Boiled LEGO, Mind-blowing Breakfast and Filipino Machismo [Elizabeth Gilbert Creativity Course Output]
I chanced upon superprofessor Paul Dumol last week when I visited UA&P. As dictated by Filipino culture, his first comment was on my weight.
Paul: Wow, you lost a lot of weight!
Me: It’s a side-effect of this diet I’m following for cognitive performance… [I explain my high-fat low-carb diet and how it gave me 2+ more hours of productivity per day…]
Paul: How about your creativity?
That’s interesting. The first concern of almost everyone I explain this diet to is either high cholesterol or “if you don’t eat rice, what the hell do you eat?”
When someone like Dr. Dumol says something surprising, you should take note. It’s a glimpse of how his mental models differ from the norm.
Honestly, I never thought of optimizing for creativity. Perhaps I should.
A day later I saw a Udemy ad in FB (must be a retargeting for visiting Tara Brach’s page). After a few clicks, I saw that Elizabeth Gilbert’s creativity course was on sale ($20 from $100).
This path is interesting. Let me follow it!
I have been studying it for a few days. Below is my output from the first exercise.
What was the last thing you really wondered about?
Some days ago I wondered if it is possible to spread the implementation of Lean LaunchPad across high schools in the Philippines (and Kenya — long story). So I’m attempting it right now. First steps in a 2+ year project! Back story:
When was the last time you experienced creative flow?
Yesterday, when I was preparing for the entrepreneurship class I’m about to run. I realized that I prefer the journey from 0 to 1 vs 1 to 100. I get into a flow state when bringing something nonexistent into existence.
What did you love to do most of all when you were 8 years old?
Lego. My father — God rest his soul — once got so frustrated, after countless of times of telling me to already eat lunch, that he boiled some of my lego pieces. I guess he tried to demonstrate the falsity of the belief that I seemed to hold: “when we’re hungry, lego will keep us alive.”
I feel for him. I am his first child and he hadn’t yet gotten in contact with Educhild (parenting education using the case method). He had a natural engineer’s mind and I must have been some frustratingly unsolvable puzzle.
What was the last passage from a book, piece of music or work of art that really inspired you? What drew you to it?
I did a retreat in Tagaytay some weeks ago. The last work of art that really inspired me was the breakfast of Pentecost Sunday: gloriously thick strips of homemade bacon, generous slices of cream cheese (3/4 of a deck of cards per piece; most likely homemade as well), fried eggs and flowing brewed coffee. Fresh tomatoes and herbs garnished the bacon (the tomatoes in Tagaytay also seems juicier and tastier). For those people who eat carbs, there were also cinnamon rolls.
I think what drew me was that these were simple things — bacon, cream cheese and tomatoes — but they were the best versions of those simple things.
What are you doing when you feel most beautiful?
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA
This reminds me of the first time I heard of Elizabeth Gilbert. This was probably 2009 or 2010. I watched her TED talk. I was so impressed that I looked her up. I ended up checking out the first pages of her famous book, Eat, Pray, Love. Here are the first few sentences.
This was as far as I got before I had the same reaction to the question above. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA WTF.
Before you judge me, please understand that I grew up in downtown Cebu and studied in Don Bosco. I was brought up with the strongest strains of the ancient traditions of Filipino Machismo.
“Feeling beautiful” is an alien concept.
I have enjoyed Jane Austen though — but that’s as far as my machismo allows me to venture. Sorry Elizabeth Gilbert.
What are your superpowers?
“Superpower” is a commonly used concept in the world of startup entrepreneurship, so I’ve always thought about this in the context of business.
I think my superpower is a spider sense for talent.
For instance, I already saw the potential of Psalm and Val when they were still in college. Now they are my teammates and they run most of the company. This has allowed me the time to explore things like this creativity course and teaching in high school.
Here’s another example. This appeared in my FB timeline yesterday:
Julia is on her way to her CS graduate studies in the US. I’m not surprised at all. In fact, when I met Julia when she was in college I already expected this. When she was about to graduate, I even tried to steer the business into software development and AI, so I could hire her and her boyfriend Arnele. Businesses, though, have a natural flow, and that simply was not our path.
I can’t wait for our business to be big enough for us to hire the talent I have been keeping tabs on in the past years.
What would you do for a living if you were not afraid of anything?
Exactly what I’m doing now.
What themes do you see?
I don’t see any themes.
What is exciting to you?
Teaching entrepreneurship in senior high school using Steve Blank’s Lean LaunchPad and bringing it to other high schools in the Philippines.
What do you want to use this course to start pursuing or start creating?
Not sure yet. I was going to start another podcast though and do some more writing. This course might help.
