Introduction

I’ve been doing this creative dance with Alteryx and Tableau for a while now. In fact, it has been years and the time is flying by. The fun I’ve had doing it is not easy to explain to people unfamiliar with this creative endeavor.

I’ve poked and I’ve prodded,  tested and retested ideas, trying to uncover the motivation and the reasons why I am so passionate for these specific pieces of software.

I’m going to show you what I did and tell you what I have learned in this pursuit. I guarantee you that the results will surprise you.

Tableau Creativity and Passion

I have written 18 articles that have attempted to unlock the secret of how Tableau spawns creativity and passion (Figure 1). This topic is the third-highest performing topic of the 3danim8 Blogging Experiment. A lot of people apparently like trying to figure this out, too, because they are willing to read my thoughts on the topic.

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If you pick the Tableau category and Commentary subcategory buttons, you can launch any of the articles instantly (Figure 2). The highlighted article happens to be one of the newest in the series and I think it happens to be my best work that nobody has read since it has a whopping 37 reads to date. The name of the article definitely masks the insights contained within.

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Alteryx Creativity and Passion

I have written 12 articles that have attempted to unlock the secret of how Alteryx spawns creativity and passion (Figure 3). This was also another topic of interest to people reading this blog.

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If you pick the Alteryx category and Commentary subcategory buttons, you can launch any of the articles instantly (Figure 4). There are a lot of insights buried in these articles.

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Finally, I now have the answer to the magic of Tableau and Alteryx, and it has nothing to do with my investigative work with these products.  The answer has to do with Big Magic.

This Big Magic concept is much more universal than my work has been and it is more widespread than I ever realized it could be. Big Magic is in all of us as human beings.

How Did I Discover Big Magic?

On July 21, 2016, I was listening to a Rich Roll podcast and Rich slipped in a little diddly about an author named Elizabeth Gilbert. I admit that I was unfamiliar with her work. Rich said something like:

Elizabeth is great – I love her writing.

I immediately went to Audible and downloaded a book called Big Magic (Figure 5) because it looked interesting. I immediately forgot about it. That was a mistake.

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Fast-Forward Five Months

Two days ago, I was doing the weekly drive to Georgia and I got a little tired of listening to Rich’s coach talk about training methods. You see, when you listen to every Rich Roll podcast, there isn’t much time to listen to anything else! However, since Rich is my best teacher of all-time, I remembered that diddly and decided to hit the play button on Big Magic. Rich has never steered me down the wrong path to learning.

Bingo. Chills. Laughter. Instant gratification. Complete understanding.

This book is so damn good on so many levels that I think everyone that has passion for data science, data viz, or any other passionate pursuit in their life needs to read it. It is phenomenal. Elizabeth’s insights are so consistent with what I have experienced that I know that there must be validity to what she wrote.

I have to say it again: This book is for everyone. Go get it. Listen to Elizabeth read it to you or just read it yourself. Buy it as a gift this holiday season. Spread the knowledge contained in that work. You can thank me later for helping you understand yourself better. Five hours and eleven bucks is all that it takes.

Final Thoughts

That is all I have to say about this because Elizabeth will teach you all that you ever wanted to know about creativity, including where it comes from and the vital role it plays in your life, whether you know it or not.

Do it now – don’t waste another minute. Thanks for reading.