Hey friends,

So... if I were to send you this sequence:

👨👨👧👦🙅🔥

Could you guess the song title? (Answer at the bottom)

Thinking Too Hard 🤔

Last week I talked about DONE-ness and I mentioned something called 'freak energy'—the joyful, creative energy that basks in strange ideas. I want to circle back to that idea.

John Cleese has a famous and entertaining talk where he talks about the necessary ingredients of creativity:

1. Space, to seal oneself off.
2. Time, to set boundaries.
3. Time (again), to not take the first solution, to stick with it a bit longer.
4. Confidence, of not being afraid of making mistakes.
5. And Humor...

Humor, in my mind, is closely related to 'freak energy'. The ability to playfully approach a problem tends to tease out odd and unique connections. John called them 'intermediate impossibilities', that contact between two mental frameworks no matter how implausible. I find that 'freak energy' arises from your OWN amusement and the ENERGY that comes in these odd connections. That type of energy can propel you into a deep focus, one where you're not distracted but deeply invested and driven. Once activated, it can be hard to leave it alone, like an itch in your brain.

The trouble becomes gauging how wild a shot you're taking. If you're not careful, you can follow your freak energy down a road no one wants to follow. Depending on what you're doing, that might be OK! But make sure to come up for air every once in a while and see if where you're going is actually where you're trying to get to. I don't believe truly creative time is ever a waste, but you do have to tame your freak a little.

So follow your freak, but don't let it drag you too far away!

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Answer ✅

'We Didn't Start the Fire' by Billy Joel

(Did you guess it? I thought that was pretty hard...)