my life that I either know, or meet for the first time, who I think are doing amazing things. In today's social media powered world, a short video goes a long way in getting picked up by a larger audience. So, in addition to creating "Interesting People" as a personal passion project, I also hope it helps the subjects of the videos to get more widely recognized. They deserve it." 

So far, Winter has profiled photographer CJ Isaac (video above) and has plans to film the founders of a NYC-based start up next."Rather than setting out with a list of industries," he says, "I'm instead going to see where things naturally lead and who I meet along the way. That will be part of the story."

Even though this project is relatively new, Winter had plenty to say about creativity and how to stay inspired. 

"You have to continually shake it up a bit.  Step out of your routine, let the world show you something new and use that as inspiration.  I'm a big fan of my friend Jason Silva's work, where he borrows a quote from Kahlil Gibran that says "Sometimes it feels as though ideas, or feelings, or thoughts, or revelation comes through you but not from you.  And though it is with you, it belongs not to you."  I think that creativity and inspiration come the easiest when you don't try to force it.  When you don't try to look at it as though it's something you're solely responsible for creating out of thin air.  Instead, it's about actively putting yourself in situations and surroundings that facilitate creative thinking, and continually interacting/meeting/collaborating with new people and trying new things.  If you actively try to do that, I believe that the creativity and inspiration will naturally follow."

We couldn't agree more.

Journalist Jonah Lehrer on "How Creativity Works"

IMAGINE: How Creativity Works from Flash Rosenberg on Vimeo.

Maria Popova recently posted this teaser video for Jonah Lehrer's new book, "Imagine: How Creativity Works,"on her site Brain Pickings. Lehrer explores how creativity "works" by debunking the common misconception that all great ideas are preceded by the elusive a-ha! moment, the moment the proverbial lightbulb goes off. Instead, he insists that frustration is part of the process. Consider us 100% on board.

Lehrer kicks off the book with this intro:

"The sheer secrecy of creativity — the difficulty in understanding how it happens, even when it happens to us — means that we often associate breakthroughs with an external force. In fact, until the Enlightenment, the imagination was entirely synonymous with higher powers: being creative meant channeling the muses, giving voice to the ingenious gods. (Inspiration, after all, literally means ‘breathed upon.’) Because people couldn’t understand creativity, they assumed that their best ideas came from somewhere else. The imagination was outsourced.”

In relation (we believe), Nietzsche may have put it best in his 1878 book, "Human, All Too Human: A Book for Free Spirits:"

"Artists have a vested interest in our believing in the flash of revelation, the so-called inspiration… shining down from heavens as a ray of grace. In reality, the imagination of the good artist or thinker produces continuously good, mediocre or bad things, but his judgment, trained and sharpened to a fine point, rejects, selects, connects… All great artists and thinkers are great workers, indefatigable not only in inventing, but also in rejecting, sifting, transforming, ordering.”

So don't give up if your "seething cauldron of ideas," as Lehrer puts it, seems unintelligible or fruitless. It's all part of the process, folks.

-- Perrin Drumm