Creativity is a skill to be cultivated

I need a break!

So 70 books into the project 100 Nonfiction Books I Recommend, I need a breather to recoup. But never fear, I am only taking a small break and shall return in exactly one week.

I will then do our sports, leadership and reader's recommendation categories and conclude the project on Thanksgiving. Yes, I'm thankful for my family, life, books and more!

So far, we have done the following seven categories:

Big time/deserving, parenting, personal growth, comedy, education, social conscience and grab bag.

In lieu of another category, I am posting my TEDx talk on creativity. Let's be clear here. This was a local Tedx talk at Whitney High School in Cerritos, Calif. This wasn't one of those talks where you pay $5,000 to attend.

Can you put a price on ideas, innovation and creativity? If so, maybe five grand is low. But I say that we live in such a money-driven, 21st-century capitalistic world that a lot kids, and adults, have to fight to find time for creativity. This is madness. We need to foster it.

Like practically anything else, creativity is a skill that we can develop. But for whatever reason, creativity often is treated like some sort of inspiration bestowed on the individual from the heavens. It doesn't work that way. We all have the capacity to be creativity, and our lives improve when we apply creativity to the lives we're actually living.

So many people fill their time with scrolling on their phone and looking at anything that comes their way that I fear actual time for creativity — something out of nothing — is being lost. Apple, Google, Amazon and all Big Tech, yeah, I think you're the new cigarette companies.

But here's the thing. The new cigarette companies are something that we all must breath. We can't survive without a little bit of Big Tech. Wow. That's power.

Personally, I'm balancing out. I'm still sticking with reading, writing, understanding facts and arguments. Being an actual teacher matters now more than ever. It turns out that kids, and adults, need more direction than ever to understand that, uh, nobody really cares about their iCloud.

Eh, this post begins a one-week break from 100 Nonfiction Books I Recommend. And here was my TEDx talk: