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My WorkAfter giving birth, Anna is utterly lost. She and her family move to the unfamiliar, snowy city of Stockholm. Anxiety threatens to completely engulf the new mother, who obsessively devours online news and compulsively buys clothes she can't afford. To avoid sinking deeper into her depression, Anna forces herself to read and write. My Work is a novel about the unique and fundamental experience of giving birth, mixing different literary forms fiction,
After giving birth, Anna is utterly lost. She and her family move to the unfamiliar, snowy city of Stockholm. Anxiety threatens to completely engulf the new mother, who obsessively devours online news and compulsively buys clothes she can't afford. To avoid sinking deeper into her depression, Anna forces herself to read and write. My Work is a novel about the unique and fundamental experience of giving birth, mixing different literary forms - fiction, essay, poetry, memoir, and letters - to explore the relationship between motherhood, work, individuality, and literature.
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4.3 ★★★★★
Based on 76 reviews
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Product Reviews
★★★★★ 4
Personal Creativity does not equal Domain Transformation
This was a good if not a great book. Its greatest strength lies in the thesis introduced early on and supported throughout that the kind of creativity that leaves a trace in the cultural matrix rests not in the personal creativity of the individual, but in what Csikszentmihalyi tags the "systems approach " to creativity. To have any effect, a creative idea must be couched in terms that are understandable to others, pass muster with the experts in the field (i.e. the gatekeepers to the domain), and be included within the cultural domain (the set of symbolic rules or procedures) to which it belongs. In this systems view, the definition of a creative person is someone whose thoughts or actions change a domain or establish a new domain (pp. 27-28). This is no easy task, especially since he or she needs to learn the existing domain or domains first, and almost always necessitates being in the right place at the right time (e.g. studying quantum physics at the beginning of the 20th century or women seeking academic opportunities when WWII broke out).
Having established this in the first 30 pages, if you didn't read the remaining 350 you wouldn't miss much. But I still enjoyed reading the stories and thoughts of selected individuals whom the author deemed as "creative" according to the definition above (However, I disagreed with the selection of a few of these and would have chosen at least one more person of faith in addition to the Quaker who was briefly highlighted. Also on the issue of faith, I found the author's grouping on page 371 of studying the bible with addictive behaviors such as cruising the internet and betting on horse races to be rather laughable!).
Some additional personal nuggets I gleaned from this book include the following:
1. Those who persevere and succeed must be creative not only in their manipulation of symbols but maybe even more in shaping a career and a future for themselves that will enable them to survive while continuing to explore the strange universe in which they live (p. 199).
2. When seeking to allow your mind to make new connections in a beautiful setting, just sitting and watching is fine, but taking a leisurely walk seems to be even better. The shaping of one's personal space is also important. The Greek philosophers settled on the peripatetic method, preferring to discuss ideas walking up and down in the courtyards of the academy. When we participate in this kind of "semiautomatic activity" that uses a certain amount of attention, we allow the rest of it to be free to make connections among ideas, often from different domains, well below the threshold of conscious intentionality. "Devoting full attention to a problem is not the best recipe for having creative thoughts. "(p. 138)
3. Both creativity and innovation on the one hand and conservation and traditionalism on the other are both equally important. "Neither uncritical acceptance nor wholesale dismissal of human creativity will lead us far. " (p. 322)
The final section deals with how to enhance personal creativity. Some of these ideas were helpful (e.g. to seek to be surprised and to seek to surprise another person at least once every day, to seek to look at problems from multiple perspectives instead of assuming you see the issue clearly from one perspective, etc.) but others just seem to be taking up space on the page. I'm afraid the phraseology of how to use psychic energy more effectively on page 356 and a few other places lost my interest almost completely.
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Reviewed in the United States on November 15, 2010
★★★★★ 5
interesting analysis of what 'being creative' really means
This easy-to-read absorbing book is based on lengthy interviews with 91 creative individuals ranging from Nobel prize winners to artists to CEOs. Csikszentmihalyi starts by debunking the myth of 'the lone genius having a brilliant idea as if by magic' and defines three necessary ingredients for creativity ('with a capital "C"') - domain, field, and individual. Creativity must take place within a recognised domain (such as physics, painting and so forth); be recognised by experts in that domain (the field, although this may not happen in the individual's lifetime, eg, Van Gogh); and of course come from an individual, although he also adds the painstaking work that precedes and insight, the reality that all creativity builds on what has gone before, and the social elements of the creative process.
The book also offers supporting evidence from the lives of the 91 interviewed, which also provides interesting insights into their lives. In many ways, this book is a biography of the creative individual.
Also contains a chapter with quite practical guidance on how to live more creatively. Prescient advice for a book published in 1996 given the increasing profile creativity is getting in business and public life.
HIghly recommended, one of the most interesting learning experiences i have had in a long while!
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Reviewed in the United States on February 5, 2013
★★★★★ 5
Very enlightening for those who truly appreciate creativity more than cleverness!
Format: Paperback
I love how the author almost redefines creativity .and sheds new light (for me, at least!)on what what real-for-true creativity is and how it benefits individuals and society. It's far more than simply brightening up a room with new wallpaper and curtains -- it describes how genuine creativity requires a thorough working knowledge of the fundamentals of any given field before one can truly create something new or better, and it reveals how those of us who aren't capable of creating something ourselves can yet be part of the process by demonstrating appreciation and support for those who create, whether as sponsors, patrons, or even just ardent fans!
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Reviewed in the United States on July 4, 2023
★★★★★ 3
instructive but limited
The testimonies of creative people that give this book its flesh and blood provide fascinating examples of creative people at work. That said, if a journalist had written the book, it would be more readable, and I don't think any less of an intellectual contribution. Moreover, the definition of creativity is elitist and stunts the topic (as observed by other reviewers): "Creativity is any act, idea, or product that changes an existing domain, or that transforms an existing domain into a new one. And the definition of a creative person is: someone whose thoughts or actions change a domain, or establish a new domain. It is important to remember, however, that a domain cannot be changed without the explicit or implicit consent of a field responsible for it." Given the people interviewed, much more needs to be said about the function of social institutions in promoting creativity. Many of the accomplishments lauded in this book would never have happened without grant-making agencies (e.g., NSF, NIH, HHMI) or non-profit employers like research universities and hospitals. To offer just one obvious example of the difference made by one's institutional context, the author had advanced students to help him do his research for this book. The elitism of the definition is even clearer in the role that marketplace plays as a judge of creativity. None of us buys books from amazon.com because some official group validated amazon.com as a good idea. We didn't wait for computer programers to affirm and certify it. Amazon.com is not deemed successful because it impressed its peers. It is successful because millions of us purchase goods through it. Similarly, auto-executives did not make the minivan a successful idea, millions of shoppers did. (Obviously I don't think the marketplace fits into the author's definition of creativity. If 300 million American consumers comprise a domain with 300 million judges, then the word no longer has any useful meaning.) The definition also precludes that countless ephemeral acts of creativity that take place daily. I think instantly of two women I have worked with who were great at holidays. Their clever costumes or decorations brightened my day, adding a little element of surprise and delight. Their acts of creativity don't meet the definitions of this book. The way that creativity is defined in this book is simply a filtering mechanism by which the author selected the people he would interview. It is not a definition of creativity. It is only a description of a subsection of creativity, the kind where institutions provide paychecks to highly practiced individuals to work hard at what they love. I also found little new to take away and apply to my own social existence inside the organization where I work. Perhaps I can summarize my dissatisfaction by observing that the subtitle sets out an agenda for the psychology of creativity, but the definitional filter is intrinsically social. This disconnection sets the book up to fail. So, count this as a negative review, yes, but I did enjoy reading the testimonies of the people interviewed, and the author adds some value in the generalizations he draws. Still, much, much more could have been said.
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Reviewed in the United States on April 30, 2012
★★★★★ 5
Wise and Complete
Format: Paperback
I've read a lot of books, too many, on creativity, and this is by far the best, the most complete, the most interesting. The idea that creativity comes out of immersion in a domain or field seems absolutely right and the idea missed by so many other writers. I'm a writer and a painter and I've learned that I'm not going to be any better than the work I've come to know and love, that I have to live in that work. If you want to be a better string player, play with a better ensemble. In many ways a creative person is someone who is in a conversation with what has come before, with work that excites her, teaches her, challenges her. This book makes that plain. But he has other insights as well, especially about the creative personality, the interesting dichotomies. Just read the book.
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Reviewed in the United States on February 22, 2015
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