Creativity, Progress, and Commitment

Motivation is the activation or energization of goal-oriented behavior.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motivation
I think that motivation is extra-ordinarily important as it is largely a frame of mind. If we view the tasks ahead of us as challenges and puzzles, we may actually begin to enjoy the work that we do. More on this in the linked article on motivation. 


The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man. - George Bernard Shaw 
A great example of this is Steve Jobs who envisioned how the computer world should ought to function and went for it. (Even though I understand he is far from a pleasure to work with.)

Creativity story: During my trip to San Diego to learn more about the different methods of education at UCSD, I had the grand opportunity to photograph alongside Alice Fan, who has hundreds upon hundreds of followers on the image sharing website flickr.com. 

After the shoot, it was brought to my attention by Stephanie Liu who was also in attendance that I should take more creative photographs. I thought that this was a particularly interesting revelation as I have become so accustomed to shooting 'commercial' photographs for my clients. This mentality has limited my creative expression because I have always been so concerned about what the clients will think. In this regard, I feel that Stephanie pointed out something that I would have not realized otherwise, and really got me thinking of how I was initially interested in photography - for the art of it, and not to just flatter people. Thank you immensely for pointing that out!

View some of Alice's incredibly creative and consistently impressive photos here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/fliceaan

This is a particularly interesting article that I believe everyone should read: 

http://www.lifehack.org/articles/productivity/the-science-of-motivation.html

Especially the link to the TED video that I had watched prior, here: 

http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation.html

explaining how rewards and the threat of punishment does NOT work in today's society , and in fact hinders our productivity. Both the article and video explain why. 

'Commitment is a freely chosen obligation'. It is also 'larger than the self': "The committed activist creates a better world not for him- or herself but for the generations to come."


http://www.lifehack.org/articles/lifestyle/9856.html


I also feel that these posts may be somewhat disorganized to some degree, and I can help remedy that situation by collecting and categorizing my different portions of my different posts so that people can go to one definitive source of my collective knowledge and things that I have written about so far in order to learn more more effectively and collaboratively! 


I will soon create a google document and invite those that have expressed interest. 


I'm also working on a definitive list of sites that everyone should know about such as Pipl, Bit.ly, Tokbox, Reddit, Stumbleupon, etc... Let me know if you have any thoughts on this! 

"A ship in port is safe...but that is not what ships are made for"

Grace Murray Hopper

Enjoy, and sorry this post was so rushed, I've had a rather eventful past few days. More to come tomorrow and later as my thoughts come together, will have more than just surface-level content as well. I am debating using the content that I begun publishing for myself since 09-09-09, and will share more thoughts on that later as well. 


Todo:
Learn how to format blogs and write more comprehensively.