Creative Cliff Illusion, Lessons from a Father, & More

Up to this point this speech has been new stuff, written for this place and this occasion. But every graduation address I've delivered has ended, and this one will, too, with old stuff about my Uncle Alex, my father's kid brother.

A Harvard graduate, Alex Vonnegut was locally useful in Indianapolis as an honest insurance agent. He was also well-read and wise. One thing which Uncle Alex found objectionable about human beings was that they seldom took time out to notice when they were happy.

He himself did his best to acknowledge it when times were sweet. We could be drinking lemonade in the shade of an apple tree in the summertime, and he would interrupt the conversation to say, "If this isn't nice, what is?"

So, I hope that you Adams and Eves in front of me will do the same for the rest of your lives.

When things are going sweetly and peacefully, please pause a moment, and then say out loud: "If this isn't nice, what is?"

"Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure... than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much, because they live in a gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat." - Theodore Roosevelt

We demonstrate that people systematically misunderstand their own creativity across an ideation session. Eight studies found that people expect their creativity to decline across an ideation session when it, in fact, tends to improve or persist (we call this misprediction the creative cliff illusion). These beliefs are consequential because they lead people to undervalue ideation: They exhibit less task persistence and lower creative performance.

There are a lot of tiny beautiful things in life that are easy to miss if you're moving too fast to appreciate them.

The most creative ideas emerge when we give ourselves the freedom and space to sit in the creative mud long enough.

If you are feeling creatively stuck, avoid frustration and allow yourself to persist.

Some of history's greatest success stories come from Type 2 people who dive deeper after an unexpected failure.