The Three Pillars of Creation
01/01/20 • 16 min
Three Pillars of Creation = Experience + Trends + Intuition
Experience
There really is no substitute for experience. It is a hard-won reference for everything that we do. In fact, every new thing that we learn is born from the womb of our experience. It colors everything we know and do, and there is no way around that.
90% of the email answers I give are to “just make stuff” What we all need is more experience, and the only way to get that is to just do it.
Trends
Trends are an important ingredient in the recipe of creation. Through being aware of trends we have the ability borrow against the collective knowledge and insight of the rest of the world. If a piece of knowledge is solid enough to make it into the general lexicon, we can cautiously assume that the idea has been tested and tried and remains sound overall.
Having said that, be weary of trends. Things are not always popular because they are good ideas. Use your experience and intuition to validate trends. Doing something just because everyone else is, is never a good idea. Have a reason. Always.
Intuition
As new parents in the hospital, my wife and I franticly asked the nurses and doctors about every little detail of infant care. I was so freaked out by this little pink batch of skin and bone that was now my responsibility. Eventually the response came to be “Listen, calm down. Just trust your instincts, you’ll be alright.”
Human intuition is a powerful thing, often when we are creating we make a choice simply because it feels right.
I’m sure you’ve had the experience of having to explain a choice that you made because it just made sense. And now that you are using language to explain it, you see how really brilliant you were in making it. Those are fun moments.
Conclusion
Understanding these pillars – these input sources of creation – will better help us to demystify the act of creation itself. To be a successful creator in the long run we must ever be gathering experience, observing trends, and trusting our intuition.
Three Pillars of Creation = Experience + Trends + Intuition
Experience
There really is no substitute for experience. It is a hard-won reference for everything that we do. In fact, every new thing that we learn is born from the womb of our experience. It colors everything we know and do, and there is no way around that.
90% of the email answers I give are to “just make stuff” What we all need is more experience, and the only way to get that is to just do it.
Trends
Trends are an important ingredient in the recipe of creation. Through being aware of trends we have the ability borrow against the collective knowledge and insight of the rest of the world. If a piece of knowledge is solid enough to make it into the general lexicon, we can cautiously assume that the idea has been tested and tried and remains sound overall.
Having said that, be weary of trends. Things are not always popular because they are good ideas. Use your experience and intuition to validate trends. Doing something just because everyone else is, is never a good idea. Have a reason. Always.
Intuition
As new parents in the hospital, my wife and I franticly asked the nurses and doctors about every little detail of infant care. I was so freaked out by this little pink batch of skin and bone that was now my responsibility. Eventually the response came to be “Listen, calm down. Just trust your instincts, you’ll be alright.”
Human intuition is a powerful thing, often when we are creating we make a choice simply because it feels right.
I’m sure you’ve had the experience of having to explain a choice that you made because it just made sense. And now that you are using language to explain it, you see how really brilliant you were in making it. Those are fun moments.
Conclusion
Understanding these pillars – these input sources of creation – will better help us to demystify the act of creation itself. To be a successful creator in the long run we must ever be gathering experience, observing trends, and trusting our intuition.
Previous Episode
Season 3 Trav & Los Premiere: Distractions Become Your Habits
Show Links:
- https://www.youtube.com/littlemusicboxes
- https://www.losmontoya.com
- https://travandlos.webflow.io
- https://onezero.medium.com/being-indistractable-will-be-the-skill-of-the-future-a07780cf36f4
- https://www.instagram.com/littlemusicboxes/
Intro:
Welcome to the Late Nights with Trav and Los Season 3 Premier and Finale!
I’m Los, your host tonight and Tav is joining us as the listener proxy.
Discussion Points:
Catch Up
Los
Company was acquired via a merger with a company called Twenty
Our goal is to enable and enrich experiences by bringing people together in real life.
Building out Los Montoya Design Co on the side
Trav
Little Music Boxes
Topic
Nir Eyal
Nir Eyal is the bestselling author of Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products, which drew on his years of experience in the video gaming and advertising industries. He has taught courses on applied consumer psychology at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design and is a frequent speaker at industry conferences and at Fortune 500 companies. His writing on technology, psychology and business appears in the Harvard Business Review, the Atlantic, TechCrunch and Psychology Today.
I want to more specifically talk about the thesis that “Being Indisctractable will be the skill of the future” around his forthcoming book “Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life.”
This is interesting to me and want to expand on it with you for two reasons:
1. We’ve talked about focus a bit in the previous seasons and
2. Out of anyone I know, you continue to demonstrate how “indistractable” you can get and accomplish some pretty rad creative endeavors.
Distractions are the name of the game right now:
Pings
Knocks
Emails
Text Messages
Social Media
in a sense, our devices have “hijacked” our brains and it’s harder to disconnect from work in this interconnected world.
Distractions aren’t your fault, but they are your responsibility. So, how do we equip ourselves to manage these distractions?
So, what’s a distraction?
It’s something that draws us away from what we want to do, whether it’s to accomplish a task at home or work, enjoy time with a loved one, or do something for ourselves.
Distractions can become habits and we may be unable to sustain the focus required for creativity in our professional and personal lives.
We are inundated by digital distractions.
On the opposite side, we have Traction. Which is any action that moves us towards what we want. Actions done with intent. Traction is doing what you say you will do.
So, what prompts us to “traction” or “distraction”?
External triggers
Cues from our environment that tell us what to do
Internal triggers
Cues that come from within
How?
We are going to walk through and discuss these points from the medium post. They are well worded and actionable:
1. Master Internal Triggers
2. Make time for traction
- PICK YOUR VALUES!!!!
3. Hack back External Triggers
4. Prevent distraction with pacts
Conclusion:
The world is split into two types of people: those who allow their attention and their lives to be manipulated by others, and those who proudly call themselves indistractable.
Next Episode
New job at Google, gets on bus to Apple...
Travis wants to go back to school so he accepts a job at Google. On his first day he ends up getting on a bus to Apple, not Google.
The rest of the story is about how introspection into ones own strengths and weaknesses can lead you to companies like Google.
Music produced by Morqix: https://soundcloud.com/morqix/body-symmetry-chakra-collab
If you like this episode you’ll love
Episode Comments
Generate a badge
Get a badge for your website that links back to this episode
<a href="https://goodpods.com/podcasts/late-nights-with-trav-and-los-104991/the-three-pillars-of-creation-10695112"> <img src="https://storage.googleapis.com/goodpods-images-bucket/badges/generic-badge-1.svg" alt="listen to the three pillars of creation on goodpods" style="width: 225px" /> </a>
Copy