Creativity & Ideas

Jeremy Nixon's compiled knowledge on systematizing creativity, generating ideas, creating concepts, and writing. Synthesized from 40+ raw entries.

Systematizing Creativity

Jeremy's signature contribution: treating creativity not as mysterious inspiration but as a process that can be decomposed, systematized, and taught.

systematizing-creativity -- The central document
17-04-08-systematizing-creativity -- Earlier exploration
17-12-10-operationalizing-systematizing-creativity -- Making it practical
18-02-11-workshopping-creativity -- Workshop format for teaching creativity
18-01-13-grigorys-compiled-creativity-shannon -- Shannon's creative method compiled
19-10-07-mathematical-creativity -- Creativity in mathematics specifically

Idea Generation

Jeremy maintained extensive idea lists as a practice -- generating ideas systematically across domains:

The Meta-Practice

15-07-16-idea-lists-meta -- Ideas about generating idea lists
idea-list-ideas -- Ideas for what to generate ideas about
idea-lists-upon-request -- The full catalog of idea lists
19-02-03-how-to-make-ideas-or-concepts-generative -- Making ideas that generate more ideas
19-01-20-generating-generators -- Generating the generators of ideas

Startup & Project Ideas

17-02-05-machine-learning-startup-ideas -- ML startup ideas
17-03-23-unusual-startup-ideas -- Unconventional startup concepts
18-10-15-funding-transcendent-enlightenment-startup-ideas -- Consciousness/transcendence startups
07-01-14-website-ideas -- Web product ideas (2014)
19-05-20-projects-worth-doing -- High-value projects
20-07-28-worthy-problems -- Problems worth working on
17-11-30-envision-ideas-to-make-happen -- Ideas to manifest

Scientific & Research Ideas

18-06-02-grand-scientific-projects -- The biggest scientific projects worth pursuing
18-03-05-metalearning-research-ideas -- Meta-learning research directions
17-10-26-representation-learning-research-ideas -- Representation learning ideas
17-10-30-nips-creativity-and-interpretable-representation-ideas -- Conference-inspired ideas

Writing Ideas

15-07-21-writing-ideas -- Ideas for things to write
17-09-17-books-to-write -- Books worth authoring
19-05-04-posts-essays-articles-to-write -- Posts, essays, articles
to-convert-into-posts -- Ideas to develop into published posts
15-08-18-technical-hyperanalytic-posts -- Technical writing ideas

Concept Creation

Creating new concepts as a thinking tool -- one of Jeremy's most distinctive practices:

18-09-10-words-to-create-creating-concepts -- How to create new concepts
19-02-02-quality-examples-of-newly-created-concepts -- Examples of successful concept creation
18-09-18-rare-concepts-i-think-with-daily -- Unusual but powerful concepts
18-11-28-most-general-concepts -- The broadest concepts
18-08-29-meta-concepts -- Concepts about concepts themselves
18-09-15-renaming-generalization -- When a concept needs a better name

Humor

18-07-05-systematizing-humor -- Decomposing what makes things funny
19-01-31-humor-decomposition -- The components of humor

Decomposition Applied

Creativity applied through decomposition -- breaking things into components to understand and recombine them:

19-02-01-conceptual-decomposition -- The general method
18-11-06-decomposing-intelligence -- Intelligence components
18-11-27-consciousness-decomposition -- Consciousness components
19-01-29-games-decomposition -- What makes games work
publishing-decomposition-recombination -- Decomposition applied to academic publishing

Writing & Voice

06-17-14-writing -- Early thoughts on writing (2014)
17-09-11-components-of-voice -- What makes a distinctive voice
19-06-11-elements-of-great-storytelling -- Storytelling fundamentals
posts -- Published posts index

Tools & Heuristics

18-12-30-extremely-useful-tools-amp-heuristics -- The most useful thinking tools
18-07-03-x-without-x -- The generative pattern "X without X"
18-09-10-counterfactuals-fact-list -- Using counterfactuals as a thinking tool
18-08-10-ideas-that-most-changed-my-decisions -- Which ideas actually changed behavior