“In order to be open to creativity, one must have the capacity for contructive use of solitude. One must overcome the fear of being alone.” ~Rollo May

Creativity is a nebulous, murky topic that fascinates me endlessly — how does it work? What habits to creative people do that makes them so successful at creativity?

I’ve reflected on my own creative habits, but decided I’d look at the habits that others consider important to their creativity. I picked a handful of creatives, almost at random — there are so many that picking the best would be impossible, so I just picked some that I admire, who came to mind when I thought of the word “creative”.

This was going to be a list of their creative habits … but in reviewing their lists, and my own habits, I found one that stood out. And it stands out if you review the habits and quotes from great creative people in history.

It’s the Most Important Habit when it comes to creativity.

After you read the No. 1 habit, please scroll down and read the No. 2 habit — they might seem contradictory but in my experience, you can’t really hit your creative stride until you find a way to balance both habits.

The No. 1 Creativity Habit

In a word: solitude.

Creativity flourishes in solitude. With quiet, you can hear your thoughts, you can reach deep within yourself, you can focus.

Of course, there are lots of ways to find this solitude. Let’s listen to a few of the creative people I talked to or researched:

Felicia Day – wonderful actress perhaps best known for her awesome awesome work on Dr. Horrible’s Sing-along Blog, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and The Guild.

I was thrilled when she replied to my email asking about her creative habits. One of the things she said: she makes “sure to be creative first thing in the morning, before doing anything for the outside world, really sets the day up for me. It makes it feel that CREATING is my job, not answering emails.”

Ali Edwards – an author, designer, and leading authority on scrapbooking.

I was honored with a response from Ali as well. One of her top habits wasn’t exactly solitude, but is related: “Do nothing. I have a habit of welcoming time away from my creative work. For me this is serious life-recharging time where my only responsibility is to just be Mom & Wife & Me. Doing nothing has a way of synthesizing what is really important in my life and in my work and inspires me beyond measure. When I come back to work I am better equipped to weed out the non-essential stuff and focus on the things I most want to express creatively.”

Chase Jarvis – an award-winning photographer.

Chase also kindly responded with several of his key creativity habits — see more great ones at the bottom of this post. But here’s one that I loved: “Find Quiet. Creativity sometimes washes over me during times of intense focus and craziness of work, but more often I get whacked by the creative stick when I’ve got time in my schedule. And since my schedule is a crazy one and almost always fills up if I’m just “living”, I tend to carve out little retreats for myself. I get some good thinking and re-charge time during vacations, or on airplanes, but the retreats are more focused on thinking about creative problems that I’m wanting to solve. That’s why I intentionally carve time out. I make room for creativity. Intentionally. The best example of what I mean by a retreat is a weekend at my family’s cabin. It’s a 90 minute drive from my house on the coast. There are few distractions. Just a rocky beach and a cabin from the 60’s with wood paneling and shag carpet. I go for walks, hikes, naps. I read. I did get an internet signal put in there to stay connected if I need it. But the gist is QUIET. Let there be space for creativity to fill your brain.”

Maciej Cegłowski – painter, programmer, excellent writer.

Maciej is one of my favorite bloggers, and responded to my email with a classically short answer that to me, embodies a beautiful way to find solitude.

What habit helps his creativity?

Maciej replied: “Running up hills!”

Leo Babauta: OK, I wasn’t going to talk about myself in this post, but I thought I should share some of my previous thoughts.

The best art is created in solitude, for good reason: it’s only when we are alone that we can reach into ourselves and find truth, beauty, soul. Some of the most famous philosophers took daily walks, and it was on these walks that they found their deepest thoughts.

My best writing, and in fact the best of anything I’ve done, was created in solitude.

Just a few of the benefits I’ve found from solitude:

• time for thought
• in being alone, we get to know ourselves
• we face our demons, and deal with them
• space to create
• space to unwind, and find peace
• time to reflect on what we’ve done, and learn from it
• isolation from the influences of other helps us to find our own voice
• quiet helps us to appreciate the smaller things that get lost in the roar

Read more: the lost art of solitude.

The Greats on Solitude

Of course, many other creative people have believed in the habit of solitude. I’ve collected a small but influential sample here. There are many more examples.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart – prolific and influential composer of the Classical era. He composed over 600 works, many acknowledged as pinnacles of symphonic, concertante, chamber, piano, operatic, and choral music. He is among the most enduringly popular of classical composers.

Mozart: “When I am, as it were, completely myself, entirely alone, and of good cheer–say, traveling in a carriage or walking after a good meal or during the night when I cannot sleep–it is on such occasions that my ideas flow best and most abundantly.”

Albert Einstein – theoretical physicist, philosopher and author who is widely regarded as one of the most influential and best known scientists and intellectuals of all time. He is often regarded as the father of modern physics.

Einstein: “On the other hand, although I have a regular work schedule, I take time to go for long walks on the beach so that I can listen to what is going on inside my head. If my work isn’t going well, I lie down in the middle of a workday and gaze at the ceiling while I listen and visualize what goes on in my imagination.”

Franz Kafka – one of the most influential writers of the 20th century. Novelist and writer of short stories whose works came to be regarded as one of the major achievements of 20th century literature.

Kafka: “You need not leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. You need not even listen, simply wait, just learn to become quiet, and still, and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked. It has no choice; it will roll in ecstasy at your feet.”

Nikola Tesla – inventor, one of the most important contributors to the birth of commercial electricity, best known for his many revolutionary developments in the field of electromagnetism.

Tesla: “The mind is sharper and keener in seclusion and uninterrupted solitude. Originality thrives in seclusion free of outside influences beating upon us to cripple the creative mind. Be alone—that is the secret of invention: be alone, that is when ideas are born.”

Joseph Haydn: A life-long resident of Austria, Haydn spent much of his career as a court musician for the wealthy Hungarian aristocratic Esterházy family on their remote estate. Isolated from other composers and trends in music until the later part of his long life, he was, as he put it, “forced to become original”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe – German writer and polymath. Goethe’s works span the fields of poetry, drama, literature, theology, philosophy, and science.

His magnum opus, lauded as one of the peaks of world literature, is the two-part drama Faust.

Goethe: “One can be instructed in society, one is inspired only in solitude.”

Pablo Picasso – Spanish painter best known for co-founding the Cubist movement and for the wide variety of styles embodied in his work. His revolutionary artistic accomplishments brought him universal renown and immense fortunes throughout his life, making him one of the best-known figures in twentieth century art.

Picasso: “Without great solitude no serious work is possible.”

Carl Sandburg – American writer and editor, best known for his poetry.

He won three Pulitzer Prizes, two for his poetry and another for a biography of Abraham Lincoln. H. L. Mencken called Carl Sandburg “indubitably an American in every pulse-beat.”

Sandburg: “One of the greatest necessities in America is to discover creative solitude.”

Thomas Mann – German novelist, short story writer, social critic, philanthropist, essayist, and 1929 Nobel Prize laureate, known for his series of highly symbolic and ironic epic novels and novellas, noted for their insight into the psychology of the artist and the intellectual.

Mann: “Solitude gives birth to the original in us, to beauty unfamiliar and perilous — to poetry.”

The No. 2 Creative Habit

While it might seem contradictory, the No. 2 habit when it comes to nurturing creativity: participation. This can come in many forms, but it requires connecting with others, being inspired by others, reading others, collaborating with others.

But how can you have both solitude and participation? They obviously have to come at different times. Finding the balance is key, of course, but it takes a conscious effort: this time is for solitude, and this time is for participation.

Why are they both important? We need inspiration from without, but we need creation from within.

A couple of the people I interviewed had habits that relate to this:

Chase Jarvis: “Devour Popular Culture. Consuming the works of others inspires me. And it’s not just museums and the “establishment”. I devour magazines, books, street art, performances, music, etc. All things that make me think critically (and whimsically) about the world. You get the picture. Inspiration can come from anywhere.”

Ali Edwards: “Participate. My creative spirit is interested in documenting the wonderful everyday details of our lives. To really get to the heart of the matter I need to be fully participating in my life, in the interactions with my kids and husband and family and friends. If I am just going through the motions or wishing away the present moment for “the next thing” I am missing the blessing of right now. My creativity requires the habit of active participation and daily attention to detail.”

Other Creative Habits

There are other habits than those top two, of course, that can nourish creativity. Some other good ones:

Felicia Day: “When I am most productive I am the most ruthless with my schedule. I will literally make a daily checklist with, “one hour gym”, “30 minutes of internet research,” and “drink 3 glasses of water” on it. For some reason being that disciplined creates a sense of control that I wouldn’t have otherwise, as a self-employed person, and I get the most out of the scheduled hours that I have for writing.”

Ali Edwards: “Take notes. I am a really good note-taker. It’s essential for me to write down my ideas when they come to mind…otherwise, poof, they disappear way too quickly as I move on to the next task (diaper changes, wiping noses, tending to the stuff of life). I use my phone, my computer, and a moleskine notebook to jot down thoughts and ideas and then I move them into Things every week or so.”

Chase Jarvis had a few more:

• Live a creative life everyday. I very much believe in doing creative stuff everyday. For one, I take photos and videos almost everyday. Doesn’t matter the camera. I use my iPhone everyday. Just taking photos keeps me in a creative headspace. Hell, I play with my food and draw and doodle.
• Moderate Expectations. Make it a habit not to judge yourself on your creative output. Sometimes your creativity is on fire. Great news. Other times, it’s not. It’s hard sometimes when you make art in a professional commercial capacity because you’re paid to be ‘ON’, but you’ll save yourself a lot of greif if you make it a habit to be cool to your psyche when your creative mojo isn’t firing on all pistons.
• Shake Your Tree. When I’m starting to feel stale, I make a habit of getting into adventures. Break molds. Drive home from work a different way. Stir up my routine. I get active and shake my tree.
• Find fun.  Doing what you love inspires you to be more creative.  Make time and space for having fun.  All work and no play makes Jane a dull girl.
• Lastly, being creative means living a creative life.  Expect yourself to have one.  Believe you are creative. Know that you are. Make that the most important habit of all.

For more on creativity, read my Little But Useful Guide to Creativity.

“Creativity is essentially a lonely art. An even lonelier struggle. To some a blessing. To others a curse. It is in reality the ability to reach inside yourself and drag forth from your very soul an idea.” ~Lou Dorfsman

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If you liked this guide, please bookmark it on Delicious or share on Twitter. Thanks, my friends.

A presidential spokesman said he would express his condolences to relatives.

The meeting comes as BP shares in the UK fell to their lowest level since 1997 amid fears the US will impose huge penalties on the firm.

Mr Obama has come under mounting political pressure over his handling of the crisis.

Oil has been leaking into the Gulf since the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded on 20 April and sank off the coast of the US state of Louisiana, killing the 11 workers.

‘Anti-British rhetoric’

President Obama will express his “heartfelt condolences” to their families during the private meeting at the White House, his spokesman Robert Gibbs said.

“And I think he’s eager to discuss with them what their family was telling them about safety conditions and what type of changes can and must be made in the regulatory framework to ensure that deepwater drilling that goes forward is done in a way that is safe and not life-threatening,” Mr Gibbs added.

Amid growing public anger in the US, President Barack Obama is keen to show he is on top of the situation and will make his fourth visit to the region on Monday.

His administration has been steadily applying more pressure on BP, and the US justice department is considering legal action to make sure BP has enough funds to cover the damage and compensate those affected by the slick.

BP says a containment cap system placed on the blown-out well last week collected 15,800 barrels of oil on Wednesday – slightly up on the 15,010 barrels collected in the previous 24-hour period.

The company has come under increasingly sharp attack by some US politicians for its handling of the spill, described as the worst environmental disaster the US has faced.

Shares in the British oil giant have nearly halved over the last couple of months.

The UK government on Thursday sought to play down fears expressed by some senior figures of “anti-British rhetoric” in the US.

Prime Minister David Cameron, who will discuss BP with President Obama this week, said he understood the US government’s “frustration”.

You may already have identified the high price, ($499-$599) as a good reason against doing so. Or, you may be on another carrier’s plan and don’t want to pay the um, substantial penalty for early withdrawal just to sign a two-year with iPhone’s exclusive carrier AT&T Mobility.

But after riffing through New York Times’ tech reviewer David Pogue’s terrific Often Asked iPhone Questions piece this morning, I’ve identified 11 more reasons you shouldn’t buy an iPhone.

Ready for a dose of tech-flavored conscience?

1. While iPhone will work with any SIM card from exclusive iPhone carrier AT&T Wireless No other carrier’s SIM phone will work with iPhone.
2. If you are wearing gloves, the iPhone’s virtual keypad won’t work. That’s a concern for wintertime phone calls in cold areas.
3. No memos.
4. No voice dialing.
5. No voice recording.
6. No games.
7. No capacity for video output to a tv (as iPod has).
8. No capacity for over-the-air calendar appointments.
9. No capacity for over-the-air software updates.
10. No IM. Gotta use text messaging.
11. No flash or zoom in the camera.

Can you think of more reasons not to buy an iPhone? Comment and let us know!

When Apple filed suit against HTC earlier this month, it was clear that Google and Apple’s romance had turned sour. But the Times’ article, which draws on “interviews with two dozen industry watchers, Silicon Valley investors and current and former employees at both companies,” offers a sense of just how personal this battle is and always has been. The writers begin by summarizing:

At the heart of their dispute is a sense of betrayal: Mr. Jobs believes that Google violated the alliance between the companies by producing cellphones that physically, technologically and spiritually resembled the iPhone. In short, he feels that his former friends at Google picked his pocket.

The article starts with the good old days, when the two companies were cooperative and when the individuals that ran them were close. What brought them together, initially, was a common adversary:

Although Mr. Jobs and Mr. Schmidt both began working in Silicon Valley in the late 1970s, their paths rarely crossed. But by 2001, with Mr. Jobs back at Apple and Mr. Schmidt running Google, they shared a singular mission: limiting Microsoft’s hegemony to the personal computer and ensuring that Bill Gates didn’t dominate the frontier of online services and mobile devices…By all accounts, Mr. Schmidt and Mr. Jobs were never close friends. But they dined together on several occasions, according to a former associate of Mr. Schmidt’s, and Mr. Jobs never hesitated to call Mr. Schmidt directly to voice his opinions.

But even before the mutually-beneficial industry chuminess between Steve Jobs and Eric Schmidt, Jobs had a personal relationship with Google’s cofounders. In the company’s early days, the article explains, Larry Page and Sergey Brin “considered Mr. Jobs a mentor,” and they did the things that mentors and mentees do:

[Sergey] Brin was also known to take long walks with Mr. Jobs near his house in Palo Alto, and in the nearby foothills of the Santa Cruz Mountains. According to colleagues, they discussed the future of technology and planned some joint ventures that never came to fruition – like a collaborative effort to develop a version of Apple’s Safari browser for Windows.

Google’s development of Android, however, was the thin end of the wedge, and even in its early stages was a source of tension. The article recounts one Android-related meeting between Jobs and Google that sounds mighty uncomfortable:

At one particularly heated meeting in 2008 on Google’s campus, Mr. Jobs angrily told Google executives that if they deployed a version of multitouch – the popular iPhone feature that allows users to control their devices with flicks of their fingers – he would sue. Two people briefed on the meeting described it as “fierce” and “heated.”

Eventually, we on the outside caught wind of the conflict. As early as January 2008, Jobs was slighting Android, and a year after that we heard that Apple had stopped multitouch on Android altogether. We watched things get publicly uncomfortable when Apple rejected Google Voice from the app store. And soon we saw their acquisitions become undeniably competitive, Apple allegedly feeling that Google “stole” AdMob from them and preemptively gobbling up Lala in return. On the AdMob acquisition, the article reveals that Apple had a 45-day window in which it could have purchased the company for $600 million, but they stalled and Google swept in to outbid them. After this move, a source says, “Mr. Jobs speculated that AdMob might have violated its legal obligations, with help from Google.”

At the time, the AdMob saga suggested that the stakes were being raised in the face-off, and Apple’s recent patent infringement suit against HTC was just further confirmation that the bad blood was turning into a blood bath.

In January we heard that Apple was in talks with Microsoft to replace Google with Bing as the default search engine on iPhones and iPads, and the Times article ends by mentioning that “One Apple employee says that Qi Lu, the president of Microsoft’s online services division, was recently seen visiting Apple’s campus in Cupertino to discuss such a deal.”

Of course, the companies still won’t come out and admit what we all know to be true. Apple declined to comment for the Times’ article, and Google played dumb, a spokesperson offering, “Apple is a valued partner, and we have great respect for everything they have done for technology for more than 30 years.” Eric Schmidt himself, said, “I continue to believe, as many do, that Steve Jobs is the best C.E.O. in the world today, and I admire Apple and Steve enormously.” But, as it’s said, actions speak louder than words.

The Apple-Google war is waged by massive, relentless corporations, but it is fueled by the bruised egos of a few men. Given a better picture of how personal the conflict has been all along, it’s hard to imagine the giants reconciling anytime soon. [NY Times]

The coating also repels water, dirt, stains, mildew, fungus, bacteria and viruses.

A liquid coating invented at the Saarbrücken Institute for New Materials in Turkey and patented by Nanopool GmbH of Germany, is a flexible and breathable spray-on glass film approximately 100 nanometres thick (500 times thinner than a human hair) that has multiple applications and uses in numerous fields.

The coating is environmentally friendly (Winner of the Green Apple Award).

It can be applied within seconds to make any surface very easy to clean and safe from anti-microbes (Winner of the NHS Smart Solutions Award).

The special glass coating known as “SiO2 ultra-thin layering” protects practically any surface against water, uv radiation, dirt, heat, acid, stains, mildew, fungus. bacteria and viruses.

Trials by food processing plants in Germany have concluded that surfaces coated with liquid glass only need hot water for cleaning. In fact, the coating provided higher levels of sterility than surfaces cleaned with bleach or other chemicals.

A year long trial at a British hospital in Southport, Lancashire is to be published soon with very promising results for a wide range of coating applications used on medical equipment, implants, catheters, sutures and bandages.

Trials for in-vivo applications are confidential, but Neil McClelland, the UK Project Manager for Nanopool GmbH, describes the results as “stunning”. “Items such as stents can be coated, and this will create anti sticking features. Catheters and sutures which are a source of infection, will also cease to be problematic,” he says.

Colin Humphreys, a professor of materials science at Cambridge University, commented that liquid glass appears to have a wide range of applications and that the product ‘looks impressive’.

The applications for this latest science invention seem endless – buildings, vehicles, appliances, clothing etc. can have dirt and germ free surfaces without using toxic coatings or chemicals.

Based on a character developed by Rowan Atkinson at university, the series followed the exploits of Mr. Bean, described by Atkinson as “a child in a grown man’s body”,^[2] in solving various problems presented by everyday tasks and often causing disruption in the process.

During its five year run the series gained large UK audience figures, including 18.74 million for the 1992 episode “The Trouble With Mr. Bean”.^[3] The series has been the recipient of a number of international awards, including the Rose d’Or. The show has been sold in 200 territories worldwide, and has inspired two feature films and an animated cartoon spin-off.^[4]

Mr. Bean

The title character, played by Rowan Atkinson, is a slow-witted yet likeable buffoon who brings various unusual schemes and connivances to everyday tasks. He lives alone in his small flat in Highbury, North London, and is almost always seen in his trademark tweed jacket and a skinny red tie. He also usually wears a digital calculator watch (which he does not like to lose). Mr. Bean rarely speaks, and when he does, it is generally only a few mumbled words which are in a comically low-pitched voice. His first name (he names himself “Bean” to others) and profession, if any, are never mentioned. Atkinson has said at the time of the first film’s release that he imagines Bean’s first name to be Julian, thus making Julian Bean a reference to famous guitarist and lutenist Julian Bream.^{[improper synthesis?]} He has been shown in the first episode to have a strong knowledge of trigonometry.^[11] (In the first film adaptation, the ‘name’ “Mr.” appears on his passport in the “first name” field, and he is shown employed as a guard at London’s National Gallery. .^[12] In Mr. Bean’s Holiday, however, his name is listed on his passport as “Rowan”.^[13]) During the series (for example on the scorecard in “Tee Off, Mr. Bean”) he also names himself as Mr. Bean. The sign in his trousers (seen in “Back To School, Mr. Bean”) says “Bean (Mr.)”

Mr. Bean often seems unaware of basic aspects of the way the world works, and the programme usually features his attempts at what would normally be considered simple tasks, such as going swimming, using a television set, redecorating or going to church. The humour largely comes from his original (and often absurd) solutions to problems and his total disregard for others when solving them, his pettiness, and occasional malevolence.

At the beginning of episode two onwards, Mr. Bean falls from the sky in a beam of light, accompanied by a choir singing Ecce homo qui est faba (“Behold the man who is a bean “). These opening sequences were initially in black and white in episodes 2 and 3, and were intended by the producers to show his status as an “ordinary man cast into the spotlight”. However, later episodes showed Mr. Bean dropping from the night sky in a deserted London street, against the backdrop of St. Paul’s Cathedral suggesting Bean is an alien. Atkinson himself has acknowledged that Bean “has a slightly alien aspect to him”;^[14] in the animated series, he was actually shown to be an alien.

Brazil’s Kaka and Portugal’s Cristiano Ronaldo have both been hailed as the best in the world. Teammates and new age galacticos at Real Madrid, are the fulcrum for their respective teams.

The spotlight is fully on Brazil’s playmaker after a rather disappointing start to his Real Madrid Innings. Add to that Brazil’s burden of monumental expectations. Inspite of all his success in the European leagues, Kaka will never be regarded in the same league as the likes of Pele, Garrincha, and to the most recent Ronaldinho, if he doesn’t get the greatest foot balling nation its greatest prize.

Simao Sabrosa, Football Player, Portugal, said, “Kaka is fantastic, a well rounded player, super explosive, technically good, and a player that needs to be well tagged. We will need to prepare well against him.”

Brazil’s title credentials will be tested at the group stage itself. There is no better schemer in world football at the moment than Ronaldo. His bags of tricks are immense, and his cheek and spunk alone can offset the Brazil’s traditional flamboyance on the field.

Anyone who takes this man lightly will do so at his own risk.

The deadliest striker in England, Didier Drogba will be fancying his and a talented Ivory Coast team’s chances to crash the party. Then, there is also the fear of the unknown. The North Koreans who are back for an encore of the great run in 1966.