Creative Practice
Grow as a person by tackling increasingly complex problems in a virtuous cycle.
we can’t become effective World Creators without also becoming effective Artist-Poet-Scientists and Comprehensive Sensemakers. We need all three capabilities working together. We can learn about each of these things separately by taking classes or reading about them, but integrating them is best achieved by actively participating in the world around us, growing ourselves as we help improve some small part of the world.
We are born artists, comprehensivists and creators, but somewhere along the line—perhaps though education or watching the people around us—those capabilities are set aside and we stop developing them.
“A creative process creates the object of the creation, but also simultaneously gives the creator a chance to evolve and grow out of their current selves. In other words not only the creation, but also the creator must be created for a process to be truly creative. The more creative the process is the more the creator has to gain and grow from it.” — Jiro Kawakita
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Developing your Personal Universe is not something you complete before you can go out in the world and make a difference. It is part of a cyclical process that includes going out and making a difference. As Daniel Schmachtenberger points out, “all complex adaptive systems [e.g. humans] can be defined by closed loop processing of sensory input (sentience), information processing (intelligence), and actuator output (agency)…where the effects of actions on the world can in turn be sensed, creating closed loop feedback and learning. […] Our conscious development can and should be informed by this evolutionary dynamic.”
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We naturally follow a process for learning that uses all our broad capacities (feeling, thinking, acting) in a repeating cycle. I’ve seen it referred to as the “action learning cycle”, an OODA loop, and Buckminster Fuller even called it teleology, which implies that it’s fundamental to our purpose as humans. To be clear, this is a process of both conscious and unconscious learning; our implicit learning system has been doing this since before we were born, but we can also consciously follow the process with intention, and direct our learning.
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The elements of the process are sensing, thinking, designing and acting. We sense the world around us, do our best to process the information, decide what we need to do, then act on that decision. Our actions change the world is some large or small way, and we start the cycle again by sensing the changes we’ve created.
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These four steps in the process go by myriad names. in the action learning cycle, they’re observe, think/reflect, design, and implement. In an OODA loop, they’re observe, orient, decide and act.
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Developing your personal universe in the context of real-world problems is a great way to get direct feedback about how accurate your ideas are, meaning how well they track with reality.
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By doing this, you are participating in the great spiral of progress that is human history. For thousands of generations, our ancestors have been working to create a better world for themselves, their family, their community. We have the opportunity to participate at the global level and with more power to create change than at any other time in history. If we do it well, we will honor the efforts of those who came before us.
Therefore:
Grow yourself by creatively tackling problems in the world; nurture a reinforcing cyclical process where both you and the world develop together.
Work to create a better world according to your best current capabilities, and find the balance between work that is too difficult or too easy so you can enter the flow state as much as possible—Yours To Do. Don’t wait for anyone else to invite you to make a difference: choose to participate—Design Initiative—and find your own Work That Needs Doing