Do you wish you could get your ideas out?
Since I was a grad student at the University of Florida, Dr. Tina Seelig has been one of my favorite authors.
I read one of her early books, What I Wish I Knew When I Was 20 after taking a Creativity class in business school and it’s a book that I’ve probably re-read at least 3-4 times over the past few years.
She has a background that brings together a Neuroscience and Engineering past with current experience teaching in the realm of business, entrepreneurship, and technology at Stanford University. If you are not already familiar with her you should start by checking out her earlier books, What I Wish I Knew When I Was 20 and InGenius: A Crash Course on Creativity.
Her latest book, Insight Out just came out this year and it’s full of both wise information, advice, and projects that the reader can immediately put into action.
The book covers the topics of:
- Imagination
- Creativity
- Innovation
- Entrepreneurship
Although we’ve probably all used these words in our daily life, we often use them interchangeably and if we were asked to specifically identify the differences between each word, we might struggle to do so.
I found Insight Out to be a really helpful guide in providing a basic foundation for each of these subjects and how they all fuse together as a whole as well as how to organize ideas.
For example, here are some some brief points about each of the these topics that Seelig covers in the book:
- Imagination requires engagement and the ability to envision alternatives
- Creativity requires motivation and experimentation to address a challenge
- Innovation requires focusing and re-framing to generate unique solutions
- Entrepreneurship requires persistence and the ability to inspire others
In the book there is a really beautiful quote by John Gardner which says,
Meaning is not something you stumble across, like the answer to a riddle or the prize in a treasure hunt. Meaning is something you build into your life. You build it out of your own past, out of your affections and loyalties, out of the experience of humankind as it is passed on to you, out of your own talent and understanding, out of the things you believe in, out of the things and people you love, out of the values for which you are willing to sacrifice something. The ingredients are there. You are the only one who can put them together into that unique pattern that will be your life.
As I mentioned earlier, I also really loved that there are projects at the end of each chapter. This allows the reader to practice and implement the ideas that they are learning about. I won’t mention all of them but one of the first projects in the book was…
Project: Spend an hour silently observing in 1 location (coffee shop, office, city street) Make as many observations as possible. Look for opportunities.
We often spend a lot of time rushing through our days without much thought as to what is going on around us.
Observing is a great way to both relax but at the same time be alert to all of the interesting things that are probably happening all around you.
Overall, this is definitely a book that I would highly recommend. There is a lot of information so I took copious notes as I read through it. Then, I have been going back and reading through the notes and working on more of the projects.
If you want to check it out or learn more, you can find it here on amazon.
Have a wonderful day and happy reading!
