Skip to main content

When we don't see the sun, we see other stars


What are your motivations for creativity?

- I want to make a change.
- It makes me happy! It is a need of my mind.

How to be creative for a thing?

There are two steps:
- See the thing as every people see it
- Think about a new different thing from it

How to think about a new different thing?

There are two ways:
- Forget all things you have already known.
- A whack on the side of your head. ;)

This was what I have learned from the following great book:

source: Amazon.com
Well! A physical whack on the side of your head is needed sometimes but the meaning behind is that you need to break these 9 following locks on your mind. Remove them!

The lock #1: "The correct answer"

We all learn from schools that there is only one correct answer to a question. For example, a proposition is only true or false in Algebra. In reality, there are always some answers to a question basing on a point of view. For example, number 6 becomes number 9 if you look it in the opposite.

The lock #2: "That is not logic"

There are two kinds of thoughts: soft thinking and hard thinking. Soft thinking focuses on finding a relationship among things. On the other hand, hard thinking focuses on the differences between things. The metaphor is a technique of soft thinking which needed for creativity.

The lock #3: "Follow the rules"

Sometimes, creativity is not always a contribution but a damage. However, in order to create a new model, we need to break an old model. Break the rules!

The lock #4: "Be realistic"

Answering the question "if...then what happens?" is useful somehow. For example:

- Imagine if what other people (your inspirational ones) will do in your situation. E.g: I sometimes say to myself when I face an issue: "What will Mr. A do in this situation?"

- Imagine if you are what you think. E.g: Imagine you are a paper; what are your characteristics to make you more convenient for users?

- Imagine an idea which is obviously not realistic. According to this idea, you can come up with a better realistic one. E.g: original idea: the Government will give money for whom put trash into trash bins. Improved idea: every time people put trash into trash bins, they will receive a random fun from the trash bins.

The lock #5: "Play is frivolous"

"If necessity is the mother of invention, then play is its father". There is no doubt about it!

The lock #6: "That is not in my field"

Specialization is necessary in most of the cases; however, bringing a knowledge from a field to another field is really useful as well.

The lock #7: "Don't be silly"

Actually, a comedian is smart. He/she always thinks in different ways. It is like a movement of a car, sometimes it needs to go back in order to go straight.

The lock #8: "Avoid ambiguity"

People avoid ambiguity because it results in the misunderstanding in communication. However, just keep listening to your dreams and playing with it.

The lock #9: "Mistakes are wrong"

In most of the case, a mistake can result in a very bad situation. However, a mistake sometimes helps you come up with some new approaches.

Reference:
[1]. Roger von Oech, A Whack On the Side of the Head

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Only allow input number value with autoNumeric.js

autoNumeric is a jQuery plugin that automatically formats currency and numbers as you type on form inputs. I used autoNumeric 1.9.21 for demo code. 1. Dowload autoNumeric.js file from  https://github.com/BobKnothe/autoNumeric 2. Import to project <script src="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.11.0/jquery.min.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="js/autoNumeric.js"></script> 3. Define a function to use it <script type="text/javascript"> /* only number is accepted */ function txtNumberOnly_Mask() { var inputOrgNumber = $("#numberTxt"); inputOrgNumber.each(function() { $(this).autoNumeric({ aSep : '', aDec: '.', vMin : '0.00' }); }); } </script> 4. Call the function by event <form> <input type="text" value="" id="numberTxt"/>(only number) </form> <script ty...
Post a Comment
Read more

How to apply Lean - Kanban for your business

This is the topic of Scrum Breakfast meetup this time, speaker: Ms. Phuong Bui - Technical Project Manager of YOOSE Pte. Ltd. http://www.meetup.com/Scrum-Breakfast-Vietnam-Agile-and-Scrum-Meetup/events/230313727/ Lean comes from Lean manufacturing is a method that focuses on elimination of wastes. In other words, this is a set of principles for archiving the quality, speed and customer alignment. The first time I knew about the term "Lean" is  from the book Software Craftsmanship . Sandro recommends if we want to transform our pet projects into a real business, we should get familiar with Lean Startup concepts. In this talk, Ms. Phuong pointed out some major wastes includes information (ex: unclear requirements), processes (ex: waiting), physical environment and people. Knowing what the problems should be the best way to eliminate them. The difference between  Single item flow and Batch processing is the second main point; and it is the Lean's idea. Batch pr...
Post a Comment
Read more

The HelloWorld example of JSF 2.2 with Myfaces

I just did by myself create a very simple app "HelloWorld" of JSF 2.2 with a concrete implementation Myfaces that we can use it later on for our further JSF trying out. I attached the source code link at the end part. Just follow these steps below: 1. Create a Maven project in Eclipse (Kepler) with a simple Java web application archetype "maven-archetype-webapp". Maven should be the best choice for managing the dependencies , so far. JSF is a web framework that is the reason why I chose the mentioned archetype for my example. 2. Import dependencies for JSF implementation - Myfaces (v2.2.10) into file pom.xml . The following code that is easy to find from  http://mvnrepository.com/  with key words "myfaces". <dependency> <groupId>org.apache.myfaces.core</groupId> <artifactId>myfaces-api</artifactId> <version>2.2.10</version> </dependency> <dependency> <groupId>org.apache.myfaces.core<...
Post a Comment
Read more

Applying pipeline “tensorflow_embedding” of Rasa NLU

According to this nice article , there was a new pipeline released using a different approach from the standard one ( spacy_sklearn ). I wanted to give it a try to see whether it can help with improving bot’s accuracy. After applying done, I gave an evaluation of “tensorflow_embedding”. It seemed to work better a bit. For example, I defined intents “greet” and “goodbye” with some following messages in my training data. ## intent:greet - Hey! How are you? - Hi! How can I help you? - Good to see you! - Nice to see you! - Hi - Hello - Hi there ## intent:goodbye - Bye - Bye Bye - See you later - Take care - Peace In order to play around with Rasa NLU, I created a project here . You can have a look at this change from this pull request . Yay! When I entered message “hi bot”, then bot with “tensorflow_embedding” could detect intent “greet” with better confidence scores rather than bot with “spacy_sklearn”. The following are responses after executing curl -X POST loc...
Post a Comment
Read more

Sharing a virtualenv across several Python projects using Pipenv

There is a standard library for all projects in Python. However, several projects don’t always have the same dependencies all the time. That is where virtual environments come to play. You can follow this official document to use two separated tools  virtualenv and pip to  fulfill that need. My preferred alternative is to use pipenv . Pipenv is easy to use and convenient. The following are my steps to make a shared virtualenv for my all projects which requires the same dependencies. Step 1. Create an isolated virtualenv. python -m venv my-shared-env Step 2. Create a symbolic link to the created virtualenv. cd project_1 ln -s ~/.local/share/virtualenvs/my-shared-env .venv I have encountered the following issue at step 1. FileNotFoundError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: '{my_project_path}/.venv/bin/pip': '{my_project_path}/.venv/bin/pip' The root cause was I tried to create virtualenv by running pipenv install and renaming the generated virtualenv to ...
Post a Comment
Read more