I try to keep track of when inspiration hits me. If I am exercising or driving or reading or running when the idea comes, I make a note of it. If I could find a pattern to when I have my best ideas then maybe I could hot wire the system when I need it. Wouldn’t it be great if you had this kind of control over your mind? Knowing that you had to come up with a solution to a tough problem, you could just follow 5 easy steps.

Step 1: Skip breakfast.

Step 2: Take a 15 minute nap immediately after eating a chicken nugget value meal from McDonalds.

Step 3: When you wake up, surf the internet for rare b-sides from your favorite musician. Burn a cd of your new music and play it in your car while you drive.

Step 4: Stay up an hour later than you normally do and set your alarm for an hour earlier than you normally wake up.

Step 5: Wake up as normal, hitting the snooze twice, then take your daily shower. As you are washing your hair the solution will come to you. Guaranteed or your money back. Lather, rinse and repeat.

Do you have any routines or tricks that help you find inspiration? In reality we have very little control of when inspiration will hit us. After building Font Burner last year I went through several months of waiting for my next idea. All I could do was wait. I couldn’t force myself to think of something. My sketchbook, where I document my ideas went practically unused for most of the summer.

The idea for Phone Feedr came to me as I lay in bed around midnight. It kept me up for hours and I had the whole site completed in my mind by morning. All that was left was the execution. Since then I have felt like I am in a zone. One idea connects to another. Ideas that have been dormant for literally years have resurfaced thanks to a new insights. My sketchbook is active again and I feel like I have to write things down for fear of forgetting them. No joke, I had a dream that I was working on a website for work. In my dream I had added a feature that hadn’t even crossed my mind while I was awake. The next day I remembered the dream, and thought, “Wow, that is actually a pretty good idea.

I don’t want to sound like I some kind of a genius or anything. Most of my ideas are crap and I won’t know it until some time in the future when I can look back at them with objectivity. But that doesn’t matter. The thrill of creating something is my drug. There isn’t a better feeling than being in the zone, having ideas that build off each other.

So as I sort through my ideas and try to carve out time to pursue my projects I find myself sleeping less and working longer. This is another chance to try to find a pattern to my productivity. How does sleep affect the equation? Too much sleep and I am lazy and unambitious. Too little sleep and I am impatient and easily distracted. But at about six and a half hours of sleep I am on fire. My brain is dulled just enough to make connections that a fully alert and rational mind would skim over. It lingers on the thoughts a little longer, in slow motion, spinning them around and remixing them. For the visual graph-lovers out there, it looks something like the graph on the right. There is a sweet spot of sleep where creativity peaks. I have a feeling that this is the same reason why some people use drugs.

So I am looking forward to finishing some of these ideas up and sharing them here soon. I have a couple Wordpress plugins in the works. I also plan on releasing some Wordpress themes. I have a significant improvement to Font Burner on the way. Some iPhone related things, and some refinements for Phone Feedr. I am really excited about it all. Better get back to work.

I recently watched a documentary about a Chuck Palahniuk conference called Postcards from the Future. For those of you who may not recognize the name, Chuck Plahniuk is the author of the book Fight Club, which was turned into one of my favorite movies. Do yourself a favor and read some of his fiction.

Unless you are a huge Palahniuk fan, I don’t know if I would recommend you rush out and watch it, but there was one section of it that I thought was especially interesting. Chuck is talking about how useless protest is compared to the power of story telling. He talks about our current times and the opportunities that are available to storytellers.

Chuck explains how as consumers of culture we have a larger archive of knowledge than any generation in the history of the world. We have more free time than anyone in history ever has. We have access to cheap and powerful technology that makes it easy to create and deliver our stories. Perhaps most importantly we have a dissatisfaction with the garbage that has flooded pop culture. It is that dissatisfaction that will compel us to create something better.

This all adds up to a time when their is huge potential for story telling to change the world. I found it really inspiring and I hope you do too. Here is the video:

If you have ever read Fahrenheit 451 you probably remember the part at the end where the people are all carrying around parts of great literature in their memories because they have no books. I wonder what copyright lawyers think when they read this part of the book. What do the people in the book plan on doing with all that knowledge? Eventually they will write it down and pass it around to all their friends. Without a licensing agreement! I’m no lawyer, but I think that qualifies as blatant copyright infringement! Wouldn’t it be funny to write an alternate ending to Fahrenheit 451 where Guy Montag and his crew are successful in recovering all the great literature but end up imprisoned for copyright infringement when they start publishing the new books?

The firefighters who set fire to the books in 451 are the copyright enforcers of today. They stifle the growth of culture and intimidate creativity at every turn. Ray Bradbury said,

“There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running about with lit matches… Every dimwit editor … licks his guillotine and eyes the neck of any author who dares to speak above a whisper or write above a nursery rhyme.”

Replace “editor” in that quote with “copyright lawyer” and I think you get the same idea.

The quote that I wrote on the bookmark that fell out of my copy of Fahrenheit 451 says, “Those who don’t build must burn.” Today we don’t have firefighters running around burning books, but there is one area where creativity is being stifled. Copyright law makes it hard for people to create new derivative work without fear of being sued. I bring this up because I think that often copyright law makes little sense in the digital times that we live in.

So if lawyers win the copyright war where will the next front be? When you think about it, digital “content” really has no value by itself. It only gains value when it is connected to your brain. Is it that big of a stretch to think that the next battle ground for copyright infringement won’t be in cyberspace, but in our heads? Will you eventually need a license to remember a song? When technology advances to the point where you can download a movie straight to your mind will you have to pay a licensing fee every time you access it?

The irony of Ray Bradbury’s masterpiece is that his dark view of the future was exactly right even though it was completely wrong. We don’t have a shortage of books. We have an overload of information. Books aren’t burned, they are buried in the avalanche of thousands of books published each year. The hard part isn’t finding a single copy of a good book. The challenge is finding a single piece of quality writing in a world flooded by information. And the biggest irony of all is copyright. Copyright is meant to protect the creativity of the author. But the harder copyright law is enforced the more limitations it puts on the creativity of everyone else. You probably would have less people up in arms about burning a copy of Fahrenheit 451 than you would people worried about the copyright infringement of adding a final chapter to the book like I suggested. That is a sad commentary of the times I am afraid.

Beating people at chess is one of my favorite things to do. I have played thousands of games online, and winning never gets old. Losing rarely comes with pleasure. Although I haven’t been playing as much as I used to, it isn’t for lack of desire. The other day an old friend invited me to a game by email, and for some reason I hesitated to accept. My hesitation has puzzled me, and I have had to analyze my response to figure out what my problem was.

There have only been a few rare occassions when I have felt bad about winning a game of chess. The example that stands out in my mind is playing my dad. My dad taught me how to play and I have fond memories of the games we played as I have grown up. When I was at the top of my game a couple years ago, I don’t think my dad could have beat me. I was playing several games a night, and he probably hadn’t played in years. When I saw that he left me an opening, I felt disappointed. I didn’t want to win that easily. It is strange because all my life I wanted to beat him, and when I finally could do it, I realized it wasn’t what it was cracked up to be. Beating someone you respect and love can be agonizing.

Back to the invitation from my friend. I think I hesitated for reasons similar to why I didn’t enjoy defeating my father. I am not saying I have a father/son relationship with him by any means, and I am not even confident that I would win. The thing is he is someone I really respect and admire. I would hate to think less of him if I win, and the thought of losing is equally unappealing.

So did I accept his invitation? Of course I did. Everything I have written so far is really irrational when you think about it. Basing my opinion of someone on how they play chess is ridiculous. Fearing that someone will think less of me if I lose is silly. If I let my irrational feelings get in the way of enjoying a game that I love, then I have lost sight of the fact that chess is just a game and a very small part of who I am. I expect that learning to not take the game so seriously will help me enjoy the game even more. Who knows, I might even enjoy beating my dad again.