art, observation, and using it all

the present is the raw material 🎨

artists tend to be incredibly present. i actually don’t think that’s a personality trait, but rather an occupational requirement.

if your job is to make something out of the world, then the world has to be something you’re constantly looking at. the way light hits a wall at 4pm, or a stranger’s posture on the train, or a phrase someone says wrong in a way that’s better than right. the present moment isn’t a distraction from the work when it quite in fact is the work.so artists learn to keep their eyes open.

stem tends to pull the opposite way. you go deep, you specialize, you build a tunnel of expertise and then live inside it. this is powerful, don’t get me wrong - it’s how hard problems get solved. but this tunnel also has a cost when you stop looking sideways and stop investing in the interdisciplinary connections that don’t obviously serve your domain.

the funny (unfortunate?) part is that the biggest leaps usually come from sideways. the people who notice that a problem in biology coincides with a pattern in architecture are the ones who pay attention to something that “wasn’t their field.”

so maybe this artist’s habit is worth stealing regardless of what you do. stay present, observe more than the thing in front of you, and collect inputs that have no obvious use yet.

the world is handing you inspiration constantly. most of us just aren’t registering it.

today’s drops 🔎

• check out the ai science summit happening next week

• product manager internship @ ibm

• $100k grants for ai research (apply by june 19)