It's a running commentary on creativity and ideation.

One of my favorite blogs, mnmlist.com, recently retold the famous Zen story of a monk who enters a monastery asking to be taught.  The Zen master asks the monk if he has finished his rice porridge.  The monk has.  The monk is then told that he had better wash his bowl.  And at that moment the monk was enlightened.

What does washing your bowl have to do with creativity?  Everything.

There is a clear distinction between ideas.  The ones you do and the ones you don’t do.  And the ones you do will always be better than the one’s you don’t for the simple reason that they actually happened.

Connecting ideas to problems is helpful, but it’s always most helpful when it results in action.

When you eat your porridge (have an idea) you had better wash out your bowl (take action on it).  Finish what you start.  One finished novel will always be better than five unfinished novels and the countless novels that never even started.  One written blog post is better than the dozen disconnected ideas you wrote down.

Start what you begin, be present with it from ideation to action.

Eat your porridge and wash out your bowl.

Not only should they be free, ideas should be fun.  And the fantastic people at Volkswagen agree.

So they created thefuntheory.com, a site dedicated to the thought that something as simple as fun is the easiest way to change people’s behaviour for the better. Be it for yourself, for the environment, or for something entirely different, the only thing that matters is that it’s change for the better.

Don’t believe me (or them)? And you still haven’t one to their site? Then watch these videos and prepare to be convinced that ideas should be free fun and fun ideas can change the world.

“From dust you came and to dust you shall return.”

People all around the world heard these words spoken over them as ashes were placed on them.  Because today is Ash Wednesday; today is the first day of Lent.

Ash Wednesday is more than just an idea, it is a reality that exists for all of us (I like to refer to these ideas/realities as “idealities”).  And this “ideality” invites us to connect with our humanity, connect with the suffering present throughout the world, and glimpse the presence of God found even in the darkest of places.

What does this have to do with creativity and ideation? Everything.

Because it is in our suffering that creativity thrives.  It is in our forced elimination that new ideas surface.  Problems are the parents of ideation; pain is the catalyst for the change most often needed but least often desired.

At Mars Hill, we are inviting our community to give up and take on various things together.  Rather than the cliche “don’t eat chocolate” we are inviting everyone to join a larger rhythm, discovering a life with God in the midst of pain and suffering, self and others.  And to do this we have a Lenten Experience Calendar.  (A group of us gathered to brainstorm ideas for each day.  Brad Nelson integrated them into a calendar.  Can you find out which ones are mine?!)

As each evening turns to morning, as you enter the highs and lows of reality, as you suffer and celebrate, may you know your humanity.  For it is a humanity destined to discover, create, and innovate.  A sculpture is only a piece of rock until you remove the parts that are in the way. In the same way, suffering leads us into the art of elimination in order that we may discover a deeper and truer humanity buried within.

Every Wednesday.

There will be something HERE.

Guaranteed.

And it will even be something worth reading.

So check back on Wednesday for something new (and something good).  And for the next four days, solve this problem:

You have too many ideas, only they’re scattered between too many notebooks.  How to you make them all accessible and usable?

The web application of ideacus! is well underway. I’ve been working on it for quite some time, but I recently started over. Because some times you get a better idea and that idea is worth starting over for. I don’t have much to say at this point, but I can say that it will be the easiest thing you’ve ever used.

Here’s a sneak peak of the GUI:

For those of you interested in the programming, here’s some quick facts:

Platform: PHP + MySQL
Framework: CodeIgniter 1.7.2
Styling: CSS3
JavaScript Library: jQuery 1.4

I’ll be sure to update soon with more news and snapshots!