Written by the99percent

Illustration: Oscar Ramos Orozco

For a creative professional, a creative block isn’t just frustrating — it’s potentially career-damaging. When you rely on your creativity to pay the bills and build your reputation, you can’t afford to be short of ideas or the energy to put them into action.But all creative blocks are not created equal. Different types of block require different solutions — something that’s easily forgotten when you’re feeling stuck. Here are seven of the most common types, and how to unblock them.

1. The mental block.

This is where you get trapped by your own thinking. You’re so locked into a familiar way of looking at the world that you fail to see other options. You make assumptions and approach a problem from a limiting premise. Or maybe your Inner Critic rears its head and stops you thinking straight.
Solution: You need to change your mind. Question your assumptions, ask yourself "What if…?", and adopt different perspectives. Go somewhere new, or read/watch/listen to something new. Talk to people you can rely on to disagree with you, or offer an alternative point of view.
You may find creative thinking cards useful, such as Roger von Oech’s Whack Pack, Brian Eno’s Oblique Strategies or IDEO’s Method Cards.

2. The emotional barrier.

Creativity can be intense. It’s not a comfortable pursuit. Faced with the unknown, you may be scared of what you’ll discover or reveal about yourself. Maybe your subject matter is painful, embarrassing or plain weird. Whatever – all of these fears and qualms are just different forms of Resistance, leading to procrastination.
Solution: You need to face the worst and come through the other side. There are plenty of things that can help — such as routine, commitment, and meditation. But ultimately you are going to have to endure the fear, pain, or other unpleasant emotions.
It’s like getting into a cold swimming pool — you can dive in head first, or inch your way in. Either way, it’s going to be bone-chillingly cold. But once you’ve got over the initial shock, done a few lengths, and got into the flow of it, you may be surprised to discover how invigorated you feel.

Faced with the unknown, you may be scared of what you’ll discover or reveal about yourself.

3. Work habits that don’t work.

Maybe there’s no great drama — you’re just trying to work in a way that isn’t compatible with your creative process. You work too early, too late, too long, or not long enough. You try to hard or not hard enough. You don’t have enough downtime or enough stimulation. Or maybe you haven’t set up systems to deal with mundane tasks – email, admin, accounting, etc – so they keep interfering with your real work.
Solution: Step back and take a good look at how you’re working, and where the pain points are. If it’s email, learn a new system for dealing with email. If you don’t have enough energy, are you working at the right time of day? If you feel paralyzed by freedom, introduce more structure and order into your day. If you feel constrained by routine, find room for improvisation.
There are no hard-and-fast rules — the only standard is whether your work habits work for you. Look for the right balance of routines, systems, and spontaneity for your creativity to thrive.

4. Personal problems.

Creativity demands focus — and it’s hard to concentrate if you’re getting divorced/ dealing with toddlers/battling an addiction/falling out with your best friend/grieving someone special/moving house/locked in a dispute with a neighbor. If you’re lucky, you’ll only have to deal with this kind of thing one at a time — but troubles often come in twos or threes.
Solution: There are basically two ways to approach a personal problem that is interfering with your creative work — either solve the problem or find ways of coping until it passes.
For the first option you may need some specialist help, or support from friends or family. And it may be worth taking a short-term break from work in order to resolve the issue and free yourself up for the future.
In both cases, it helps if you can treat your work as a refuge — an oasis of control and creative satisfaction in the midst of the bad stuff. Use your creative rituals to set your problems aside and focus for an hour, or a few, each day. When your work is done, you may even find you see your personal situation with a fresh eye.

It helps if you can treat your work as a refuge – an oasis of control and creative satisfaction in the midst of the bad stuff.

5. Poverty.

I’m not just talking about money, although a lack of cash is a perennial problem for creatives. You could also be time-poor, knowledge-poor, have a threadbare network, or be short of equipment or other things you need to get the job done.
Solution: Like the last type of block, this one has two possible solutions: either save up the time/money/or other resources you need; or make a virtue of necessity and set yourself the creative challenge of achieving as much as possible within the constraints you have. If you’re doubtful about the latter option, consider the first and second Star Wars trilogies, and ask yourself whether more resources always equal more creativity!

6. Overwhelm.

Sometimes a block comes from having too much, not too little. You’ve taken on too many commitments, you have too many great ideas, or you’re overwhelmed by the sheer volume of incoming demands and information. You feel paralyzed by options and obligations, or simply knackered from working too hard for too long.
Solution: It’s time to cut down. If you take on too many commitments, start saying ‘no’. If you have too many ideas, execute a few and put the rest in a folder labeled ‘backburner’. If you suffer from information overload, start blocking off downtime or focused worktime in your schedule (here are some tools that may help). Answer email at set times. Switch your phone off, or even leave it behind. The world won’t end. I promise.

Sometimes a block comes from having too much, not too little.

7. Communication breakdown.

Creative blocks can happen between people as well as between the ears. If you work in a team, tensions are inevitable, and can make it hard to do your best work — especially if you have one of those proverbial ‘difficult people’ in your working life.
Sometimes you get blocked by phantoms — merely imagining your work being booed by audiences and mauled by the critics. And sometimes this happens for real and you have to deal with it.
It could just be a marketing problem — after years of plugging away at your art with a miniscule audience, you wonder why you bother. Or maybe you just don’t have a hotline to the people who matter in your field, so you struggle to land the right opportunities.
Solution: This is where creativity blends into communication skills. You need to be adept at understanding and influencing the right people, however difficult or mystifying they may be. Which means beefing up your influencing, marketing, or networking skills. I don’t care if you’re shy (I was) or introverted (I am). If you want to succeed, you need to do this.
And sometimes it’s about accepting that you can’t please all the people all of the time, and growing a thicker skin for rejection and criticism. Show me a creative who’s never suffered a setback or a bad review, and you won’t be pointing at a superstar.

–

How Do You Deal with Creative Blocks?
Which type of block do you struggle with most often?
What solutions have worked for you?

Bonus: I wonder why she deleted me…

Written by lifehacker

Technology is great until it breaks and you have to spend hours trying to figure out what’s wrong before you can even fix the problem. Often times the entire ordeal will take even longer because you’ve failed to consider the obvious, or a particular strategy that worked in the past. Here are our top 10 tactics for diagnosing and solving the many problems that occur with your computers, smartphones, web sites, and more.

Thanks to everyone on Twitter, Facebook, and Google+ who helped out with suggestions for this post!

10. Disable Crap You Don’t Need

When something goes wrong, it’s probably your fault. Computers certainly have their issues all on their own, but more often than not you’re going to cause a problem yourself. For example, AdBlock—as great as it is—can cause web sites to look like they’re not loading properly (or at all). It can prevent video playback if you have video ad blocking enabled, too. It should work, in general, but it’s not perfect and screws up from time to time. The same goes for any drivers or extensions in your computer. Sometimes you’ll install something incompatible by accident. Keep track of what you do and look at the third-party stuff you’re using to test and see if it’s causing the problem. Often times you can figure out which extension or driver (or whatever) is the problem by going down the list and considering if it relates to your issue.

9. Take a Break

If you’re working on a frustrating problem for more than 10 minutes, it’s probably a good time to take a break. Take a walk, get a cup of coffee, or do something else that will take your mind off the issues. Focus is only good when it won’t lead to an aneurism. Sometimes you just have to take a step back so you can approach the issues a bit later with a fresh perspective. It can be hard to do, but it’s often necessary.

(Thanks for the tip, Brian!)

8. Talk It Out with a Troubleshooting Buddy

When you’re stuck and don’t know what to do next, sometimes the best way to figure it out is to talk about it with someone else. Under ideal circumstances you have a troubleshooting buddy you can bother to discuss the problem and hopefully get some suggestions as well. If not, non-techies aren’t so bad either. Discuss the issue with them. Explain it to them in terms they’ll understand. It doesn’t matter so much if they can offer any help. The fact that they’re listening and you’re thinking about the problem in different terms can often lead you towards a solution—or at least the beginnings of one. If you’re stuck and don’t know what to do, stop searching online and talk it out. After a few minutes you should have some new ideas to try.

7. Make Sure It’s Not Just You

When a web site isn’t working, sometimes it’s not the internet. Sometimes it’s just you. How can you tell? You could ask a friend or just use something like Down for Everyone or Just Me? Go there and type in the web site in question. DFEOJM.com will let you know if it can reach the page or not. If it can’t, it’ll report that it’s down for everyone. If it can, you might want to restart your router and, if necessary, start looking into other possible causes.

6. Check Your Logs

Logs are your friend, even if you don’t know half of what they’re saying. When they seem like a foreign language, even a quick glance can tell you what might be causing the problem. You might not understand the error codes or any of the details, but you should be able to see if the error pertains to a specific application or task. This will, at least, give you a lede to investigate so you can focus on discovering what the problem really is. If you’re running Windows, here’s a tutorial on finding your log files. If you’re on Mac, just open the Console applications in Hard Drive —> Applications —> Utilities. If you do understand log files, then you’re in really great shape (and probably do not need to be reading this tip.)

(Thanks for the tip, Dan!)

5. Perform Regular Maintenance Tasks

Regular maintenance is important, whether you’re on a Mac, Windows, or Linux PC. Sometimes the issue you’re seeing is the result of a permissions error, a bad cache file, hard drive fragmentation, a messy registry, and so on. Obviously these issues don’t apply to every operating system, but performing maintenance tasks for your specific OS (guides linked earlier in this paragraph) can often clear up the problem. And, if you make these maintenance tasks a recurring duty, you may not run into some issues at all.

4. Set Up Remote Access

Whether you need to fix an issue on your own computer when you’re away or you’re helping out a friend or family member,setting up remote access makes a huge different in the troubleshooting process. When you can’t be there, it’s as close as you can get. There are many options, too. You can simply set up VNC or use a service to take the hassle out of the process. Many chat apps like Skype and iChat have screen sharing features as well, so you’re bound to be able to get through if someone else is around. When you can’t be there to troubleshoot the problem yourself, remote access is the next best thing.

3. Use Alternative Search Engines When Looking for Help

Google’s great, but it’s not the best place to go for everything. More geek-oriented search engines like DuckDuckGo tend to turn up better results when you’re looking for troubleshooting assistance. When you’re trying to find someone else with your problem, you want a search engine that’s going to dig up plenty of forum posts with discussions and, hopefully, solutions. If your primary search engine isn’t turning up what you want, try DuckDuckGo instead.

(Thanks for the tip, Kevin!)

2. Hit Up Helpful Q&A Web Sites

When you’re not sure what to do or who to ask for help, there are places online designed to solve your problems. As mentioned in #3, there are plenty of specific forums, but sites like StackExchange offer a focused format for asking questions and getting answers on a variety of topics. (We have a few other suggestions as well.) If none of those sites do the trick, you can always email us. We’re always on the lookout for good Ask Lifehacker topics, so if your issue is broad enough it may be a good problem for us to solve for you. Alternatively, our Help Yourself and Open Threads are good places to ask each other for assistance on a more specific issue.

(Thanks for the tip, Wagner!)

1. Restart

Seriously. We often forget to do it and it regularly solves the problem. It doesn’t matter if it’s an old Super Nintendo, a brand new laptop, or your smart or dumb phone—restarting is, in most cases, the first thing you should try when there’s a seemingly unsolvable problem. Remember to do it and save yourself a lot of trouble.

(Thanks for suffering through iPod troubles for this one, Whitson!)

Bonus: Balancing Sasuke – The McDonalds toy that became an internet sensation in Japan [Xpost r/otaku]

Written by socialhype

We all know Steve Jobs as the man behind the magic, but what we don’t know is the magic behind the man. The unfortunate passing of this pioneer left us with a lot of unanswered question. Who was this guy? why was he so passionate about this product? How did he become who he was?  Can his success be duplicated? – Probably not – Here are some interesting tidbits about the life of Steve Jobs.

1. Childhood

Steve Jobs was born on February 24, 1955 in San Francisco, California. He was put up for adoption and was shortly adopted by a couple named Clara and Paul Jobs. Paul was a machinist for a laser company and Clara was an accountant. Years later, Jobs sought the identities of his birth parents. He discovered his mother was a woman named Joanne Simpson, a speech pathologist, and his father, Abdulfattah John Jandali, a vice president of a Nevada casino. Though Jobs remained close with Simpson, he remained estranged from Jandali.

2. He dropped out of college!

In fact, Jobs never came close to graduating college. Surprising, considering he was one of the most brilliant masterminds behind the most successful company in the world. After graduating from high school in Cupertino, Jobs enrolled in Reed College in Oregon, where he stayed for a total of one semester. He dropped out due to the financial strain the tuition placed on his parents. In 2005, Jobs gave a commencement speech at Stanford University in which he described his short-lived experience at Reed: “It wasn’t all romantic. I didn’t have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends’ rooms, I returned Coke bottles for the 5 cent deposits to buy food with and I would walk seven miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple.”

3. He lied to Apple co-founder about a job at Atari.

We all know Jobs for his amazing innovations in mobile technology, software, and computers, but what most people don’t know is that he helped in the creation of Atari’s game, Breakout. Jobs was offered $750 for his work on the product development, with the possibility of a bonus $100 for each chip eliminated from the game’s final design. To help him with this challenge, Jobs called upon Steve Wozniak, a man who would later become one of Apple’s co-founders. Because of Wozniak’s talent, Atari gave Jobs a $5,000 bonus, which he kept all for himself! He gave Wozniak a total of $375 for his help with the job.

4. His marriage

Jobs did an excellent job keeping his family and marriage out of public watch. In the public eye, Jobs was known for donning his signature black turtleneck and jeans on stage solo. However, at his Palo Alto home, Jobs had a family with his wife, Laurene. Laurene was an entrepreneur with a degree from University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton business school and an MBA from Stanford, where she met Jobs for the first time.

Though he was always dedicated to his company, Jobs skipped a meeting to take Laurene out for their first date. Jobs says: “I was in the parking lot with the key in the car, and I thought to myself, ‘If this is my last night on earth, would I rather spend it at a business meeting or with this woman?’ I ran across the parking lot, asked her if she’d have dinner with me. She said yes, we walked into town and we’ve been together ever since.” The two were married in the Ahwahnee Hotel at Yosemite National Park by a Zen Buddhist monk.

5. His sister is a famous author.

While searching for his birth parents, Jobs also discovered his biological sister, Mona Simpson. You may know her as the author of the well-known book, Anywhere But Here, a story about a daughter and her mother that was later made into a film starring Susan Sarandon and Natalie Portman. After their first meeting, the two became best friends and spoke every few days.

6. Celebrity flings

In an authorized book entitled The Second Coming of Steve Jobs, one of his college buddies wrote that Jobs had a short fling with musician Joan Baez. Baez later confirmed that the two were close for a brief period of time, but she is more known for her romance with Bob Dylan (coincidentally, Jobs’ favorite musician). According to the same biography, Jobs also dated actress Diane Keaton.

7. His first child

At age 23, Jobs and his then girlfriend Chris Ann Brennan had a daughter, Lisa Brennan Jobs. Her birth in 1978 came just as Apple was gaining fame in the technology world. Jobs and Brennan were never married, and he denied his paternity for some time, stating in court documents that he was sterile. However, he had three more children with his wife, Laurene. Years later, Jobs reconciled with Lisa and paid her tuition at Harvard.

8. Alternative lifestyle & drug use

Jobs has hinted a few times that he had some experiences with the psychedelic drug, LSD. In fact, he once stated about Bill Gates: “I wish him the best, I really do. I just think he and Microsoft are a bit narrow. He’d be a broader guy if he had dropped acid once or gone off to an ashram when he was younger.” Albert Hofmann, the Swiss scientist who first synthesized LSD approached Jobs asking for funding for research pertaining to the therapeutic uses of LSD. Jobs has admitted to these experiences, calling them “one of the two or three most important things I have done in my life.” He suggests that his experiences with acid have contributed to the different approach that makes Apple’s designs so unique.

After visiting India, Jobs took a trip to a famous ashram and returned to the United States as a Zen Buddhist. Furthermore, Jobs was a pescetarian who avoided eating most animal products with the exception of fish. Jobs also had a firm belief in Eastern medicine and before he had his first surgery for his cancerous tumor, he tried alternative approaches and specialized diets.

9. His Estate

Even though he is the CEO of the world’s most valuable brand name, Jobs made an annual salary of just $1 since 1997 (his first year as Apple’s lead executive). Jobs often joked about his meager salary, saying: “I get 50 cents a year for showing up, and the other 50 cents is based on my performance.”

At the start of last year, he owned 5.5 million shares of the Apple corporation, which are now valued at $377.64 each. This demonstrates a 43-fold growth in valuation over the last 10 years. Because of these shares, Jobs leaves behind an enormous portion. He earned $7 billion from the sale of Pixar to Disney in 2006. Forbes magazine rated Jobs as the 110th richest person in the world, with a net worth of $8.3 billion. Had he not sold his shares upon leaving Apple in 1985 (prior to returning in 1996), Jobs would top the list at the world’s fifth richest individual.

No word has been given pertaining to plans for his estate, but Jobs has his wife, his three children with Laurene, as well as his first daughter to account for.