creativity on S Anand

Speaking unprepared

Tue, 07 Apr 2026 13:14:13 +0800

I deliver about 3-5 talks a month and usually prepare for them.

Thanks to AI (but even otherwise), I have a steady stream of new content. So, I just to assemble the story.

For example, in my TEDx Whitefield talk “Prisoners of Birth”, I shared the impact of name, gender, lineage, place, and time of birth. I didn’t execute any new analysis. I just cherry-picked disparate analyses into a theme. (Took me three days to plan, though.)

But repetition bores me. I’ve known this since 2002 when I tried coaching CAT students. Conventional teaching isn’t for me. And talks get boring too.

So, often, I ad-lib. Impromptu. Deliberately under-prepared. (Panels are good practice for this. I must try improv next.)

This has a surprising benefit. In the pressure of the moment, inspiration can strike.

For example, yesterday, at an internal Straive fireside chat, I went completely off-script and answered a question on the chat about the benefits of Gemini.

The sort of things that you can do with Gemini is amazing. And what I do … is to poke … what can I do here? What’s in here? What’s in here? Recently, I saw that it can create music. And some of this music is stunning!

Now, I had to think of something interesting to do with the music. Despite weeks of exploring Lyria, I never found a use for it, let alone “stunning”. Now I had 3 seconds.

Then, inspiration struck!

Now, we had music at the beginning of this Zoom call. Why does that need to be something that is unpersonalized?

I went to ChatGPT and asked it to create a personalized jingle for the talk I was delivering, providing it my name, title, talk topic, etc. - something the L&D team could replace their stock jingle with. And it was pretty good, actually.

That’s a novel and a useful idea - something many people can use!

It’s times like this that I really enjoy delivering talks. This is why I live-code. This is why I pause for questions. This is why I’m thrilled when I have no clue of the answer. Pretending to be know is fun and all that, but the kick of discovery on stage – that’s something else!

Exploring Creativity with SORA: My Animation Journey

Tue, 17 Dec 2024 13:38:06 +0000

I got access to SORA today. My first attempts was typical.

An animated cartoon featuring Calvin, a young boy with spiky hair, standing in a playful boxing stance with oversized boxing gloves. He looks determined as he says ‘Bring it on!’ in a speech bubble. Facing him is Hobbes, a tall and slightly bemused tiger, also in a mock boxing pose with a gentle smile, as if humoring Calvin. The scene is set in Calvin’s backyard, typical of a Calvin and Hobbes comic, with a simple and uncluttered backdrop.

That looks nothing like Calvin & Hobbes. But there never was an animated Calvin & Hobbes anyway. (It’s probably for the best.)

My second attempt was to recreate the Fangorn Forest.

First person POV of a person walking through the woods in bright daylight, with the sum streaming across. He looks up and the trees gently crowd over, bending over him, darkening, darkening, … until there is no light.

The “darkening, darkening, …” part clearly didn’t make it.

At this point, I learned 2 things.

I lack creativity. (Not a surprise.)
If you don’t get what you expect, appreciate what you get. These videos are pretty good!

So I decided to seek inspiration by copying. By exploring SORA gallery, I saw a lizard made of diamond. A man made of balloons, somersaulting. Santas made of jelly, dancing. Which led to asking ChatGPT:

Build a creative list of video ideas with this structure: made of . For example:
Man made of balloons jumping.
Water bottle made of diamonds dripping.

This gave me quite a good list. Here are some creations.

Now that the constraints of reality are eliminated, wouldn’t more of us explore impossible art more readily?

Wisdom and Intelligence

Wed, 14 Feb 2007 12:00:00 +0000

Paul Graham pens another brilliant essay on Is it worth being wise? It’s mostly about the difference between being wise (right most of the time) versus being smart (being right where few others are). If you’re picking between options, being wise is useful. There is a best option, and you’ll pick it most of the time. If you’re doing something creative, there’s no finite set of options. Then it’s worth being smart. Increasingly, tasks are asking for more creativity, so it may be better to be smart.

TEDTalk by Sir Ken Robinson

Mon, 18 Dec 2006 12:00:00 +0000

Sir Ken Robinson’s TED Talk on education is brilliant and funny. Some quotes that struck me:

If you think of it, children starting school this year will be retiring in 2065. Nobody has a clue, despite all the expertise that has been on parade the last four days, what the world will look like in five years’ time. And yet we’re meant to be educating them for it. So the unpredictability, I think, is extraordinary.

If you were to visit education as an alien and say “What’s it for?”, I think you’d have to conclude, if you look at the output, that the whole purpose of public education throughout the world, is to produce university professors. Isn’t it? They’re the people who come out on top, and I used to be one. (So there!) And I like university professors, but you know, we shouldn’t hold them up as the high watermark of all human achievement – they’re just a form of life.

The myth of prodigy

Fri, 13 Oct 2006 12:00:00 +0000

The myth of prodigy. Precociousness as a child is no indicator of future success.

How to do what you love

Wed, 18 Jan 2006 12:00:00 +0000

Excellent article by Paul Graham on How to do what you love.

[the] new definition of work [is] to make some original contribution to the world, and in the process not to starve.

I think the best test is to try to do things that would make your friends say wow.

If you admire two kinds of work equally, but one is more prestigious, you should probably choose the other. Your opinions about what’s admirable are always going to be slightly influenced by prestige, so if the two seem equal to you, you probably have more genuine admiration for the less prestigious one.

The test of whether people love what they do is whether they’d do it even if they weren’t paid for it

Comments

Arun 19 Jan 2006 4:22 am: Nice article. My takeway was this: Another test you can use is: always produce.

10 steps for boosting your creativity

Fri, 25 Feb 2005 12:00:00 +0000

10 steps for boosting your creativity

If you’re stuck for an idea, open a dictionary, randomly select a word and then try to formulate ideas incorporating this word. You’d be surprised how well this works. The concept is based on a simple but little known truth: freedom inhibits creativity. There are nothing like restrictions to get you thinking.

Copyrights are not helping creativity

Fri, 31 Jan 2003 12:00:00 +0000

The Economist on how copyrights aren’t really helping creativity, which is what they were intended to do in the first place. via andersja

Mind mapping

Wed, 24 Jul 2002 12:00:00 +0000

I learnt mind mapping. Ref: 1 2