There was once a famous story about innovation. 1836 On a voyage in the Indian Ocean, young Charles Darwin discovered a phenomenon: a large number of marine life often lives in a coral reef, but there are far fewer species living on a small piece of land near the coral reef or in the sea outside the coral reef.
At that time, young Darwin did not discover the mystery behind this phenomenon quickly, but he began to think about an inspiration, and it was this inspiration that laid the foundation for his masterpiece The Origin of Species 30 years later.
For Darwin, his great ideas were born here. After decades of cultivation, the flower of creativity has finally blossomed.
It can be seen that innovation is not the patent of extremely smart people, nor is it an instant inspiration in the brain of a genius, but the result of grasping an inspiration, sorting out information and thinking deeply.
American advertising master James said in his book The Generation of Creativity:
"The so-called creativity is just to recombine the original elements."
As the saying goes, "There is nothing new under the sun." Nowadays, many best-selling cartoons and well-received movies are re-created according to the ancient myth Shan Hai Jing and the Western Bible, and become a generation of screen classics, such as a Chinese Odyssey and ghost stories, which we never forget.
In the creative writing class, someone suggested that there was no material to write. The teacher said: "If there is no material to write, you can start with childhood stories, or restate myths and legends, or write a new history." In the market, there are more and more best-selling books, that is, historical interpretation and legend continuation.
Therefore, creative people should be deeply immersed in the theme to find, and have more information and old elements, so that the greater the chance of producing good ideas.
So how to collect more information and elements? With so much information collected, how to use it? When will the goddess of inspiration come to mind?
In How to Organize Information Effectively, Hiroshi Kono, the founder of Japan's famous information collation and wisdom creation method, said this:
"In the era of information explosion, you need a notebook to find the original flavor of independent thinking."
He made it himself. Kono Xuanzhi records "log)= of life = lifelog" in his notebook every day, recording his actions and thoughts, what he did, what he ate and what he thought, and almost completely recording his life on the next day.
In his notes, you can see: the minutes of the meeting a month ago, the business plan two weeks ago, the newspaper clippings a week ago, the feelings after reading it three days ago, the business cards and conversations of the people you met yesterday. These have become the soft material for his later introduction of products, and the feeling after reading them has also become the talk material for chatting with a new friend.
Kono always feels that there is a sense of existence only after recording.
Rereading his notes, he can look back at himself, his childish words, find more room for improvement, see today's maturity, see personal growth and see a sense of accomplishment. By recording 108' s 108' s notebook notes, Hiroshi Ono constantly tapped inspiration from them, realized a lot of knowledge production, and edited his own methods and feelings in this process into a book to share with creative people who could not get inspiration.
He said: "Creative generation, excerpts and comments are carried out alternately, which deepens memory understanding and makes original thinking blossom everywhere."
Isn't this the most effective way to collect information that most of us who suffer from material shortage urgently need?
However, such a practical creative guide is not complicated. This book has a clear structure and strict logic. Through my own experience and popular language, I focus on three aspects: sorting out rules, how to accumulate them, and how to generate ideas. Next, I will introduce you to the steps of generating original content:
1, three rules for organizing information with notes:
△ unification
What is unification? Just record whatever you want, regardless of category, and put all the information you want to record into this book.
Creativity at work, books read, epiphany, newspapers, magazines, other people's messages, letters, postcards, promised meetings, training records, printed e-mails, movie records, personal diaries, used bills, etc ... all these are recorded in notebooks.
You might say, with so much information, I want to sort it out. Actually, no.
Putting all the information in a notebook is like packing a child's toy box. You will definitely find the information you want. We don't have to sort out the classification deliberately, because it is easy to consume time and energy. According to some simple ways, we can easily record it and look for it with peace of mind. The key is to be able to persist.
So how can we make information easy to find? We can pinpoint its location when necessary? This requires our second principle:
△ time series:
Add date labels and record them in chronological order. In other words, use the notebook sequentially from the beginning.
Here is a very useful way: 6-bit date recording.
Two digits after the year+two digits after the month+two digits after the date, a total of six. For example:171008 = 201710/October 8th.
According to the author, he recorded 10 years in this way, and there has never been an unclear recording time. If you record information in your notebook many times a day, you can know it through the context of the content even without adding a 6-digit tag. He gave a small example:
130708 visiting card
130709 book review "the first universal suffrage and election poster"
1307 10 Asahi shimbun reported "predicting the seats of all parties in the Senate election"
1307 1 1 the process of a party and the business cards received.
1307 12 Essays on the French Revolution.
I may not remember why I recorded these bits and pieces of information at that time, but by arranging myself in chronological order, I can make clear the relationship between the materials. In the above information, when he later turned to this page of notes, he could remember that when the "Senate election in July 20 13" approached, he became interested in books on election history and political thought history and read a lot.
With records, the key to reading and extracting information in the future is to organize the index, so we have a third principle:
△ Index:
The so-called index is not the information itself, but a clue to find information. If when we are looking for a piece of information, there is "XX note on the page of 1 Volume 6' 130227'", the materials or sporadic impressions that come to mind will become clearer and clearer.
We can make a handwritten directory for each volume of notes after the end and edit important information to the home page. The process of handwriting is also a process of consolidating and deepening memory, so we can browse the directory at will in the future search process.
You can also label instead of the catalogue, and write the classification where you label.
At the same time, it is also a good choice to paint the incision.
If you want to have your own database after 10 years, it is a good choice to find index data on the computer. Here, the author suggests using the method of notebook code-date-search mark-entry title to continuously improve our notebook database, so that it will be very convenient to find it in the future.
2. How to accumulate: skills of writing and cutting and pasting
△ letter shorthand:
Writing it down with Roman initials can speed up our recording. Of course, not all information is abbreviated, but what we often use is abbreviated. For example: place names, names, etc.
△ Symbolization of content:
We can also use symbolic simplicity instead of what we often write, including high-frequency words in interview records and reading notes.
R: reading
M: Movies.
T: TV
Meeting: Meeting
P: plan
Element: material
A: Ideas.
E: diet
……
You can also create some text symbols that only you can understand, so that when you look through your notebook, there may be a small surprise with a smile.
△ Clever use of separation line:
If you don't want to write down the six-digit date repeatedly, you can divide the content into blocks with different dividing lines, so that you can understand the difference between the upper and lower content when reading.
△ reuse "super prime location":
Generally speaking, nothing is recorded on the first and last pages of a notebook, and the author Xiao Ye declared it a "holiday resort". Why do you say that?
Because he will put the "baby" that makes people feel happy on it, put up pictures of children playing, thank-you letters from fans and so on. When you open your notebook and see these contents, you will feel happy and relaxed. An unintentional glance may change your mood of writing down key information at this time and make you more motivated.
△ Use newspaper clippings, waist seals and souvenirs:
The content of news is generally summarized in the first paragraph, and we only need to cut and paste the core part when cutting and pasting;
The waistcoat of a book is often a summary of the author, the main contents of the book and the reasons for recommending reading, which is also a place that we easily ignore. If we cut and paste them, we will suddenly remember the contents and the most wonderful places in the book when we read them later, so don't throw them away easily.
Some souvenirs can be a magic weapon for our time memory, such as coasters in coffee shops, shopping receipts and even a leaflet. If they can arouse your thoughts, they can all be important memory clues in your notebook.
Imagine opening your notebook one day and recalling a moment ten years ago when you were thinking vividly about your work or life. This is a great thing, and it may become a part of your future creativity.
3. How to make it: the skill of using materials flexibly.
In fact, there are five steps in the process of getting ideas, combining the author and American creative master James:
Step 1: Collect-accumulate the knowledge of trying and researching topics.
Step 2: Chew-read, think back and think deeply about the accumulated information.
The third step: fermentation-leave the subject and think at the subconscious level.
Step 4: Epiphany-the generation of creativity, suddenly exclaiming "I see" and "I found it"
Step 5: concretization-turning ideas into results
First of all, but for the collection, you don't want to write, but you want to write. Even if you feel that your point of view is not wonderful enough when writing notes, it is not necessarily a bad thing.
The author mentioned that one day he read a report on the related problems of the US military base in Okinawa in the newspaper and was deeply impressed. He posted the report on his notebook and wrote down his thoughts directly: "It's really outrageous to send troops to Okinawa all the time."
As soon as he started writing, he couldn't help feeling that the idea was meaningless. People can make such comments everywhere. What is really meaningful should be thinking: "How to solve it?"
He wrote: "so many people think it is unfair, why does the government turn a blind eye?" If we want to undertake the obligation fairly and station troops on the street where we live, can we accept it? " "How has the military balance in the Far East been maintained so far in history?"
In this way, writing and writing, he triggered new thinking and in-depth research, which provided material for his later articles.
Therefore, not thinking before writing, but thinking for writing. In this way, we don't worry about having no source of material at all, but we can only blame ourselves for thinking too little on weekdays.
Secondly, regarding chewing, Kono Xuanzhi put forward a viewpoint: aimless rereading.
How to reread without purpose? In fact, it was very difficult at first. However, we can pick up the old notebook when we are bored, and turn it around aimlessly, preferably from the front to the back, as far as possible away from what we care about, and you will find something unexpected.
At this point, the information has entered the subconscious of the brain, and then it is related to our work, and it is very likely that we will find some perspectives that we have never thought of.
Through notes, we can get in touch with the past thoughts, shake the present world outlook and reread the dialogue between notes and our past selves, so that our long-standing problem consciousness will surface and further deepen our thinking.
In addition, we should take the initiative to compare and analyze the content of the same theme. Only in this way can we find new clues and perspectives, make the combination of creativity more possible and expand the breadth of thinking.
Finally, for all the information, how to combine the existing information to form creativity? The author Okino proposed three methods: card reorganization, information transplantation, copying and collage.
△ card reorganization
In the process of rereading your notes, sort out the information on the same topic, about 80 words, each card corresponds to a message, the back is blank, and then spread out in a big space like a playing card. You will reread what attracts your attention, and you will find unexpected combinations that you didn't notice before.
△ transplant information
Using large paper, the information recorded in the notebook is transplanted to paper, giving it new connotation. It is suitable for the creation of articles within 10,000 words and the arrangement of thinking about a topic for several months.
In fact, this method can be used with mind mapping. While sorting out the notebook information, sort out the information in your mind, write down the content in detail, and then come back and read it again. You will find that some information is important and you will mark it repeatedly, which may be the material and creative point you can use.
△ Copy and Collage
Like transplantation, if you find handwritten materials troublesome, you can consider copying them and pasting them on a blank piece of paper to sort out all the contents. Soon, you will have a thick stack of copied original material content.
No matter what we have read, experienced or even had an epiphany in our long life, our memory is very limited. How to record these subtle thoughts and inspirations in life and become our inexhaustible source of material and creativity? With such a notebook around us, we can record and think skillfully and have a solid harvest.
Reading notes help us change the way we read, and information sorting helps us change the way we think. Take a notebook with you and record important information. One day, you will find the goddess of inspiration around you.