I never saw myself as an interviewer, although I always wanted to ask people whose work I admire how their ideas came to be. Now, a little more than a year “in the business,” I’ve just released a second interview series called Time to Think, shifting the focus from the writing process behind a book (the Book series) to how core ideas take shape over time.
At this new moment in my interviews, I couldn’t help but marvel at how it all started completely by accident and soon became something I look forward to. I’ve had so many interesting conversations with incredible people that I plan to continue doing interviews as part of my work and research.
It all goes back to when Professor Zorana Ivcevic Pringle wrote her book, The Creativity Choice. Instead of just sending out a newsletter saying, “Hey, here is Zorana’s book, buy it if you like creativity,” I decided to interview her about her writing process. I came up with some questions and emailed them to her. The idea was that she would revisit her own process through the lens of the same ideas she wrote about in the book, and that became episode 1 of the Book series.
After this first experience, I thought, “This interview format looks promising. Who could I interview next?” The initial focus was on people who had just written a book, like Professor Michael Hanchett Hanson, whose Creative Work and Distributions of Power became the subject of episode 2. Then, I decided to talk with Professor Keith Sawyer about his recent book, Learning to See. But Keith answered my invitation by saying, “Yes, sure. Send me the Zoom link and a few dates for the interview.” I wasn’t planning to do it live, but I decided to give it a chance. Hearing the story behind the book straight from the author’s mouth was an incredible experience and allowed for a deeper connection with Keith and the content of his book.
After Keith’s interview, I continued doing the interviews live, which meant I could have easily shared the recordings or turned them into a podcast. But if you are wondering why I haven’t done either, here’s why: my mind wanders during videos and podcasts, so I get easily lost in the content. Reading makes it easier for me to get back on track. Since text is my preferred medium, I decided it would be the perfect format for the interviews. By talking with people and later going through the text, I get two opportunities to delve deeper into their thoughts.
A few interviews later, I wanted to talk with people who hadn’t written a book recently. I had always been fascinated by where people’s big ideas came from, but my self-imposed constraint of focusing on recently published books kept me from doing it. You know, most of the time these constraints are good because they give us some structure and discipline, but sometimes they can become restrictive and hard to let go of.
However, in my interview with Professor Punya Mishra, the conversation naturally flowed toward his core ideas, without even mentioning any of his books. When I was working on the text, I thought that maybe it was time to start a new series. As I move on to the next episodes, I realize that I’ve been interviewing people about how they became the thinkers they are all along. The books were just a perfect excuse to talk to people and get to know their creative journeys – their beginnings, false starts, struggles, lucky moments, and how they eventually got to where they are today. And by doing that, we can discover much about our own journeys.
What started completely by accident has become a whole new project that I’m excited about. Looking back also reinforces what this new series is about: there is no single insight capable of doing what conversations, opportunities, accidents, experiments, and small decisions can do over time. And precisely because you never know beforehand where they might take you, keep doing things. They will show you where to go next.