Our creative products represent the best ideas we’ve had so far — the best ideas available to us based on the time and space we’ve allowed for creativity so far.

If we want our creative output to represent the best ideas we’re capable of producing — as opposed to merely the strongest idea we thought of this morning — it’s up to us to operate in a way that allows our best ideas to form. It turns out that their ability to form is dependent both on the way we approach our creative work and on the way we spend our time between periods of focused creative work.

Over the past year, my creative artifacts (e.g., prose, presentations, code) have benefited from that realization. And in large part, I credit that realization (and my specific techniques for acting on it) to the insight offered by these gentlemen:

• Jay Fields: Is Productivity Killing Your Creativity
• John Cleese: On Creativity
• Linds Redding: A Short Lesson in Perspective

Each of these items is worth absorbing in its entirety.