Some notes on bits of advice from Marc Andreessen's blog:
personality
" * How energetic are we? How inclined towards motion are we? Those of you who read my first age and the entrepreneur post will recognize that this is a variation on the "optimize for the maximum number of swings of the bat" principle. In a highly uncertain world, a bias to action is key to catalyzing success, and luck, and is often to be preferred to thinking things through more throughly.
- How curious are we? How determined are we to learn about our chosen field, other fields, and the world around us? In my post on hiring great people, I talked about the value I place on curiosity -- and specifically, curiosity over intelligence. This is why. Curious people are more likely to already have in their heads the building blocks for crafting a solution for any particular problem they come across, versus the more quote-unquote intelligent, but less curious, person who is trying to get by on logic and pure intellectual effort.
- How flexible and aggressive are we at synthesizing -- at linking together multiple, disparate, apparently unrelated experiences on the fly? I think this is a hard skill to consciously improve, but I think it is good to start most creative exercises with the idea that the solution may come from any of our past experiences or knowledge, as opposed to out of a textbook or the mouth of an expert. (And, if you are a manager and you have someone who is particularly good at synthesis, promote her as fast as you possibly can.)
- How uniquely are we developing a personal point of view -- a personal approach -- a personal set of "eccentric hobbies, personal lifestyles, and motor behaviors" that will uniquely prepare us to create? This, in a nutshell, is why I believe that most creative people are better off with more life experience and journeys afield into seemingly unrelated areas, as opposed to more formal domain-specific education -- at least if they want to create. " -- http://pmarca-archive.posterous.com/?page=22