#42 Creativity: The What

In this Question and Quote episode, Arnold Beekes asks: which activities in your real life make time disappear and leave you feeling more like yourself? He suggests starting a list, anything from cooking a meal to walking a dog, talking with a friend or reading a great book. He stresses “real life,” meaning not three hours of scrolling, and says to keep the list for a month or two without rushing. Once you have five or six activities, look at what the list tells you and how it makes you feel. The quote is “If you think that there is a quick fix for major problems, be sure that the fast food mentality has taken over your life. The only instant gratification is from daily learning and effort.” Arnold links it to a culture of instant gratification, quick fixes and dopamine hits. He shares an example from when he lived in Budapest, where a university hosted weekly talks by the ambassadors of the main Middle Eastern countries. He went wondering why a few weeks and some clever people couldn’t solve the conflict, and came away realising it is far more complicated than he thought, with history and religion behind it as well as emotion. He values giving people a stage to share their point of view, since the ambassadors also listened to each other’s talks.

In this episode, Arnold Beekes looks at what happens when we use AI heavily, as work shifts from humans using software to humans managing autonomous agents that do the writing, searching and image creation for us. He cites a number of studies and surveys to make the case that outsourcing your thinking weakens it. He refers to an MIT study on using ChatGPT for writing tasks, which reported significantly lower brain activity and learning, with AI users showing the weakest neural connectivity compared with people using search engines or their own thinking. He also cites US reading results, where only 35 percent of high school seniors were proficient at analysing complex themes and arguments in 2024, and a rise in the share of American adults who struggle to paraphrase or draw inferences from a longer text, from under 20 percent in 2017 to nearly 30 percent. He adds that teachers and professors tell him students at every level can no longer write, think critically or remember what they read, and mentions a study of X-ray specialists in Poland whose skills declined after relying on AI. His point is that the brain works like the body: if you don’t use it, you lose it, like a limb that has been in a cast for six weeks. His advice is to think for yourself first, whether it’s a blog, a plan or a structure, and then use AI as a tool to improve or clarify the result, so you work with AI and stay in control, not work for it. The episode closes with an everyday beauty story from Oregon, which has recorded five consecutive years with zero pesticide-related bee deaths. It began with a mass bee die-off in a parking lot in 2013 that led to a pollinator health task force, followed by the Oregon Bee Project from 2018 training 12,000 people on reducing pesticide risk, and the Oregon Bee Atlas cataloguing all 567 bee species found in the state.

In this Question and Quote episode, Arnold Beekes asks: what motivates me? He is looking for your intrinsic, inner motivation rather than the external kind. Most people use the word as if someone else has to do it, like a boss motivating an employee. Arnold thinks that is impossible and that it reinforces not living your own life. To live your own life you need to know what motivates you. Is it money, fame or status, which many people think bring lasting happiness but don’t, or is it helping others, doing something good for the world or building something beautiful? He notes that beauty is disappearing from our cities and communities, so build something that is beautiful. Don’t look at other people or depend on what they want, look inside, between the ears. The quote is “If you don’t add any newness into your life old habits will determine your outcomes and these habits will govern your future.” It echoes the saying that if you do what you did, you get what you got. If you want to change your outer world, your life, work or relationships, you have to change something inside yourself, because hoping for something else without changing anything won’t change the results. His closing question: what old habits would you like to shed and replace with new ones?

In this episode, Arnold Beekes talks about rudeness contagion, a video his business partner Roy shared with him. The idea is that low-level rudeness doesn’t just feel bad, it spreads through our nervous system and organizations like a virus. Arnold lists the key findings. Even a single rude encounter can make you more likely to read later interactions as hostile and respond rudely yourself. Anyone can become a carrier, even a kind and conscious person, often without realizing it. Rudeness works by priming a hostility schema, a mental threat file that makes neutral faces and words look disrespectful. The people who suffer most may not be part of the original event, like the person snapped at in traffic who is then shorter with a colleague, who is then colder with a partner. In workplaces it undermines performance, collaboration and psychological safety, and in hospitals and other high stakes settings it can impair decision-making. Kindness also spreads, but not as automatically or strongly, because rudeness taps directly into threat vigilance, the same fight-or-flight response as fear. Arnold’s conclusion is that you need roughly four or five acts of kindness to level out one act of rudeness, so over-indexing on kindness, appreciation and positive micro signals is crucial, and it takes daily practice and discipline. That is why he ends each episode with everyday beauty. This time the story is from Uganda, where he is mentoring a group of young people. In the Masaka region, which grows Robusta coffee, 30 model farms using regenerative practices held up when a drought hit while conventional farms struggled. The practices were practical and unglamorous: drought resistant seedlings, mulching to retain soil moisture, cover cropping and shade trees that cool the microclimate and reduce evaporation, so the soil held water longer and supported roots better.

In this Question and Quote episode, Arnold Beekes asks: what gives you fulfillment? The answer doesn’t matter as long as you give one, or a couple. He suggests giving yourself a few days to observe yourself, then looking at your answers and what they mean to you. The quote is “If you do business like everyone else you will end up discounting your people and your products.” Arnold says business schools, MBAs and universities teach you to look at best practices and copy the best companies in your industry. He thinks that is not worth your time, because you will never do it exactly the same as the other company, and in line with the uniqueness formula he shared a few episodes ago, you can reach a maximum of about 40 percent of what they do. When you can’t win against the competition, you end up paying your people less, skipping raises or cutting your prices lower and lower, and that is not the way to go. His advice is to do business as you think is appropriate and in a way that suits you.