What Makes You Think?

brain pickings

Not sure if you’re familiar with Brain Pickings, the weekly free newsletter that arrives by email on Sunday’s. It is filled with articles on a variety of topics including the arts. It is put together by Maria Popova who are also writes for Wired UK and The Atlantic. On Twitter Maria has described herself as: Interestingness hunter-gatherer obsessed with combinatorial creativity.

Maria put over 5,000 hours into creating Brain Pickings. She is one of those people who makes me think “out of my box”. When I take the time to read her Sunday email the articles can take me down a pathway I haven’t ventured before. Pathways that really make me think.

Like today, here I sit getting ready for the Mega-regional workshop tomorrow at UMF, and the Brain Pickings email arrived and I am off reading about Sherwood Anderson on Art and Life: A Letter of Advice to His Teenage Son, 1927. His letter is found in a book of letters called Posterity: Letters of Great Americans to Their Children.

Last weeks entry was called Creativity Is Like a Slot Machine.  The piece is about the book called How To Think Like a Great Graphic Designer by Debbie Millman. Twenty graphic designers are interviewed for the book which combines their answers and ideas on their creative process, work ethic, and general philosophy of life. I can only imagine how interesting the conversations were.

Next time you’re looking for something to take you down a pathway perhaps on a foggy afternoon I highly recommend Brain Pickings!