The Art of Manliness - The Imagination Muscle — Where Good Ideas Come From (And How to Have More of Them)

00:00:00.000 brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast

00:00:10.960 imagination is the ability to form mental images and concepts that don't exist or haven't happened

00:00:16.000 yet think outside of current realities and form connections between existing ideas to create

00:00:20.780 something new and original if the number of movie sequels and the outsized popularity of music made

00:00:25.240 decades ago as any measure our current age is suffering from a deficit in imagination and

00:00:30.120 indeed tests show that creativity which takes the possibilities generating the mind and produces

00:00:34.560 something with them has been in decline for many years now a phenomenon that has repercussions for

00:00:39.320 personal edification professional advancement and societal flowering but if imagination is indeed

00:00:44.780 atrophied the good news is that it can be strengthened so argues my guest albert reed the former managing

00:00:50.560 director of condi nash britain and the author of the imagination muscle where good ideas come from

00:00:55.580 and how to have more of them today on the show albert shares his ideas on how our imagination can

00:01:00.420 be built back up we discuss how to get better at observation and how to use a commonplace book and

00:01:05.120 the way you structure your reading to cross-pollinate your thinking and generate more fruitful ideas

00:01:09.320 we also discuss how to overcome the unthinking habit resist stagnation as you age and embrace

00:01:14.620 imaginative risk after the show is over check out our show notes at awim.is imagination

00:01:19.380 all right albert reed welcome to the show thank you brett great to be here so you are a journalist

00:01:36.960 a writer you're a former head at condi nash britain where you're overseeing magazines like

00:01:41.620 wired and gq and you've recently published a book called the imagination muscle where you explore

00:01:48.280 the power and history of imagination and you start off the book with this story that you're out of

00:01:55.920 college just barely and you're in a used bookstore and you came across this book that it kind of

00:02:02.720 changed the trajectory trajectory of your whole life so what was that book and how did it set you on a

00:02:07.700 career path in the world of creativity the book was called the secret language of film and it was by

00:02:14.140 this guy called jean-claude carrière he's a french script writer and he would write scripts for this

00:02:19.900 guy called luis bunuel who's a famous spanish film director made surrealist films and they worked

00:02:25.900 together on many different projects and one passage particularly struck me in the book when he said that

00:02:32.180 at the end of shooting a film at the end of the day of shooting they would have this exercise where

00:02:37.600 they'd each go to their rooms and force themselves to come up with an idea for a story and then they'd

00:02:43.260 meet an hour later in the bar and then they'd tell each other their stories and he says that they did

00:02:49.420 it because the imagination is a muscle it needs exercising and it's an exercise that requires real

00:02:55.760 discipline and this idea that the imagination is something that you can work at something that you

00:03:00.120 can develop struck me as a very very interesting thought that really hadn't been explored in great

00:03:06.460 depth we talk about our physical health and we take exercise and we do weights and we stretch

00:03:12.260 and we do yoga and we talk about our mental health and our mental well-being but what we don't do in

00:03:18.040 my opinion nearly enough is focus on our imaginative health on this idea imagination something that

00:03:24.800 is a force within us that can be used or not used or can be ignored or it can be it can be celebrated and

00:03:30.660 it can be developed and it can be something that grows within you and this idea really stayed with me

00:03:35.540 for 20 years before i wrote the book but i want to say to readers i wanted them to consider this

00:03:40.780 possibility that the imagination is akin to a muscle it's something that you can develop it can make

00:03:45.680 you more alive it can make you happier it can make you better at your job and so this really was the

00:03:49.800 sort of underlying message that i with the book yeah because i think a lot of times we think of

00:03:54.060 imagination we think of it as something innate either have it or you don't yeah exactly i don't think

00:03:59.720 that's true i think everybody's got an imagination it's like saying you know because hussein bolt

00:04:05.240 runs 100 meters really fast we shouldn't none of us should try running you know everybody has

00:04:10.180 an imagination of some sort some have greater imaginations you know we start from different

00:04:15.520 starting points we end up at different finishing lines but the point for me is to run the race the

00:04:19.820 point is to be in the game to use your imagination in whatever way it suits you to use it you talk about

00:04:25.460 the book that you think our culture today can make developing your imagination more difficult why is

00:04:31.300 that i think there are different forces at play here and it's not completely definitive what i'm

00:04:38.080 saying but i do see signs of what one could call a quiet crisis of the imagination and i worry sometimes

00:04:45.560 that the notion of having ideas of seeing ideas as something that is important in life has slightly

00:04:51.800 been eroded by technology by this idea that the imagination is best left to the professionals

00:04:56.180 is best left to the experts to the writers and the filmmakers and the musicians when in fact we should

00:05:00.180 all be imagining as we used to do in in our more so-called primitive communities imagination was something

00:05:05.300 you did together you sang you danced you told each other stories and this was something i think we've

00:05:10.600 lost and there are definite data points which suggests that ideas are getting harder to come by

00:05:16.660 there's a study from stanford that says to sustain growth in gdp per person

00:05:20.640 the amount of research effort has to double every 13 years to offset the difficulty of finding new

00:05:25.620 ideas and there's another test called the torrance test which measures creativity and that shows that

00:05:31.340 creativity has fallen since 1990 with a steady and persistent decline and you see other areas where

00:05:38.800 you know you see the sequels in hollywood you see netflix ratings going down you see a kind of

00:05:45.960 possibly a cult of nostalgia in the musicians we follow so i just want to really draw

00:05:50.480 attention to this and say are we really being as creative as we can be or are we falling into

00:05:54.460 the trap of passivity and trap of adequacy yeah i've noticed that too it's sometimes i feel like

00:06:01.020 culture is very stagnant yeah the sequels with the movies is the most obvious example i think it's

00:06:06.140 interesting you know i look at my kids my son he's 14 a lot of the music that he enjoys they're from

00:06:12.800 bands that started 20 30 years ago like one of his favorite bands is cake and i listened to cake when

00:06:19.840 i was in high school and i went to a concert with my 14 year old son to watch this 60 year old front

00:06:24.820 man of cake singing it was great but i was like where's my son's generation cake like what's the

00:06:30.420 band that he's gonna like listen to with his kids yeah i have exactly the same thing with my kids

00:06:35.800 who are a bit older than yours but they listen to the same music i listen to and and you know a little

00:06:39.440 bit of new music feeds in but there's this idea of music defining your generation seems to have gone

00:06:44.340 you know it's now it's arrives in different ways from you know tiktok or from film scores and it's

00:06:49.660 often stuff that even predates our own childhood and teenage years so yeah okay the culture is hard

00:06:56.120 because we have technology that i think the thing with technology it can be a source of imagination and

00:07:02.960 creativity but it's so easy that you don't have to exercise that muscle because it makes it so it makes

00:07:08.320 you feel like you're being creative and imaginative when you're really not does that make sense

00:07:12.960 yeah it makes complete sense i think also there's a there's a sense of risking a new idea seems harder

00:07:19.520 than it used to because you're so surrounded by social media and by the attention of anybody that

00:07:24.000 it's it feels easier to fall in step with a group and fall in step with a mindset of that group and to

00:07:30.120 step outside it feels a little scary in a way that it didn't before the advent of social media

00:07:35.140 and i think another thing that social media and the technology we have one way can hamper

00:07:40.660 imagination is like we don't have as many opportunities to be bored and that's when i

00:07:46.220 remember when i was a kid i had to use my imagination when i was bored because i didn't have tiktok i didn't

00:07:50.480 have you know i had to figure things out on my own i had to get creative yeah and i talk about this in

00:07:55.760 the book about the spaces what i call the spaces in between these gaps in your day when your mind is

00:08:00.740 allowed to wander you know when you're standing in a queue or whether you're or sitting on a bus now we

00:08:05.720 we fill these these gaps these small gaps of 10 minutes with checking our email checking social

00:08:12.100 media and those were the moments those were the gaps in the day when people used to have ideas that's

00:08:17.580 when you know george michael was standing in a queue when he invented the the the opening sequence for

00:08:22.900 careless whisper and there's this french mathematician called poincare who had been struggling with this

00:08:28.820 very complicated mathematical formula for for months and then only as he was getting on a bus

00:08:34.300 did it suddenly come to him and it's these moments when you allow the mind to declutch you allow the

00:08:39.200 mind to be drifting a little so that these ideas can make themselves known to a to a mind that's

00:08:44.680 slightly less attentive to what's going on around it and less stimulated by its immediate surroundings

00:08:48.540 so it sounds like there's less chances to exercise our imagination these days but it's still

00:08:53.240 important because you know it can enrich our personal lives it can help us find purpose in our life

00:08:58.400 we use our imagination to develop a vision for our lives imagination can help us have a rich inner

00:09:03.320 life help us to see more layers in life you know just kind of makes you feel more alive but then you

00:09:08.440 also in the book you put numbers to this like it has an economic benefit it can help businesses thrive

00:09:12.940 lead to the scientific discoveries move research forward so there's stakes here in developing our

00:09:18.720 imagination and what you do in the book that i really enjoyed was you talk about the idea or the

00:09:24.660 history of the idea of imagination you give a general definition of imagination as creating

00:09:31.020 connections to create something new but you also impact the idea that people haven't always seen

00:09:37.060 imagination the same way so what's the history of the idea of imagination thumbnail sketch well the

00:09:43.120 imagination has always been with us as long as we've been alive and conscious but we never knew that it

00:09:47.680 was there we never knew what to call it and you see examples of great imaginative feats through history

00:09:55.440 whether it's the homeric poems or the storytelling of the hakawattis and the ancient medieval islamic

00:10:01.200 world but they didn't know what to call it and they didn't really have a sense of what it was and

00:10:04.780 the word imagine comes from this latin root of imago meaning to form an image in your mind and that's

00:10:11.660 where it started and for a long time that's where it ended in a way and that's that that this this idea that

00:10:16.540 humans could use this imagination to conjure up new worlds or think of new ways of of solving problems

00:10:22.100 was something that struck fear into many of the more kind of repressive regimes whether they were

00:10:26.780 political or religious they saw the imagination as a threat to the smooth functioning of society

00:10:31.920 this idea of the imagination was was it was a little scary and it was only later really when

00:10:37.040 it came to the 18th century when the the enlightenment thinkers hobbes and hume and kant began to really

00:10:43.800 isolate and identify this power within us this energy that was the imagination and then it became

00:10:50.660 something enormously important in the world and something that was celebrated and revered and seen

00:10:57.140 as something superior to reason shelley the poet wrote reason is to imagination as the body to the spirit

00:11:03.680 as the shadow to the substance so the imagination was put on this pedestal by these poets and by these

00:11:09.020 writers and what they were saying is they were saying not only can we imagine but it is our duty

00:11:14.640 to imagine we have to use our this enormous power we have within ourselves to live to be alive and

00:11:21.260 that's really when it is only so really it's only a very recent invention the imagination in terms of its

00:11:25.760 conscious application to our lives and this was you know this was 200 years ago yeah this was like

00:11:31.280 the romantic era you know keats and those guys they they really romanticized this idea of imagination

00:11:36.780 yes and they talked about originality as well and that that was another part of it they thought

00:11:40.980 originality was was extremely important whereas in the years before that in the centuries before that

00:11:46.000 originality was rather wasn't really considered and if you think of someone like shakespeare he was

00:11:51.240 wildly original in one sense but he was perfectly happy to take the works of plutarch and ovid and

00:11:57.000 chaucer and christopher marlowe and take stories like romeo and juliet which had been told

00:12:01.860 six times before in various forms and then reinvent them in a way that we wouldn't really

00:12:06.780 think of doing today in quite the same way and i'm very interested in the idea of originality and

00:12:11.560 the notion of how original really is something i write about picasso's le demoiselle d'avignon which

00:12:16.940 was this wildly inventive breakthrough piece of art which appeared at the beginning of the 20th century

00:12:22.760 which really reset the journey of art and into cubism and into into everything that followed

00:12:28.080 and we think of his work as being you know almost the benchmark of originality but actually if you

00:12:33.100 look at it it's actually taking its inspiration from a number of different sources whether it's

00:12:37.620 cezanne and el greco or whether it's african art or iberian face masks and recombining them in a

00:12:44.640 completely new way and that is that is the question about originality and about imagination is do we

00:12:49.580 imagine something completely new or are we just recirculating the colored glass in the kaleidoscope

00:12:55.380 with the existing elements that are already out there yeah and that goes to the questions that

00:12:59.900 people are having today about artificial intelligence what exactly is chat gpt doing when it's generating

00:13:05.400 an image and is it the same as our type of imagination that we do as humans that is the

00:13:10.340 question that nobody really knows the answer to but it seems like for the time being imagination is the

00:13:15.260 thing that we can still do better like it gives us an advantage over the machines and it'll probably

00:13:21.400 become an increasingly valuable commodity or resource so let's talk about what we can do to

00:13:27.840 strengthen our imagination muscle you offer different ideas that you can do to implement in your life to

00:13:33.220 develop your imagination the first one is observation and you start the chapter on observation with this

00:13:39.260 statement observation comes before imagination what do you mean by that what i mean is that the

00:13:46.420 imagination is fed by the imagination is fed by the senses it's fed by what we see and what we hear and

00:13:50.320 what we observe and we don't observe nearly as much as we think we do and we let most of the world

00:13:56.340 pass by without us really noticing it so what i'm saying in the book is learn to take notice learn to see

00:14:02.260 what's around you and if you look at the most creative minds in history they tended to have this ability

00:14:08.040 to see things that other people couldn't see they tended to be able to see see into another layer of

00:14:13.100 existence whether it's an artist or a scientist or even an entrepreneur they see things that other

00:14:18.640 people glance over they spot opportunities because they're looking that much more closely

00:14:22.960 so what i'm saying in the book is build ways of behaving that increase your observational power

00:14:28.440 whether it's and i talk about this thing called observational closure when when you if you really

00:14:32.220 want to see something you should sketch it or you should describe it in words or if you're reading a

00:14:37.100 book you should take notes in the margin and the other thing i write about is building what i call

00:14:42.280 what was called in history a commonplace book where you take notes of things you've read that you found

00:14:47.920 interesting and then you gradually build up a notebook of your own pulled from many sources and

00:14:52.660 then you have this very valuable set of observations that you've made over the years and then you find

00:14:57.880 yourself making connections between them so really it's a way of living where the world is something

00:15:03.200 that is your raw material for your imagination but you've got to be able to capture it and draw it into

00:15:08.520 your mind no i like that idea of observational closures it's basically it's not just noticing

00:15:13.980 it's you have to do something with it you have to tell your brain i have recorded this i have actually

00:15:18.280 paid attention to this by putting it in a notebook or i've made a note somewhere because i think

00:15:22.960 oftentimes yeah we just go through our day we might notice something that captures our attention and then

00:15:26.780 we just move on and we forget about it and i think also there's a sense of if you don't

00:15:32.140 achieve observational closure you you somehow feel dissatisfied the example i use in the book is of a

00:15:37.980 child rushing home to its parents to report on a drama in the school playground and the child will

00:15:43.320 have this kind of agitation that they need to tell you what happened you the parents and then in the

00:15:49.300 telling of it they can somehow relax and they feel they've passed it on and they've achieved this

00:15:54.600 closure and i think that is a very simple example of what we feel as adults where something really

00:16:02.060 valuable happens if you take the time to use whatever means you like to use to find a way of

00:16:07.960 recording or systematically encompassing something you've observed going back to this idea of the

00:16:13.400 commonplace book i love this idea so it started in the renaissance and people would just basically

00:16:18.140 have a notebook a little notebook that they would just jot down notes and quotations from books in it

00:16:23.960 that they were reading and sometimes you put things under categories i think like guys like john

00:16:29.320 lock he had an index in his commonplace book to add some organization so it's kind of like a bullet

00:16:35.040 journal but the fact that you gave these notes a new organization from the book you just read you

00:16:40.560 know mixing different quotes and sources together that was the point really because it'd help you see

00:16:44.720 new connections and come up with new ideas and i think people today they've picked up on this idea and

00:16:49.700 they say well you know i can just use my digital devices to create a commonplace book but you're a big

00:16:55.480 proponent of keeping an actual physical commonplace book why is that i am i mean i i certainly would

00:17:02.520 use my if i'm out in the street and i have a thought and i want to record it i certainly would

00:17:07.300 use my phone to record it but i will then go back home and i will transfer it to a written to a book

00:17:13.280 with a pen my view is that writing in the act of writing you absorb something in a completely different

00:17:19.200 in a much more profound way and i think that if you can build up this treasure trove of observations

00:17:25.900 that you've written down it becomes a more valuable thing and from a purely practical level i i have a

00:17:31.480 i'm gonna give you an example i have a commonplace book in my bookcase that i completed in my 20s

00:17:36.400 and i just know that if i put it onto some floppy disk i would have lost it so so you know there is this

00:17:44.120 very practical advantage of pen and paper not only is it a better way of recording in terms of

00:17:48.540 absorbing the information and seeing things on the same page and going back over old pages and

00:17:54.300 you know i see this book looking at me on the shelf and i think i must look at it again and i do bring

00:17:58.080 it bring it down occasionally so for me it's what i prefer doing there are of course advantages of

00:18:02.400 technology but i think the disadvantages outweigh the advantages at least for me yeah i've had that

00:18:07.280 same experience as you i have a commonplace book that i had from my 20s where i write down quotations

00:18:12.100 and just notes and i find it more useful than you know the digital systems i've developed

00:18:18.040 to capture different interesting tidbits i've read on the internet because i feel like when you use

00:18:23.440 these tools on your computer i just like end up capturing everything like oh i'll save this and

00:18:29.080 save this and save this and it becomes so useless and then i forget to check it yeah it's almost too

00:18:33.440 easy to record it i think the act of writing yeah it's a little bit of an effort and so you're a bit

00:18:37.400 more selective about what you record and you also you make more of an effort in recording it and that

00:18:42.160 effort is what really makes it stick and remain something valuable okay so get yourself a common

00:18:47.920 place book get yourself a little notebook could be a moleskin make it fancy if you make the yeah i

00:18:53.160 think you make the experience more enjoyable you'll enjoy doing it more and just write down your

00:18:57.320 observations could be quotes also the writing and drawing it slows your mind to a more reflective

00:19:04.180 rhythm it makes your mind open to ideas in a way that if you just quickly write something with your

00:19:10.060 thumb on an iphone it just isn't the same yeah and so yeah all the stuff you're observing and recording

00:19:15.320 this can be the building blocks of new imagination things you're going to create in your head you also

00:19:21.320 have one more thing to that which is which is the way you read i think is very important

00:19:26.020 well in the renaissance people used to read in a completely different way to the way they read to the

00:19:32.160 way we read now they would read many books at the same time they would write in the margins they would

00:19:36.520 scribble over things they'd underline things they'd they'd read books again and again and we now read

00:19:43.540 books you know like a chapter at the end of the day when our when we're tired and we'll read sequentially

00:19:47.960 one book and then another book and really that what's interesting is when you have a whole lot of

00:19:54.720 books maybe four five six books going on at the same time and one book is a novel one book is a work

00:19:59.820 of science one book is a history book you'll find yourself making connections across those books

00:20:03.800 in the way that they used to in the renaissance and that is another valuable sort of you know element

00:20:09.080 which is connected to commonplace books which is this idea of of connecting the previously unconnected

00:20:14.920 those things that nobody else has thought of together and that's something which was a great

00:20:19.740 source of great fuel for the imagination in history this idea that people could pull from science and from

00:20:25.240 art and from history and from whatever else they're observing and ideas will come from this

00:20:29.920 this kind of you know this this clashing of different disciplines and different observations

00:20:34.220 you see that a bit with people who talk about going on reading weeks someone like bill gates will go away

00:20:40.160 for a week with a whole bunch of books and they're on all sorts of different subjects and really what he's

00:20:45.160 doing is replicating what they used to do this idea of reading widely and exploring areas that are not

00:20:50.780 familiar to you and staring at things that you don't fully understand yeah okay so let your reading

00:20:55.060 cross-pollinate exactly yeah that's something i do i'm always reading like multiple books at the same

00:21:01.280 time and i just keep them in different parts of the house so i got a book you know in my living room

00:21:06.120 and i got a book in the office i got a book i'm reading on my phone and they're just i'm in different

00:21:10.940 parts of them and i just read them when it's sort of it's very um higgly piggly i don't really have a

00:21:17.180 rhyme or reason why i pick up and decide that's exactly higgledy piggledy is good that's that's

00:21:21.520 the way you should approach it and going back to technology i i read things on kindle you know i

00:21:25.120 read things on the train and and having that access to lots of different books with a few swipes is an

00:21:30.560 extraordinary power that is you know something wasn't available to our predecessors we're going

00:21:36.240 to take a quick break for your word from our sponsors and now back to the show you talk about in

00:21:43.560 the book the unthinking habit what is that and how does it get in the way of strengthening our

00:21:47.620 imagination the unthinking habit is something which i talk about in relation to life passing us by and

00:21:54.420 habits setting in which begin to limit the way we can think and the way we see things there's a

00:22:01.300 philosopher called william james the brother of henry james who wrote about this and his view was that

00:22:07.480 by the age of 30 most people's minds have encrusted in a way and he says by the age of 30

00:22:13.540 you've more or less set your habits your thoughts your political views and you don't tend to change

00:22:19.820 much after that and this has implications for the imagination so what i'm challenging people to do is

00:22:26.940 to say get out of this unthinking habit get into a place where you can remain young in your mind

00:22:33.140 remain open and embrace the mindset of a beginner because by doing that you get out of the habit of

00:22:39.460 thinking of the same things all the time of thinking this is the way the world works because the world

00:22:42.780 changes around you and if you're not changing with it if you're not learning and observing and seeing

00:22:47.240 what's out there because you've lost that kind of youthful curiosity then you're going to be more

00:22:52.540 limited in what you can achieve so the question is what can you do about this how can you keep this

00:22:57.360 mindset of a beginner through your life and one very interesting fact that i discovered in the book

00:23:02.460 when i was writing the book was this piece of research that showed that the nobel prize winners in

00:23:07.740 science compared to other scientists tended to have a disproportionate interest in the arts so while

00:23:14.000 they were great scientists in their free time in their in the weekends and evenings they were also

00:23:19.860 doing something entirely different they were being artists so you think of someone like alexander

00:23:24.080 fleming who discovered penicillin he was also an artist and a member of the chelsea arts club in

00:23:29.080 london or you think of someone like richard fineman he was also a painter or even einstein was playing

00:23:34.940 the violin or newton was also a poet so what i find fascinating about these people is they were

00:23:40.440 being great you know experienced achievers in their day job they were being beginners in their leisure

00:23:46.440 time and that that beginner's mindset is something i think it's very important was was very important

00:23:51.160 my theory is that that was what made them great they had this ability to keep their minds open to

00:23:57.180 keep themselves humble and curious through their art and then we'll take it back to the science

00:24:02.000 okay so tip there if you want to avoid the unthinking habit as you get into midlife

00:24:06.440 i've been noticing this in myself you know i'm in my 40s now and i'm starting to notice i'm kind of

00:24:11.540 stuck in my ways and i don't it's part of it i like you know because it's it's easy but there's a

00:24:16.440 part like i don't like this it's a very comfortable feeling yeah so one thing you do is just keep trying

00:24:21.740 new things try new hobbies become an artist if you want i know winston churchill he was an artist he

00:24:26.460 picked up painting he was and that's that's another great example of somebody who was you know he was

00:24:30.520 learning something new he was you know while he was being the prime minister he was also

00:24:34.440 struggling with something and i think that's really important another thing i think can help

00:24:38.660 i've been talking to a friend of mine who's he's in his 50s now he talks about how he's starting to

00:24:43.760 enjoy hanging out with younger people like in their 20s he says like there's a mentoring part like i want

00:24:49.200 to i'm in my life phase of my life where i want to become a mentor because like i actually enjoy being

00:24:53.160 around them because they've got fresh ideas it's new it's more exciting to talk with them than to talk

00:24:58.200 with people my age who are more stagnant just talking about getting reading glasses at walgreens

00:25:04.080 i think there's also a feeling in your 50s and i'm speaking of somebody as somebody who's in their

00:25:09.500 50s of the ego sets in there's a kind of need to feel right and if you've got to a position where

00:25:15.620 you're senior in a company you kind of think well i got here because i'm cleverer than everybody else

00:25:19.840 and i made all the right decisions or i made more right decisions than not wrong decisions and so

00:25:23.760 forever forevermore whatever i say is likely to be right and that that that is that is the wrong

00:25:28.960 attitude the correct attitude is to think i got here through a sequence of lucky breaks and i made

00:25:34.060 a few good calls but what was true five years ago may not be true anymore and the thing that i can do

00:25:41.520 to stay in my position and to be good at what i do is to realize that i might be wrong and that i should

00:25:47.100 allow a culture where people can contradict me and where younger people from different backgrounds

00:25:51.600 with fresh perceptions can come along and say actually i disagree with you and actually the

00:25:55.560 world's changed and that's a very difficult thing to take on in your 50s or your 40s even because i

00:26:02.720 think that's not the way we like to think about ourselves okay so to get out of the unthinking

00:26:07.460 habit try new things even as you are in midlife and in your elder years hang out with young people

00:26:13.500 who have got different ideas than you the thing about imagination is you're combining stuff in your head

00:26:18.900 to form something new and then you're testing out in the world to see if it works and sometimes a lot

00:26:24.960 of times ideas don't work so imagination requires some risk and i think that's one reason why people

00:26:30.960 are afraid to be imaginative and or be publicly imaginative so how do you learn to become immune to

00:26:37.760 imaginative risk well i think you i think you learn to be immune from this by detaching your activity

00:26:45.680 from any need to succeed or to be recognized in the outside world as a success we see creativity as

00:26:53.540 something that we embark upon when we think we can do something better than everybody else or something

00:26:59.400 where we can do something that we can get applauded for it but really what i'm saying is your fear of

00:27:06.620 failure will hold you back and you shouldn't be thinking i mean some people think if i can't imagine

00:27:12.160 successfully the better not to imagine at all and that is the wrong attitude because even the most

00:27:16.420 successful people in the creative worlds failed a lot there's a saying by w h auden the the english

00:27:22.660 poet that good poets write more bad poems than bad poets and i think that's true i think if you think of

00:27:28.420 anyone who one admires greatly as an artist they have had plenty of failures if you think of david bowie or

00:27:36.180 you know wordsworth they they bowie wrote some terrible music and wordsworth wrote some terrible

00:27:41.840 poems but in the act of doing those works they also came up with great things and so we have to think

00:27:48.360 of ourselves not only as people comfortable with failure but also as thinking of the process of

00:27:55.900 creating is what's important is the act of creativity not the result that makes you alive and brings out

00:28:02.760 the best in you that's what i would say is a different way of looking at things yeah so

00:28:08.100 sometimes i mean a lot of times quantity trumps quality because it's through quantity that you

00:28:14.060 can get to the quality exactly yeah but also not to think about quality necessarily you know do your

00:28:19.880 best but don't don't worry if it doesn't work yeah you know another artist who was prolific but we

00:28:26.480 think everything you did was awesome was bach so bach that guy that guy worked all the time like he

00:28:33.580 was cranking out stuff weekly um but we only remember just a handful of the best works that

00:28:41.280 have stood up over time you know we forgot about the all the other stuff that he churned out that was

00:28:46.300 just you know okay by the way i'd say the same about business if you think of the great entrepreneurs

00:28:51.360 if you think of steve jobs you know between the first computer and the iphone between the mac and

00:28:56.680 the iphone you know you have the g4 cube and you have the apple leaser you know you have these big

00:29:01.760 mistakes but he understood he thought like an artist he understood that these frequent attempts at

00:29:08.360 creating you know you keep going and often you fail but but it's the failures that that are the

00:29:13.780 byproduct of success the failures of the byproduct of success as opposed to things that lead to some

00:29:19.840 terrible you know end game i think another thing going back to this idea that midlife can make it

00:29:25.360 hard to be imaginative not only do you get kind of stuck in your thinking ways but oftentimes by the

00:29:32.380 time you're in midlife let's say you're 40s and 50s you've established a career you've maybe had some

00:29:36.860 success you've spent a lot of time developing a skill set maybe you reach this point where that's not

00:29:42.880 working for you anymore the way it was and you decide i got to do something different but it can be

00:29:48.840 scary to try something different because like wow if i do that then i'm i'm gonna lose this good

00:29:55.680 thing that i i had i mean yeah you said you're in your 50s and you're still in this kind of creative

00:30:00.540 world what have you done to help you get over that imaginative risk in midlife well i wrote this book

00:30:08.240 you know this book was something that was entirely new to me and i didn't know if it was going to work

00:30:12.580 and it was something completely outside of what i've been although i've been working in the creative

00:30:16.960 industries i've been on the business side so to write a book was something that felt very scary

00:30:22.260 and you know the risk of failure the risk of public embarrassment is you know it's something

00:30:27.720 you have to deal with and i'm very glad i did so you just got to do it there's no there's no hacks

00:30:33.140 or tricks you just have to do it you've got to do it and if you do it and you don't succeed you've

00:30:36.920 got to think of it in a different way you've got to have a different mindset there's a quote i make

00:30:40.120 up in the book which is borrowing from eleanor roosevelt who's she said this thing she said do

00:30:45.860 one thing every day that scares you those small things that make us uncomfortable help us build

00:30:50.080 courage to do the work we do and i said in my book do one imaginative thing every day that scares you

00:30:55.740 scribble a short story a drawing an idea to change something around you or you could compose a piece

00:31:00.580 of music because these small imaginative acts will make you uncomfortable and when you venture to

00:31:06.140 retrieve the piece of paper the following morning they'll look ridiculous but you might laugh at

00:31:10.120 yourself and feel some misguided flush of shame but eventually you'll lose your fear your self

00:31:15.460 mockery and your embarrassment and you'll begin to feel comfortable with imaginative risk realizing

00:31:20.560 there's no real risk at all they're just ideas and you start to wonder what was i afraid of and you

00:31:24.640 begin to feel stronger and you realize that by risking yourself imaginatively you will gradually build

00:31:29.720 the courage to do to echo eleanor roosevelt to do the important imaginative work we all need to do

00:31:34.700 so it's really a mindset and it's really a a kind of way of living that i think is so rich and

00:31:40.260 fruitful if you throw yourself into it yeah and it fits in nicely that idea fits in nicely with the

00:31:45.620 idea of the imagination is a muscle like you just have to yeah exercise it's painful it can hurt

00:31:50.820 sometimes exactly it's like working out in the gym it's it's you know it starts off being painful

00:31:54.820 but it gets easier and you get fitter and you get stronger and you feel more alive yeah you have

00:31:59.940 this section about 18th century coffee houses and how social connections can help us increase

00:32:06.620 our imaginations what can we learn from the 18th century coffee house well i have this chapter in

00:32:11.700 the book called talking to strangers and it starts with this idea of me if i go into a coffee shop in

00:32:16.660 london and i observe this you know everyone grabbing their coffees from starbucks and walking off to work

00:32:22.240 and actually right by this coffee shop where i bought the coffee was a sign saying here stood the first

00:32:26.640 london coffee house at the sign of pascal rose's head and pascal rose was this guy this turkish guy

00:32:32.700 who came to london and in 1652 opened the first coffee shop and it's hard to imagine now but the

00:32:38.880 coffee didn't exist and nobody knew what it was but it was an enormous success and it spawned other

00:32:45.700 coffee shops very quickly and then gradually what was just a coffee shack became a coffee shop with a

00:32:50.760 with big wooden rooms wooden floors and sofas and it really led to the explosion of thought

00:32:58.440 and energy in london it was an amazing period and what it did really was it had a double effect of

00:33:05.060 caffeine energizing and sharpening people's minds because until then they were drinking warm beer most

00:33:10.720 of the time and they were mostly drunk so in london suddenly everyone was super alert and sharp and then

00:33:15.300 the other thing that it engendered was this mingling of people which had never happened before because

00:33:19.640 all thought and all debate took place within academic institutions of the church so suddenly

00:33:25.100 you had these kind of democratic gatherings of people from all sorts of different backgrounds you

00:33:30.920 had great scientists you had just regular people coming in and they would all talk and share ideas

00:33:36.340 and it attracted you know people like isaac newton and benjamin franklin it led to the birth of the

00:33:42.460 insurance market and the finance the city of london and lloyd's and the first newspapers and

00:33:48.360 magazines and really what this this represents is something that has been repeated in different

00:33:54.520 ways across history which is this idea of the cluster this idea of people coming together and

00:33:58.880 having ideas which they wouldn't have sitting on their own and you see it with the salons of the

00:34:04.440 french enlightenment you see it with the harlem renaissance you see it in the medieval times of

00:34:09.340 the baghdad house of wisdom and really what i'm saying in the chapter called talking to strangers is

00:34:14.980 find ways of recreating the coffee shops find ways of mingling with people that you may not agree with

00:34:22.820 but they will sharpen you and you sharpen them and it's in this in these gatherings that interesting

00:34:28.260 things happen i mean silicon valley is another great example of that do you think you can replicate

00:34:33.140 this on the internet like some people would say well x.com is the coffee shop what do you think about

00:34:38.520 i think it has certain advantages i think it's rather like you know i don't want to sound like

00:34:44.380 a luddike but it's rather like the writing in a commonplace book i do believe that actually physical

00:34:49.520 encounters have a value to them that digital encounters don't have i think i i think they

00:34:54.380 both have value i think the digital world of bringing people together with common interests is incredibly

00:34:59.940 powerful and i don't think twitter is a particularly good example that it has been there have been good

00:35:05.200 things about it but certainly scholars researchers can mingle in ways that they couldn't do before

00:35:11.140 using the internet so i definitely think it has an advantage but i wouldn't discount the physical

00:35:15.480 environment and say that the virtual environment does the job in its entirety yeah i'd agree with that

00:35:21.300 i've my experience i you know i've been on the internet and i i like rubbing digital shoulders with

00:35:26.380 people but there's something about being with a group of people in person the dynamic is completely

00:35:32.200 different i feel something about it it leaves more of an impression on me when i'm with people in

00:35:36.980 person and then the ideas i don't know you everyone's had that experience after you had like

00:35:41.420 this great conversation with a bunch of different people you just feel enlivened and it gets you

00:35:45.520 thinking about different things that doesn't happen so much after i spend a few minutes on x it's harder

00:35:52.540 i think and i think people need to connect in the room in order to open up in order to relax in a way

00:35:59.340 and i think the other thing to remember is or to rather to point out is that many great geniuses

00:36:05.480 in history we think of as individual geniuses you think of shakespeare or charles darwin or

00:36:11.720 virginia wolf to take three british examples they were geniuses but they were surrounded by other

00:36:19.320 brilliant people and it was in this atmosphere of what i would call mild competitiveness that really

00:36:25.360 their greatness was drawn out and without that cluster of people around them i'm not sure they

00:36:31.300 would have achieved what they did achieve in the end yeah you see that with c.s lewis and tolkien

00:36:36.320 the inklings yes and you see it with the homebrew computer club of the 1970s with you know steve

00:36:42.640 wozniak and you know they were collaborators but they were also trying to impress each other and that's

00:36:47.940 a very powerful powerful force in making progress yeah well another place we see that was in america

00:36:54.900 in concord with the transcendentalists like emerson yes yes fuller they were friends and they were you

00:37:02.000 know exchanging ideas but they're also kind of competing against each other there was a little

00:37:05.640 bit of friendly rivalry there yeah you've got to be on your you've got to be on your metal when you're

00:37:09.700 in the room with those people yeah how are you doing that how are you incorporating stranger talk

00:37:15.340 these days are you going into starbucks and saying hey what's going on what's the news i tried that it

00:37:21.840 didn't really work i think people look at you weirdly if you try and strike up a conversation

00:37:24.880 in starbucks these days i think that the day of the coffee shop being a gathering of of people is gone

00:37:29.780 i think the world's too big i think there's too much suspicion i think in a way that doesn't work

00:37:35.400 quite and it's got to be more organized than that these days i do it through through my social life

00:37:40.700 i guess mostly through having interesting friends and trying to bring people together at dinners and

00:37:45.260 parties who may not agree with each other but i think this idea of agreeing and disagreeing is

00:37:49.980 something else that that has gone a little bit wrong possibly where if you disagree with somebody

00:37:55.040 then an awkwardness might set in whereas i think disagreeing with somebody is actually much more

00:37:59.840 interesting than agreeing with somebody i'd much rather sit next to somebody i don't know who i

00:38:02.600 disagreed with than i agreed i think how interesting and let me see if maybe check my assumptions that's

00:38:07.800 something which you know social media has possibly eroded a little yeah we atrophied that skill

00:38:14.220 i think so yeah yeah i just had an idea of what you can do to incorporate these you know getting

00:38:19.720 together in person with strangers to bounce off ideas and increase your imagination we had this guy

00:38:24.300 on the podcast named nick gray and he wrote a book called the two-hour cocktail party and he talks

00:38:30.300 about you know just like this thing you can do it's a two-hour cocktail party you invite different

00:38:35.140 people and it's just two hours has like a very short time limit it doesn't take much work

00:38:39.900 and it's first off people just love socializing but you know he talks about that lots of different

00:38:45.220 cool things have sprung up from these two-hour cocktail parties businesses have been formed and

00:38:50.880 you know relationships have been formed you know non-profits etc so that's another we'll link to that

00:38:56.240 show in the show notes the two-hour cocktail party yeah great i'd like to listen to it so another

00:39:00.940 thing you talk about something you do to strengthen your imagination muscle that called to me

00:39:04.460 was walking outside in nature how can that help our imagination well walking is i think the best

00:39:11.540 form of exercise when it comes to the imagination it's the most natural physical activity and hence

00:39:16.800 the most kind of beneficial to the imagination i mean it improves blood flow and it stimulates creative

00:39:21.860 thinking but it's not kind of making us busy by movement it's not running and jogging and playing

00:39:27.600 sport they're all kind of exerting us to the point where we can't really think at the same time so

00:39:32.820 it's this kind of equilibrium of being and doing that i like about walking you know you're walking

00:39:38.500 it's a natural rhythm but you're not distracted by it and it kind of releases you from the burden of

00:39:45.140 the self it kind of it's this kind of declutching thing where you're removed the kind of immediacy of

00:39:50.800 your existence and i find walking is when i have the best ideas you know often it's a bit of a time into

00:39:58.280 a walk it could be half an hour 40 minutes into a walk and then things things emerge you know things

00:40:03.380 get jogged into view as you keep walking no i have that experience too and i lots of great philosophers

00:40:09.580 have had that same idea of aristotle yeah his fathers are called peripatetics because they just

00:40:14.920 walked around everywhere nietzsche so all the truly great thoughts are conceived while walking

00:40:19.560 exactly kicker garden another big walker kant i guess the town set their clocks to his daily walking

00:40:25.580 schedule so yeah charles dickens yeah and darwin darwin is another one like he would you know get

00:40:32.420 up in the morning and he'd do his work and then for the rest of the day he'd just go for a walk and

00:40:37.040 just hang out yeah i'd write about i write a lot about wordsworth and his walking in the book and

00:40:41.760 somebody came to see him and his sister was there and she said and they said where is he and he said he's

00:40:45.320 out he's easy to study she said he's out he's out walking his studies in the outdoor

00:40:49.520 you know and this idea of walking as being work in terms of creativity i think is um is is very

00:40:56.240 important and they walk for miles you know what words of the courage would walk for hundreds of

00:41:00.520 miles and they'd walk for 20 miles to post a letter they had this completely different approach to

00:41:05.300 walking yeah they weren't just walking around the block i think people in the 21st century think oh

00:41:09.840 let's go for a 15 minute walk around the block which you know look that that has some benefits like go do

00:41:15.100 that but these guys were on a whole different level they were walking hours hours i mean wordsworth's

00:41:21.420 friend thomas de quincey estimated that by middle age the wordsworth walked 180 000 miles which um you

00:41:28.520 know that's a lot yeah and they weren't listening to their their podcast they were just thinking they

00:41:34.540 were just alone with their thoughts exactly it was a way of life which um we can't all spend our whole

00:41:40.240 time walking we have other things to do but if we can build walking into our lives in some form it's

00:41:45.060 very valuable for the imagination yeah well albert this has been a great conversation uh where can

00:41:49.860 people go to learn more about the book and your work they can go to my website i've got a reading

00:41:53.760 list i've got notes on my book but the book is really the kernel of everything that i've got to say

00:41:57.940 on the subject so i hope people will read it and enjoy it well albert reed thanks for your time it's

00:42:02.840 been a pleasure thank you great pleasure talking to you my guest today was albert reed he's the author of the

00:42:08.280 book the imagination muscle it's available on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere you can find

00:42:12.440 more information about his work at his website albert reed.com also check out our show notes at

00:42:16.920 aom.is imagination where you find links to resources we delve deeper into this topic

00:42:21.320 well that wraps up another edition of the aom podcast make sure to check out our website at

00:42:32.680 artofmanliness.com where you find our podcast archives as well as thousands of articles that we've

00:42:36.620 written over the years about pretty much anything you think of and if you haven't done so already

00:42:40.080 i'd appreciate it if you take one minute to get reading up a podcast or spotify it helps out a lot

00:42:43.680 and if you've done that already thank you please consider sharing the show with a friend or family

00:42:47.280 member if you think about something out of it as always thank you for the continued support until

00:42:51.200 next time it's brett mckay reminding you to listen to the aom podcast or put what you've heard into action

00:42:55.740 you

00:43:08.240 you

The Art of Manliness - October 02, 2024

The Imagination Muscle — Where Good Ideas Come From (And How to Have More of Them)

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