Massimo Curatella

Tag: writing

  • Ideate and Curate(lla)

    Ideate and Curate(lla)

    What would I do with the time I am using to write and publish daily? It takes me about 30 minutes to write, revise, illustrate and publish an article online. It always happens during eating breaks or very early in the morning or late at night. It’s about 4 hours per week and about 15 hours per month. 

    As I wrote a few times, I would like to go deeper with my writing. If writing is thinking, I want to think deeper, longer.

    I am frequently referring to a top-down/bottom-up approach to challenges. And also, on this occasion, I might find it helpful.

    Top-down: what do I want to write about, and why? I’ve been writing a lot about writing. And, with great satisfaction and pride, it leads me to CREAZEE. I gathered 15 people and made them write for 30 days. How about that? The next big topic I want to write about is Personal Knowledge Management. You can create little gems every day, but it might be a huge waste if you don’t curate them.

    Bottom-Up: If I curate my 200 online articles and my 500 journal entries, I can extract common threads and inspiration. That’s why I shall never stop writing daily. It’s the rereading and curation that requires time and, honestly, is quite dull.

    Possible solution: split in half the 30 minutes of creativity in:

    1. Curating what I have already written
    2. Ideating and writing new content

    I think I’ve already made this thought two or three times. Let’s see if this is the good one.

    I am Massimo Curatella, and this is my DAY 26 Article in the CREAZEE Daily Writing Challenge and my 163rd daily article in a row.

    There's no writing without thinking. There is no thinking without writing.
    There’s no writing without thinking. There is no thinking without writing.
  • Future Prompts

    Future Prompts

    What is the future?

    How do you prepare for the future?

    Why is it important to think about the future?

    How do you think about the future?

    How do you try to understand what the future could be?

    What is your power to change the future to design the future to write your future?

    What are the factors and the actors that are influencing our future?

    What can I do to influence them? to influence my future?

    Who has an advantage in the future?

    Who knows best about the future? And why? What can I learn from them?

    What are the methods and tools, techniques we can use or we can invent, build better futures?

    Is it important to know about the future? Should I worry about the future?

    If it is impossible to know the future, why am I worrying about it?

    Shall I just be prepared for any possible future? Which is impossible, So for which future Should I prepare for? To do what and why and how?

    If I knew the future, what would I do today?

    How can I make the activity of being curious about the future, not scary? How can I enjoy the process of imagining futures?

    Is the future part of our work? How can we use thinking about the future as a force for good? To change our collectivity, our society?

    What is future literacy? What shall every person know about the future?

    How is future thinking, connected to sciences or day-to-day activities, or learning, studying, and researching?

    Who are the most important thinkers in future studies? What are their positions? What about their contrasting attitudes and behaviors towards the future? What can we learn from those?

    Has the man ever thought about the future during history, as we are doing right now, why and how? How was thinking about the future different in the past?

    How will thinking about the future change in the future?

    What is time? What’s the relationship between the present past and the future? Is it the same thing? Are they always connected? Shall we think about time instead of the future? 

    What can I do to control time? What is the effect of my past on my future? Is it always linear and logical the evolution of a certain past into a certain future? Yes? no? When? how? What can I learn from this?

    Do I see a coffee in my future? Yes in the very next future.

    I am Massimo Curatella, and this is my DAY 21 Article in the CREAZEE Daily Writing Challenge and my 158th daily article in a row. 

    Che sarà, sarà.
    Che sarà, sarà.
  • The spur of the moment

    The spur of the moment

    I’ve built a habit of writing every day. It was hard. I can now safely say that I write every day. It took me two long years after long decades of failure. Why did I do that? I did it to better myself. I always found it a waste to live a fragmented life without systematically making sense of what happens to us.

    And that was the initial intention, to start a continuous conversation with myself. To learn more about me, to improve my skills, to create opportunities, personal and professional.

    And, I must say, I got my share of benefits, for sure. But, systematically, when I consider this daily creative effort as a choir, I fall back into the trap of the routine. I write because I have to write. Which is fine, don’t get me wrong. But my goal is not just to fill a page with words to say I did it. It would defeat my original purpose.

    What do I want, then? I need to go beyond the daily habit to write and publish.  Because it makes quite a difference to just write into your private journal (like I did for 365 days and half a million words) compared to publish it every single day, for instance, for more than 150 days like I am doing right now.

    The threshold of going public makes a difference. Again, consider I am writing for myself, mamma, and a couple of dear friends, but I still have this habit so engrained with me that, really, I cannot stop.

    So, what? What do you want, Max?

    I miss going deeper. I cannot reserve more than 20-30 minutes per day for this personal creative space. And it is barely enough to put up a new blog post. Where is the deep reflection about worthy topics? Where are the insights? The reflections? The new ideas?

    I miss going deeper. And I need to be patient. One possibility is to take the tiniest piece of a concept and write about it in those 30 minutes. I can write 300 words in half an hour which is not bad. 

    What if I go to 200 words, but I take time to do lightning research and validation? I would move from the spur of the moment, of the flow of conscience (like this, for instance) to a little more deep thought I might be prouder to share.

    That’s for me to test and see if it works.

    Go to explore, Max!

    Written in 12 Minutes. Revised in 5 minutes.

    I am Massimo Curatella, and this is my DAY 19 Article in the CREAZEE Daily Writing Challenge and 156th daily article in a row.

  • Morellino di Scansano

    Morellino di Scansano

    I am not a great drinker. Sometimes half a glass of wine makes me dizzy. I am not a habitual drinker as well. Nonetheless, when I get in one full glass, or heavens forbid, one glass and a half, oh boy. I go in that warm and fuzzy feeling of being slightly numb. If there’s a sofa with a soft blanket, well, that’s the end of it. Regardless of who is present and what I am doing, I enjoy going into the most wonderful dreams. Environmental noises are even facilitating the transition. Better than total silence. I am in a trance status (yeah, you might say that I am drunk), and I get enjoyable and nice feelings and visions. I am not always able to remember or to describe, but I feel good. It happens seldomly. Once or twice per year if I want to be on the rebel side. It’s not always good getting out of that state, but usually, it leaves me a satisfying feeling, like if I experienced something wonderful and unique. I am utterly terrified by the damages that alcohol could do to my health, so I tend to forget its existence. I have no problems living without it. But when it happens, I like to appreciate the good that it brings.

    Alcohol is bad for health. Prove me wrong and I’ll invite you for a drink.

  • Give Me Endless Stories

    Give Me Endless Stories

    I don’t like the end of stories. Why shall I interrupt being transported in another world and another time? I feel good, distracted from the daily rot, my mind finally begins to wander, and I start to wonder. I am not interested in plot development. I don’t want to have a plot twist. I don’t want to discover surprises. I just want to expand this moment to infinity. Like sea waves caressing my legs on a white sand beach, where the water is warmer than my skin. I have everything I need. I don’t need anything. I don’t need anybody. I am perfect. There’s no horizon to see. It merged seamlessly where the last of the waves meet the first of the clouds. Good sensations envelop me entirely.

    I am Massimo Curatella, and this is my DAY 16 Article in the CREAZEE Daily Writing Challenge and my 153rd daily article in a row.

  • Dear Future Me, Prepare to Be CREAZEE, Again

    Dear Future Me, Prepare to Be CREAZEE, Again

    Dear Max of the 30 April 2021,

    this is yourself from the past, the 7th of April. The CREAZEE Challenge is going on for seven days now. It is beyond any expectation you had in terms of participation, ideas, contributions’ quality, spirit.

    You have questions in your mind and, wisely, you started to share them with your Challengers. You did well. They are involved in this project, they began to feel the importance of the daily writing habit building, and they will be an essential part of the community at the end of the month regardless of their future intentions.

    Is CREAZEE a cohort-based challenge that repeats each month indefinitely? Or is the challenge an initial test to enter the community?

    Daily writing is just a tool at the service of the most diverse variety of persons. Why don’t you tap into this fantastic collective of creatives to understand from them how they want to continue?

    The Circle platform has excellent benefits but also some limitations: long threads of replies become quickly unmanageable. The forum-like platform is not well-suited to aggregate and distribute resources or organized pages. You need to develop a dedicated website for Challengers to publish book-like information and collect challengers’ contributions.

    How did you manage the daily challenge workflow? Right now, the prompt release is starting the day while the collecting of all the articles is manual and tedious. Why don’t you delegate the “check-the-mark” process to the challengers, so they are even more in charge of giving proof of their daily writing?

    Google Drive might not be elegant to collect the actual documents but demonstrated to be reliable and open. Even without community support, it’s always possible to access all participants’ articles organized by folder. The “Activity” tab at the group’s root folder is invaluable to give a log of who wrote what and when. That is a powerful feature to monitor group activity.

    Did you organize live chats? You can give a lot of support to challengers and learn a lot from them if you just talk to them. It might be resource-demanding, but you should try to have at least one call per week to integrate the textual support provided through the community forum.

    And, finally, have you prepared a final day of celebration? It will be necessary to celebrate the incredible achievement obtained by strangers gathered on the Internet to write for their life. How did you manage to give the proper importance to such a decisive goal?

    Max, I am proud of you. In such a short time, you finally passed from dreaming to making this project a reality. You deserve to receive your group of challengers’ warm friendship because you created a fantastic little spot in the online world to be yourself together with others while growing and pushing for being better. Please take some time to reflect on this incredible month and be prepared, again, to be CREAZEE.

  • My 100 Ideas to Write About

    My 100 Ideas to Write About

    I am Massimo Curatella, and this is my DAY 3 Article in the CREAZEE Daily Writing Challenge, and my 138th daily article.

    Dear readers, this is my answer to the Write 100 Ideas creative exercise.

    1. How to become an independent author.
    2. How to reuse the content you have produced to create a product.
    3. How to create an online course.
    4. How to reuse the format for an online course to apply it to different disciplines.
    5. Online course about writing.
    6. Online course about creating an online course.
    7. Online course about how to become a designer.
    8. How to become a facilitator.
    9. How to self-develop by writing every day.
    10. How to build a habit.
    11. How to become a coach.
    12. How to facilitate collective intelligence.
    13. How to use the Internet and social networks to create your personal brand.
    14. How to create a group of professionals collaborating remotely on several projects.
    15. How to build a habit to take daily photographs to develop your photography skills.
    16. How to become a better learner.
    17. How to create your personal knowledge management system.
    18. How to read effectively.
    19. How to take notes.
    20. How to explain complex topics effectively.
    21. How to be a better critical thinker.
    22. How to improve your memory.
    23. How to develop your artistic sensitivity.
    24. How to develop your artistic expression with Visual Media.
    25. Visual facilitation.
    26. Future thinking, how to think about the future.
    27. How to manage your time and productivity when you are an independent professional.
    28. How to integrate your time management system with your family.
    29. Keeping a diary.
    30. How to educate people, your family, your children, using games.
    31. How to learn to play any musical instrument.
    32. Writing poetry.
    33. What is the most useful fundamental knowledge every human being should have?
    34. Create a collection of the 100 most influential books of all human history.
    35. Top 100 films.
    36. Top 100 podcasts.
    37. Top 100 thinkers in history.
    38. 100 places I want to visit and their stories.
    39. Make a list of all the people that I know.
    40. Find groups of people that I know aggregated by their skills.
    41. Find at least ten professional opportunities per month.
    42. Prepare a list of topics to write about to position me as an expert in the fields that interest me.
    43. Study and share about design.
    44. Facilitation.
    45. Systems thinking.
    46. Critical thinking.
    47. Knowledge management.
    48. Teaching and education.
    49. Learning, understanding memory.
    50. Neuroscience.
    51. What is the latest theory about life in the universe?
    52. What is the theory of mind?
    53. What are the basics of artificial intelligence?
    54. What is essential in computer science that I can use in my interests.
    55. Learn Chinese.
    56. Learn to cook.
    57. Apply the metaphor of cooking to systems thinking, design, and as a simple project to create, as software to learn and teach about computer science, interaction design, and brain development.
    58. What are the most important trends for the future?
    59. According to the trends, what can I do today to mitigate risks for the future?
    60. How to be healthy.
    61. The basic concepts of nutrition.
    62. Personal finance, what is important to know to avoid.
    63. Is there any kind of investment, financial investment that I can do to have some future revenues?
    64. What are the most important things to be done when you have children for every year of their life?
    65. Is it important the location where you live? How am I affected by the place where I live?
    66. What can I do to get the benefits of having contacts with people around the World?
    67. Creates a periodical meeting with creative people to exchange ideas.
    68. How would it be to live by always flying up in the air?
    69. If I have to go to Mars, what would it bring with me?
    70. What is sex?
    71. What is the impact of sex on our lives? And how should we behave accordingly?
    72. What is change? How do you manage it?
    73. How can I create an environment conducive to creativity, health, and wealth for my family and me and my friends?
    74. What is the most important thing that I should do every day that would have the highest impact on my life?
    75. Who are my best friends?
    76. What am I doing to curate my relationship with other people?
    77. Can I create rituals, celebrations, and special dates to enjoy life more?
    78. What happened if I booked some time per week or per day to do something fun?
    79. How can I involve other people in creative, smart regenerating activities without wasting our time?
    80. How can I earn a living by having fun and leaving a legacy?
    81. What is my legacy? What do I want to leave as a legacy?
    82. We cannot live separately, and we are forced to be closed in lockdown. What would I do If I were free to leave?
    83. What’s the best place in the world where I would live instead of this one?
    84. Who is a person from the past that I would like to meet again?
    85. What’s the best place I visited and why?
    86. What are my best memories?
    87. What are my worst memories and what I have learned from them, That I am applying today?
    88. Do I have a daily ritual in which I reflect on the most important things I have listed so far?
    89. How can I overlap, intersect and create synergies between the different needs and desires I have, Like working and having fun? Working and meeting people, having fun, and earning money?
    90. What is the role of animals in our lives? How can we live more and better with them?
    91. What would it be to live near the sea? Or in the countryside?
    92. What are behaviors that are part of my character that I could change?
    93. What experiment can I do to see what happens if I behave differently from what I’ve been doing so far?
    94. How can I learn from books and past experiences that can be useful for my life without being myself in the first person to experiment?
    95. I want to fly. What would it be to be able to fly?
    96. Why don’t we create virtual worlds to express our desires to be free from our bodies? Like being able to fly?
    97. What about learning and teaching about painting, sculpting, and creating 3d worlds and video games or environments to explore and interact with and live different lives.
    98. What’s the meaning of life? If it is giving sense to others, what purpose am I giving to others?
    99. How do I want to be remembered?
    100.  If being happy means knowing that I did it and doing that thought as the last thought that I think while being alive, what would I be to have done it?
    Will They Shine?
    Will They Shine?
  • Containing Large Multitudes

    Containing Large Multitudes

    This is my Day 1 Article to participate in the CREAZEE Daily Writing Habit Challenge April 2021. And it is also my Day 136 Article since I’ve started to write daily.

    I am Max. Massimo Curatella if you want the full name. Presenting myself has always been a problem.

    Not anymore.

    “Hi, what do you do?” used to be an embarrassing question for me.

    “Yeah, I write about Computer Graphics, but I am also a programmer. I am studying as an Engineer, but I want to make movies and videogames. Yeah, not started yet. In the meantime, I am doing training for architects. No, no, it’s not related, but I like it. Oh, yes, the university courses, I designed and developed them because a friend suggested me to do it for the Physics Faculty. Oh, I think Design is the key success factor of software. I find it even more fun than software development.”

    That would have been one of the many conversations I would hold with people. And I would usually remain with a sense of incompleteness and unsatisfaction.

    Fast forward 20 or 30 years, now I am using my roles in a fluid and fluent way. I can talk “programming” if I am with developers, I can defend “design” with colleagues and client, I can propose “training” with corporate, I would suggest “facilitation” in social innovation and agile management, I can “write and speak” in diverse settings if I need to. (Another day I will tell you about, management, direction, research, coaching, and mentoring).

    Why? Because that is who I am.

    How? By remaining humble, accountable, and, first of all, supporting what I promise with valuable evidence.

    Is it easy? No, it is not, and it took me my entire life to find a bearable balance and make an advantage out of it.

    What about tomorrow?

    Thanks for this question. I’ve found a beautiful way to manage all of the passions and the threads passing through my mind: writing about it.

    And this is just one of those threads.

    I dance between roles and labels. I use them for my benefit. I aim at being what I can be by playing with possibilities and potentiality. That’s who I am today. Ask me again tomorrow.

    Oh, and I am large, by the way.

  • I am ready, I am CREAZEE

    I am ready, I am CREAZEE

    I’ve been preparing for the launch of this moment for some decades. I still remember desiring a project of my own when I started to write for a specialized printed magazine in the 90s. And then for another. And I was then participating in several start-ups, ventures, courses, schools, films, videogames. I always wanted to have a product, a service, a community. And I also tried a few times. With software, first. It took me so close to the occasion of my life, but I was too young to catch it. With an online community, then, but it wasn’t, in the end, what I wanted. So I resume dreaming.

    Until now.

    Now that I have a project that excites me, that keeps me awake at night with the fire of creativity. That evokes closer dreams of achievement. Now that I have been preparing all the materials, the websites, the newsletters, the forums.

    Now that I am at 48 hours from the official launch: I feel sick.

    I didn’t have a cold nor the flu in three years—the time when I decided to walk at least one hour per day. I have been walking for 3’000 km since then—about 80 Km per month. And my life changed. Oh, woman, if it changed. Of all the benefits that I started to get: avoiding colds and flu were among the best.

    And now that I need to have all of my energies and enthusiasm, I have this piercing pain in my ear. Soft sounds rumble like explosions in my head, and I can barely concentrate on writing.

    No fever, no other symptoms, so I don’t think I need to worry about other significant problems.

    So, what is it? Why did I take this minor obstacle as the perfect excuse to avoid working and facing this exciting new beginning?

    It’s fear.

    That’s what it is.

    The fear of failure. The uncertainty of exposing myself. The fear of discovering that this project is not what I am expecting. The fear of not being up to the level of conducting it.

    I am wiser and better equipped than in the past. When on these occasions, I would have remained paralyzed. In the flee or fight, the former would have been the choice.

    But not now.

    I’ve prepared all things needed for the first cohort of my CREAZEE Challenge.

    Everything is ready as I am.

    Despite some small impediments and unreasonable feelings, I am ready.
    I am CREAZEE.

  • What have you learned today?

    What have you learned today?

    Journaling is a powerful practice for self-reflection and leveraging on your experience. You should include in your periodical writing what you have learned during the day or recently. The prompt is very easy: “What have you learned today?” 

    The exercise of going back with your memory to the experience you just lived is important because it reinforces what you have done and allows you to extract the best information. It will become the knowledge you want to synthesize, strengthen, summarize, and store. You can learn with it. You can leverage it.

    The best way to reflect on your recent learnings is to take from 15 minutes to half an hour to record your experience. You could voice-record it. It would be more flowing. It’s just a story you are telling about yourself and the experience you had. Or you could write it down quickly and straightforwardly.

    You should highlight the things you’ve noticed:

    • What surprised you?
    • And then, what did you do about it?
    • What happened in a concise way so that you can summarize the events?
    • And what happened that you want to remember and connect with things that already happened in the past?
    • Or what do you need to remember next time that you will face something similar?
    • Is there a process that you want to grab or of pattern about your approach or behavior?
    • Is there a specific tool that was particularly useful?
    • Or is there anything new that you discovered about new tools, new techniques, new methods, unique names, or new people?

    Collecting your set of questions to query yourself and your memory about it, you get the most value out of your daily life. You will have the possibility of extracting further knowledge or ideas, maybe through abstraction, for instance, or connection. You will get ideas to write about, teach about, or share, or perhaps experiment next time you will face a similar situation.

    If you want to become a better learner and give a higher value to your experiences, keep track of what you have learned daily. 

    It might not be what you think superficially.
    It might not be what you think superficially.