Time Management for the Creative Person: Right-Brain Strategies for Stopping Procrastination, Getting Control of the Clock and Calendar, and Freeing Up Your Time and Your Life

Creative folks often know all too well that the muse doesn’t always strike when you want it to, or when the deadline for your next brilliant project is creeping up on you like an ill-fitting turtleneck. Originality doesn’t follow a time clock, even when you have to. While conventional time management books offer tons of instruction for using time wisely, they are traditionally organized in a linear fashion, which just isn’t helpful for the right-brain mind. In Time Management for the Creative Person, creativity guru Lee Silber offers real advice for using the strengths of artistic folks—like originality and resourcefulness—to adopt innovative time-saving solutions, such as:

* Learning to say no when your plate is just too full
* How to know when a good job, not a great one, is good enough
* Making “to do” lists that include fun stuff, too—that way you won’t feel overwhelmed by work
* Time-saving techniques around the house that give you more time to get your work done and more time to spend with your loved ones
* The keys to clutter control that will keep your work space and your living space neat
[Read more…]

Creativity Workout: 62 Exercises to Unlock Your Most Creative Ideas

TAP INTO YOUR CREATIVE POTENTIAL

Creativity was once thought to be a talent bestowed upon a lucky few. Today it is understood as a skill that we can all learn, develop and apply. And in today's economy–with information available to everyone and support services outsourced overseas–creativity is the most valuable asset you can possess and the best way to get ahead.
Learn to unlock these abilities with Creativity Workout. In 62 excercises designed by Edward de Bono, the world's leading creativity expert, you'll discover how to tap into your most original thinking. Each exercise is fun and simple and will get you in the creative state of mind necessary to think yourself to success.
You'll learn to:
[Read more…]

Spark: How Creativity Works

How did Richard Ford's cat influence his work as a novelist? HOW is Chuck Close's portraiture driven by his inability to remember faces? What pivotal moment helped Rosanne Cash understand the healing power of the stage?

Creativity is an elusive subject. We enjoy its fruits—movies, novels, paintings, songs—but rarely are we privy to what happens in the creative process. In Spark, Julie Burstein traces the roots of some of the twenty-first century's most influential and creative thinkers, including Joyce Carol Oates, Yo-Yo Ma, David Milch, Isabel Allende, and Joshua Redman. Burstein pulls back the curtain to reveal the sources of these artists' inspiration and the processes that bring their work into being.
[Read more…]

The Cambridge Handbook of Creativity (Cambridge Handbooks in Psychology)

The Cambridge Handbook of Creativity is a comprehensive scholarly handbook on creativity from the most respected psychologists, researchers, and educators. This handbook serves both as a thorough introduction to the field of creativity and as an invaluable reference and current source of important information. It covers such diverse topics as the brain, education, business, and world cultures. The first section, "Basic Concepts," is designed to introduce readers to both the history of and key concepts in the field of creativity. The next section, "Diverse Perspectives of Creativity," contains chapters on the many ways of approaching creativity. Several of these approaches, such as the functional, evolutionary, and neuroscientific approaches, have been invented or greatly reconceptualized in the last decade. The third section, "Contemporary Debates," highlights ongoing topics that still inspire discussion. Finally, the editors summarize and discuss important concepts from the book and look to what lies ahead.

Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention

Creativity is about capturing those moments that make life worth living. The author's objective is to offer an understanding of what leads to these moments, be it the excitement of the artist at the easel or the scientist in the lab, so that knowledge can be used to enrich people's lives. Drawing on 100 interviews with exceptional people, from biologists and physicists to politicians and business leaders, poets and artists, as well as his 30 years of research on the subject, Csikszentmihalyi uses his famous theory to explore the creative process. He discusses such ideas as why creative individuals are often seen as selfish and arrogant, and why the tortured genius is largely a myth. Most important, he clearly explains why creativity needs to be cultivated and is necessary for the future of our country, if not the world.

Art Heals: How Creativity Cures the Soul

The field of art therapy is discovering that artistic expression can be a powerful means of personal transformation and emotional and spiritual healing. In this book, Shaun McNiff, a leader in expressive arts therapy for more than three decades, reflects on a wide spectrum of activities aimed at reviving art's traditional healing function. In chapters ranging from "Liberating Creativity" and "The Practice of Creativity in the Workplace" to "From Shamanism to Art Therapy," he illuminates some of the most progressive views in the rapidly expanding field of art therapy:

   •  The "practice of imagination" as a powerful force for transformation
   •  A challenge to literal-minded psychological interpretations of artworks ("black colors indicate depression") and the principle that even disturbing images have inherent healing properties
   •  The role of the therapist in promoting an environment conducive to free expression and therapeutic energies
   •  The healing effects of group work, with people creating alongside one another and interacting in the studio
   •  "Total expression," combining arts such as movement, storytelling, and drumming with painting and drawing

Walking in this World: The Practical Art of Creativity

Walking in this World presents the next step in Julia Cameron's course of discovering and recovering the creative self. The Artist's Way, a classic cherished by aspiring and working artists who have experienced its benefits, is a groundbreaking book that offered an original and astoundingly effective 12-week course in recovering inherent creativity by minimising life's 'blocks' – self sabotage, jealously, guilt, lack of confidence and other inhibiting forces. Walking in this World shows readers how to inhabit this world with a sense of renewed creativity. Full of valuable new strategies and techniques for breaking through difficult creative ground, this is the 'intermediate-level' of the Artist's Way programme. A profoundly inspired work by the leading authority on the subject of creativity, Walking in this World is destined to become a true classic.