Creativity comes from connected thoughts

It’s hard to come up with any truly new ideas today, as most of the best new ideas are merely the combination of existing ideas — but that’s a good thing.

In a recent podcast with Adam Grant, author James Clear (author of Atomic Habits) summarized his work in that way:

I haven’t had someone tell me this before, but you just said that I was good at reframing ideas. But that actually might be the only value that I really provide. I mean, the truth is most things that have been covered many times before. I mean, there’s 8 billion people in the world and there’s 100 billion that have lived before us. All this stuff is very well trod ground. It’s very rare that you come across something genuinely new. But maybe I can give somebody a new angle on it, or maybe I can provide clarity to the thought where if someone says, “oh, you know, like I’d never quite heard it put that way before.”

This reminded of a quote I just head in Steve Jobs’ new book “Make Something Wonderful”.

(side note; his new book is a compilation of quotes are stories about him, assembled by his wife and friends, and is 100% free to download and read in a variety of formats)

Steve said:

Be a creative person. Creativity equals connecting previously unrelated experiences and insights that…