In a beautiful article for The Atlantic, Nancy Andreasen, a neuroscientist who has spent decades studying creativity, writes:
The same point of view is offered by James Webb Young, who many years earlier, wrote:
A lot of creative luminaries think about creativity in the same way. Steve Jobs had a lot to say about creativity.
In I, Steve: Steve Jobs in His Own Words, editor George Beahm draws on more than 30 years of media coverage of Steve Jobs in order to find Jobs’ most thought-provoking insights on many aspects of life and creativity.
In one particularly notable excerpt Jobs says:
The more you learn about, the more you can connect things. This becomes an argument for a broad-based education. In his 2005 commencement address to the class of Stanford, Jobs makes the case for learning things that, at the time, may not offer the most practical benefit. Over time, however, these things add up to give you a broader base of knowledge from which to connect ideas:
While education is important for building up a repository for which you can connect things, it’s not enough. You need broad life experiences as well.
I, Steve: Steve Jobs in His Own Words is full of things that will make you think.
This piece originally appeared on Farnam Street.
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