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The In-Between: When Clarity Puts You On Hold

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Limitations lead to innovation

Rich Kirkpatrick0252 views

This is an excerpt from my new book: MINDBLOWN: Unlock Your Creative Genius by Bridging Science and Magic. In my book, I write about the creative process and my three steps, The Dream, The Sandbox, and The Story. The excerpt refers to The Sandbox, where we develop our ideas. Subscribe to the audio blog on your favorite podcast app: Subscribe We now have arrived at step two—The Sandbox. This is where we test our creative limits. It doesn’t surprise us that creativity comes with real-world limitations, such as deadlines, human resources, and budget. For some of us, this is the part when you see your creativity soar—forcing us to budget time and resources to maximize our project. This is the spreadsheet part of creativity where we manage constraints.  Believe it or not, constraints can have the potential to help us do our best work. The Ancient Greek philosopher Plato was right when…

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Creator vs Employee: Why don’t you get a real job?

Rich Kirkpatrick0455 views

Subscribe to the audio blog on your favorite podcast app: Subscribe Have you ever wondered why work seems meaningful to some and not to others? Perhaps it has to do with how we see ourselves. Are we creators or employees? There are a few recordings that playback in the mind of innovators and creators and they begin early in life. In grade school, the teacher says, “Sit still, color within the lines, and stop daydreaming.” They scolded us for the doodles on the edge of the folder and shamed us for our sensitivity. In the old days, teachers simply put you in the corner of the room. The mission of education, in the mind of a myopic society, aims for conformity and uniformity. Sticking out threatens the general order. Things are simply the way they are and if you want to challenge it, you will pay the price. The schoolyard…

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Why Brainstorming Meetings Suck and How to Make Them Better

Rich Kirkpatrick0481 views

Subscribe to the audio blog on your favorite podcast app: Subscribe If you want to see eyes roll, tell the team you planned a brainstorming meeting. The hope is to practice innovation, foster teamwork, or prop up low morale. Motives, whether sane or desperate, propel such a meeting to the calendar. The effectiveness of these types of meetings is another story, however. Be honest. They suck. Let me jog your memory. The dreaded no-idea-is-bad on the whiteboard turns into three people dominating the meeting while the rest watch the clock, hoping to get to the break room microwave first to warm the leftovers they brought for lunch. After an hour’s work, the whiteboard has the thoughts of these three people, and the no-bad-ideas promise fails. Passing objections and restrained snickers frustrate the goal of non-judgmental civility, however. The leader writes lists of ideas on the board, filtering, categorizing, and labeling them in…

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Creativity Finds A Way: Creating During the Darkest of Times

Rich Kirkpatrick0319 views

Like life, creativity finds a way. In fact, we are not unique in surviving a pandemic. The poet and playwright William Shakespeare offers an example of how creative work continues in the darkest of times—whether it is the 1590s or 2020s. English professor Travis D. Williams, says, “The word ‘poet’ comes from the Greek ‘to make.’ Shakespeare used language and thought to make a path for himself through the miseries of the plague and the resulting economic depression. Creating and making during lockdowns are nothing new. What is new is this: most of us haven’t experienced it before. Our desire to move on from difficult times is strong. For example, we forget AIDS is still an epidemic. It’s likely we will, in our lifetimes, collectively experience more of this kind of weariness. However, we continue to make things, write poems, and sing songs. I recall many years of directing Christmas…

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How does the creative process work?

Rich Kirkpatrick1331 views

I am writing a new book about the creative process Many of my readers may not know that I have been writing a book about the creative process. It’s an idea I have chewed on and studied for several years. What is my progress? As of today, I have written a manuscript of about 60,000 words and am in the third draft of edits. My new book has a working title, too: MIND BLOWN: Bridging science and magic to unlock your creative genius.  How does creativity actually work? I am curious. How does creativity work? How can we get better at it? A lot of books give us habits and systems to follow. I hope to explain well what I have found under the hood–the engine behind creativity! It is about bridges, connecting between opposing things. I have distilled it into three steps: The Dream, The Sandbox, and The Story. The…

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Wear a mask! There’s a difference between self-expression and being selfish.

Rich Kirkpatrick0415 views

The most helpful creatives among us know this truth by painful experience: Our selfishness never helps us. It, in fact, has the opposite effect. When individual rights seem suspended, the idea of the “greater good” takes a back seat. For my Christian friends and family, the ethic of taking care of your neighbor divides our churches and our homes. Wearing a mask has become a violation of rights to some rather than a symbol or method of safety. Closing businesses upends livelihoods and shatters dreams. Disrupted worship services keep us away from the fuel of our faith and fellowship of our friends. We don’t walk this life alone, and this pandemic keeps us alone. Selfishness is a powerful tempter. And, at the moment, we are vulnerable to its seduction. My feelings are important, but how about the health of my loved ones? In LA County, our health officer’s life has…

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Connection versus Content: 5 Worship Team Hacks for the pandemic

Rich Kirkpatrick0437 views

Our worship teams need to be shepherded, especially during this season. Beyond content creation, we need connection. There are a lot of innovative and practical pointers for putting online services together. What I hope to do here is address how we care for each other, equip our teams, and build community during a pandemic. How do we stay connected and even grow?

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Flexing the Muscle of Imagination: The hard work of creativity

Rich Kirkpatrick0496 views

Leading worship requires a heavy dose of administrative strengths. There are team members to schedule, music to arrange and distribute, plans to execute, and budgets to keep. Just because you sing and hold a guitar doesn’t mean you automatically get to create! Yes, you serve by making music and prayers work in service for your church. Yes, the desire for unique artistic expression worthy of a worship service rate high on the task list. But, imagination takes a back seat.

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COVID-19 is the Villian, but Who is the Hero?

Rich Kirkpatrick2480 views

What if the enemy in the pandemic was the cause of the pandemic, the coronavirus Covid-19? What if we could lay all our anger, grief, mistrust, and fear in the direction of this invisible-yet-deadly foe? Every one of us is a potential target, from Libertarians who squirm at their local pub being closed to businesswomen who had to layoff their treasured friends and employees. The virus succeeded in wholesale disruption, denying school kids their dreaded fifth period and terrorizing parents who love their kids but cannot change diapers while simultaneously presenting a Zoom call for work. Disruption goes deeper than lifestyle interruptions. Life itself is threatened as thousands experience a violent, ugly, and lonely death. No one is immune, literally–at least we are not sure of that yet. Is the virus an enemy? If true, why not blame the virus for all that befalls us? We could sell coronavirus targets…

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