Summary: A Satisfying, Convincing, and Actionable Initiator on Creativity
It's not uncommon that when we finish a book, we feel something lacking. Sometimes it's because it starts strong and wears out at the end (like most bestsellers); sometimes because it facilitates thoughts beyond the scope (philosophy or mathematics); other times because it's inspiring enough to provoke thought, but not practical enough to provoke action (positive psychology).
Scott Berkun's The Dance of the Possible (DoP) goes farther and beyond. It’s one of the most satisfying, convincing, and actionable initiators on creativity.
1. It’s Satisfying
Many bestsellers are actually best-fillers, inflating one chapter (or less) worth of materials to a dozen-chapter balloon, which eventually shrinks to the bare and bald.
Scott’s book is bestseller-worthy with no compromises. With his characteristic fluency and just-enough humor, Scott’s book is dense with insights, to-the-point with examples, and is intentionally kept concise for the most impatient. There’s no reason you can’t or shouldn’t read it.
2. It’s Convincing
Over the years I’ve also, just like the author, read quite some books on the topic of creativity. Blended with my own experiences and lessons, many of the books’ major points are resonant and are often finer and summarized better. Only solid research leads to sound reasoning, which is evident in the book.
Misconceptions, myths, and blindspots about creativity are all well addressed, barely leaving any space for further doubt. The author does a great job in anticipating and answering your questions along the way. Major concerns are usually addressed on-location, in a logical, practical manner.
You end up connecting all the fuzzy dots in your own experiences and reasoning about the topic, and, along with the author’s, shape a far better understanding and opinion. It’s not magical. It's just incredibly intelligent.
3. It’s Actionable and Inspiring
The understanding, the steps, and the encouragement are all right in the book. You can easily see yourself doing all the things suggested, with most of your skeptical or anxious questions about taking action answered.
4. Conclusion
This should be your first book on creativity, and hopefully the last (because it’s just so action-provoking).
Eventually, there's no magic at all when it comes to creativity. It's always in the details. And attending to the details of the mind and the action requires a higher calling, established by intelligence, curated by will, and implemented by habitual commitment.
Scott's book guides you to that calling. And the rest is, well, not easy, but finally in sight, probable, and most importantly, approachable.
Highly recommend!
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Reviews with images
You'll never look at your socks the same way again
Few categories of book have the potential to be as obnoxious as the "how to be creative" genre. Scott Berkun's The Dance of the Possible fails to live up to its potential in that regard. In fact, it's not really obnoxious at all. Instead it's filled with a humorous approach to treating creativity as a skill to be honed instead of a magical epiphany bestowed from some mysterious muse.Berkun goes out of his way to avoid giving an easy solution to being creative, and he's very dismissive of creativity as an end goal. The point of being creative is to create something, and creativity as a virtue is a relatively recent development. Explore the possibilities of choices in mundane situations, he suggests. Somehow, this ended up with me writing on my sock with a permanent marker at 12:30 AM.Any sort of creative work, even this very book review, is a delicate dance between two opposing forces: expanding what is possible for the project and contracting the scope so that it actually gets done. I can deconstruct the message of the chapters and reassemble them in any way I want, mixing them into something new. And I can shuffle these ideas around forever, but at some point the review must be published, or else what good has it done you?One aspect of the book that I particularly liked was Berkun's focus on some of the mental issues involved in trying to develop a creative work. In chapter 12, he talks about "the tightrope of creative confidence": being confident enough to act, but not too confident. I prefer to think of it as "the eternal struggle between the Dunning-Krueger Effect and Impostor Syndrome", but regardless of the name it's a balancing act I know well.All-in-all, The Dance of the Possible was a quick read. Indeed, the very first note I wrote down was "he seems to insist we not read the book." This is not a book designed for Scott Berkun to wax poetic for chapters on end. Instead it shares real, actionable advice for exercising the thinking muscle. I enjoyed this book and found the framing of the problem and solution to be very helpful in understanding my own thought process. I can't say that I came away with any sudden, brilliant insight, but maybe that's the point.
Top reviews from other countries
J. J. Noad
Very accessible account of being creative.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 16, 2017