What is my favorite AI creativity hack?

I’ve long since learned that my creativity cannot be forced. If I have to bring my mind kicking and screaming to the table to be creatively productive, at best it will produce mediocre work as a gentle reminder of who’s boss.

I absolutely adore the approach from Neil Gaiman about his writing cabin. When he goes there to write, he doesn’t force himself to write. He can either write or do nothing. It’s an ingenious hack to avoid force and kickstart the work.

Another hack I’ve discovered recently is using AI to light up the creativity neurons. I don’t use it to outsource my creativity although sometimes that can be helpful. I get inspired by other humans creating.

I spend time in the midjourney discord looking at other people’s prompts, works in progress and final outputs. People are so freaking creative with this stuff. A recent favorite is AI’s interpretation of every country in the world as a villain. It has absolutely nothing to do with my own creative work, and yet it’s amazing.

I’m not forcing my brain to go into creative mode if it doesn’t want to. I’m slightly nudging it in the direction that I want to go with help from my new AI friends. Sometimes it goes along and sometimes it doesn’t. Either way it produces vastly superior results than force.

How can I help from my couch?

This past weekend I participated in a Global Covid Hackathon where over 18,000 people came together to build projects to help in the response to the global pandemic.

It was an energizing and uplifting experience to see so many strangers come together to work on projects with a desire to be part of the solution.

My goals in participating in this were two-fold:

• learn something new that is useful
• contribute to a project that has an immediate impact

There were over 1,500 projects that were submitted, and I read through many of the early projects to find where I could contribute. While there were so many fascinating projects in all shapes and sizes, I ultimately felt that it was best to start my own.

In line with my goals, I built Sponsor A Quarantine.

This was my first time using any "no code" tools which provided a super fun learning opportunity. Very powerful to be able to put together something like this in a weekend. Bonus points that my girlfriend helped me get some key things done in order to meet the submission deadline.

We went from idea in the shower to raising over $2,100 in donations in a weekend, and our first food basket of many is out for delivery today.

Even though the hackathon is over, we're going to continue to keep donations open, we're working with a couple of local organizations in SF and NYC to find people in need and do whatever we can to help with this site. I'm still feeling a pull to be doing more which feels reasoanble, and I've been continuing to both listen and take action towards what's next.

It felt a lot better to build this past weekend than occupy time with distractions, and I'll be looking for more ways to integrate that as we bunker down for however long is need.