The Element (Robinson, 2009)

The Element (Robinson, 2009)

How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything

A breakthrough book about talent, passion, and achievement from one of the world's leading thinkers on creativity and self-fulfillment.

The Element is the point at which natural talent meets personal passion. When people arrive at the Element, they feel most themselves and most inspired and achieve at their highest levels. With a wry sense of humor, Ken Robinson looks at the conditions that enable us to find ourselves in the Element and those that stifle that possibility. Drawing on the stories of a wide range of people, including Paul McCartney, Matt Groening, Richard Branson, Arianna Huffington, and Bart Conner, he shows that age and occupation are no barrier and that this is the essential strategy for transforming education, business, and communities in the twenty-first century.

xiii My aim in writing [this book] is to offer a richer vision of human ability and creativity and of the benefits to us all of connecting properly with our individual talents and passions.

p.7 Never underestimate the vital importance of finding early in life the work that for you is play.

p.30 One of the key principles of the Element is that we need to challenge what we take for granted about our abilities and the abilities of other people... We don't question them because we see them as fundamental, as an integral part of our lives.

p.32 One of the enemies of creativity and innovation, especially in relation to our own development, is common sense. The playwright Bertolt Brecht said that as soon as something seems the most obvious thing in the world, it means that we have abandoned all attempts at understanding it.

p.46, 49, 50 Human intelligence seems to have at least three main features. The first is that it is extraordinarily diverse... The second feature of intelligence is that it is tremendously dynamic... The third feature of intelligence is that it is entirely distinctive. Every person's intelligence is as unique as a fingerprint.

p.56 I firmly believe that you can't be creative without acting intelligently. Similarly, the highest form of intelligence is thinking creatively... Everyone is born with tremendous capacities for creativity. The trick is to develop these capacities.

p.57 Imagination underpins every uniquely human achievement.

p.58 Imagination is the foundation of everything that is uniquely and distinctly human.

p.67 Imagination is not the same as creativity. Creativity takes the process of imagination to another level. My definition of creativity is "the process of having original ideas that have value."

p.73 People who work creatively usually have something in common: they love the media they work with.

p.77 Being creative is about making fresh connections so that we see things in new ways and from different perspectives.

p.96 When people are in the zone, they align naturally with a way of thinking that works best for them.

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