Tom Monahan demonstrating Jimi Hendrix's imaginary guitar.

There's a story told by Jimi's dad that sheds some interesting light on the vivid imagination of the guitar wizard of Purple Haze fame. The elder Hendrix says he always knew when his son was practicing to be a rocker. Seems the splintered broom bristles on the bedroom floor gave it away every time. Do you believe it? One of the best rock guitarists of all time was writing songs and "playing", too, even before he owned a guitar. Talk about imagination. And we need our computers to be creative? Yeah, right. This photo is from a recent speech Tom gave before nearly 2,000 people at the HOW Conference in Dallas.

Tom suggests a "Cliff's notes" of biographies of great creative minds.

Over the years I have discovered that some of the most valuable lessons in creative thinking and problem solving come from the lives of high achieving people. I came across this link from TIME's top 100 achievers of the last century: http://www.pathfinder.com/time/time100/index.html Some great stories here. Personally inspirational and many great refreshers to the lessons from the B&A program, i.e. TV inventor Farnsworth conceived the idea of electronic television - the moment of inspiration

coming, according to legend, while he was tilling a potato field back and forth with a horse- drawn harrow and realized that an electron beam could scan images the same way, line by line, just as you read a book." A great example of Intergalactic Thinking™.  Cool stuff. In a very 21st Century "I'm-too- busy- to- read- as- many- biographies- as- I'd- like" form. Save the link. And I suggest you soak it up soon. My guess is that TIME won't be keeping this posted forever."

Tom's Book: The Do-It-Yourself Lobotomy

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