Book Review: "Creativity, 63 short exercises to a Happier Life" by Dr. Andrew M. Goodman

This books good ideas, good potential, but a couple of problems.

If you are feeling creatively challenged, you COULD open up this book to a random page, and you might run into some inspiration. Though there is no table of contents in the E-book version, which makes the random opening difficult.

This is a disadvantage of this book. A table of contents is particularly needed here, because each chapter is an idea that stands alone, and there is a big need to navigate freely between the chapters (unlike reading them chronologically).

This book is full of good ideas, but doesn’t go deep into most of them. I think this book COULD help to inspire creativity, it is possible to get some good ideas from it.

But it is giving many ideas of WHAT to do without going deep enough into the background of the WHY and HOW.

So if you’re just starting to explore creativity, and you decide to read this book, just remember: If an idea from this book resonates with you, but feels too fuzzy, don’t let that discourage you. But simply find more ways to learn about that idea. For example, to learn more about ‘thought watching’, and the WHY and HOW of it - read “Mindfulness for beginners” by Jon Kabat Zinn.

Another example is the chapter ‘Creative Connection’ - if you like it, then really get into it: read one or all of Ken Robinson’s books (start with “The Element”). This chapter (‘Creative Connection’)  is Robinson’s whole philosophy in a nutshell.

The format is of many brief to-do instructions. It could works out fine for you, or present a problem. It depends on what kind of person you are.

Most people I know, including myself (a poet and painter), need more than to-do instructions. We need to be convinced, in order to actually try out some relaxation technique, or solution-generating list. We need to understand some background about the WHY should we bother, and HOW could we go about trying it.

The WHY and HOW could have been brought into this book by deeper examples, but rarely did I find a personal example which inspired me. I did find one in the chapter “Meaning Creation”, and it was inspiring.

For the most part, the chapters in this book do not include examples. And when I say “examples”, I am talking about personal meaningful stories.

I have read many books about creativity, and the ones I found truly meaningful and helpful tell stories of personal experience which helped me take in the advice, fully understand WHY and HOW I can use it. And those books normally don’t include to-do instructions at all, but base their entire message on the stories.

Link to book.

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