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💡The Big Idea: How to Leverage A Simple Framework to Unlock Your Creativity

Believe it or not, I used to think that I just wasn't creative.

Other creators seemed to be able to just pull something fully formed from the ether. But creating for me was a mighty struggle.

I used to believe that creativity was a talent you were born with, and I just didn't have the gift.

In this newsletter, I want to share a simple framework that can help unlock your creativity and free you to do your best creative work.

You ARE Creative!

The truth is that everyone is creative.

It doesn't matter if you are a writer, musician, desk jockey, or engineer - you have the ability and potential to create.

Creativity, like everything else in life, is a system. And every system has three parts:

• An input (what goes in)
• A process (what happens with the input)
• An output (what comes out)

So, if you haven't seen much creative output, it doesn't mean you lack something in your DNA — you simply need to tweak either your inputs or your process.

I know this because I’ve struggled with this myself.

I used to believe the lie that I just wasn’t creative. I remember playing guitar and writing songs, then getting mad when I realized that I had unintentionally picked up a melody or chord progression from another song I heard on the radio. I used to think to myself, “What is wrong with me? Why can’t I create anything original?”

But when I read Steal Like an Artist by Austin Kleon, I realized that nothing is completely original. When someone creates something, they are simply connecting dots in new and interesting ways.

So, if I wanted to get better at creating, I just needed to collect better dots.

And all of a sudden, I was free.

I didn’t have to judge what I made anymore because it was simply the natural output from the dots I had collected. When I started changing my inputs (by listening to podcasts and reading books intentionally), I found it easier to synthesize those ideas and create something new.

And that, in a nutshell, is why you should use a PKM system — it can help you connect the dots and makes it easier for you to do your best creative work.

I love this quote by Hugh Mcleod, where he says:

And once you understand how creativity works, it becomes a lot easier to ask for your crayons back.

What is creativity really?

Hopefully, by now, you understand that creativity is not a sudden flash of inspiration.

It’s not making something out of nothing — it’s simply combining bits and pieces of things that already exist into something new.

Basically, it's a remix.

This sounds simple, but understanding this is critical. This basic revelation was the single thing that unlocked my true creative potential. And I've seen it have the same effect on countless others as well.

You see, when I was in college, I liked to write songs. But then I would be out with my friends, and I’d hear a song on the radio and realize that I’d ripped off a melody line or chord progression from something that already existed.

Then, the shame spiral would begin. I would beat myself up for thinking that I had actually created something new when I had unknowingly been influenced by something I had listened to previously.

That’s what led me to say (and believe), “I guess I’m just not creative.”

But reading Steal Like an Artist helped me realize that creativity is simply connecting dots. And if I wanted to be more creative, I just needed to collect better dots.

So that’s exactly what I did.

I started reading more books (I got them from the library before I could afford to buy them myself), and I noticed that it increased both the quantity and the quality of my ideas. And those ideas became the seeds of the things I ended up creating.

I didn't quite understand how it worked (yet), but I knew that if I focused on the input, the output became easy.

It wasn't until years later that I started getting curious about how this system actually worked, and I created a framework called The Creativity Flywheel.

The Creativity Flywheel: A System for Making Creativity Effortless

The act of creating, I believe, is very much like a flywheel. Kit CEO Nathan Barry shared at the Craft + Commerce conference a few years ago that there are three laws of flywheels:

1. Things must flow smoothly from one stage of the flywheel to the next
2. Each rotation becomes easier than the previous rotation
3. Each rotation produces more than the previous rotation

The hardest part about a flywheel is getting it started. But that becomes a lot easier when you understand how all the parts work together.

So here are five distinct stages in The Creativity Flywheel. I also call these The 5 C's of Creativity.

The first stage in The Creativity Flywheel is the Capture stage. This part is pretty easy; you just need to pay attention and capture what has your attention (or what “resonates”). At this stage, you’re not really worried about figuring out what things are — you’re just looking for anything that might be useful.

The second stage is the Curate stage. This is where you look at the things that you’ve captured and selectively add things to your idea development greenhouse (which is the place where you develop your ideas). For me this is Obsidian, but the key here is to only keep the really good stuff.

The third stage is the Cultivate stage. This is where we develop our ideas to see what they really are. I firmly believe you don’t know what an idea is when you have it. It’s just a seed, and if you want to make the most of it you need to give the right conditions for it to mature.

The fourth stage is the Connect stage. This is where you connect the ideas to others, very much like the idea of syntopical reading from Mortimer Adler's classic How to Read a Book. The goal is to look for the connections that aren’t obvious (and why I love connected notes apps like Obsidian).

The fifth stage is the Create stage. This is where there’s an output from the ideas you’ve collected, whether that’s a blog post, podcast, or simply an opinion note where you codify your thoughts on a topic. It doesn’t matter what the format is; the important thing is that there’s an output.

Once the output is created, it usually creates a curiosity for something else (which is then used in the Capture phase to find new and interesting material for the next time). Once you get a little momentum, it becomes easier and easier to keep the flywheel turning.

🖥️ Free Webinar: How to Use Obsidian to Create Consistently & Effortlessly

If you want to get your Creativity Flywheel spinning, I’m actually hosting a free TOMORROW where I’ll dive deeper into the five stages of The Creativity Flywheel. In this 1-hour webinar, I’ll share how you can:

• Never run out of ideas by developing a system for creating consistently and effortlessly
• Get your PKM system to actively surface ideas instead of having to go hunt for them
• Think better and more creatively (even if you don’t think you are creative) so you can do better work
• Create a practical and sustainable information workflow that sparks inspiration and curiosity

So if you:

• Want to create more but have trouble coming up with and developing ideas
• Don’t consider yourself creative but always wished you were
• Don’t have a consistent system for handling everything that comes your way
• Battle FOMO, even though you consume a lot of information (but don’t actually do anything with it)

Then this free workshop is for you!

Make sure to ​RSVP here​ and save your spot.

😎 Something (Potentially) Cool: System-Level Obsidian Notifications on Android

One of the drawbacks of using Obsidian for all of my personal task & project management is that I can no longer get system-level notifications. I don’t actually mind this (I time-block my important tasks at the beginning of the day and actually don’t want to receive task notifications on my phone), but I know many people who rely on these mobile notifications.

Well, this week, I saw a very interesting app pop up in the Obsidian Discord called Notifian that actually adds system-level notifications from your Obsidian tasks. Full disclosure: I haven't tried this! Frankly, this isn’t for me. One, I don’t have an Android device where I could even install this. And two, it seems to use a specific property value, which would require using individual notes as tasks.

I do know a lot of people who do task management in Obsidian that way, though, and if you’re one of them, this might be for you. I do think it’s a pretty cool idea, and I’m interested to see where this goes.

If they ever add support for the Obsidian Tasks plugin, it might be enough to get me to switch to Android 😉

Book Notes: The Creative Act by Rick Rubin

If you're looking for another great resource to give your creativity a boost, I can't recommend The Creative Act by Rick Rubin highly enough. It's a great book with a lot of short chapters where author (and 9-time Grammy Award-winning producer) Rick Rubin shares snippets of wisdom from his years of studying the creative process.

If you want to download my notes from this incredible book, click here.

— Mike

P.S. My 4-week Practical PKM cohort kicks off next Monday! If you want some help building a PKM system that helps you be more productive and creative by living and working in alignment with your vision and values, this is for you. If you want to find out more, you can click here for the details.