I make a cameo appearance in the January edition of Creative Review. The magazine features the web designers WeFail, who have been working together for 4 years and only met 3 times, partly because one of them is in the States and the other in the UK, but mostly because they prefer collaborating online. And they don’t meet their clients, who include Eminem, Dixie Chicks, Christian Aid and BBDO.

Creative Review asked me what I thought of WeFail’s working practice - well, I’d better not steal their thunder by repeating it here so I’ll just say I was intrigued by their approach and after several months blogging it makes a lot more sense than it would have beforehand. A bit like Russell’s idea of the Global small business.

Come to think of it, I did the Creative Review piece without meeting or even talking to Mark Sinclair who commissioned it. We did it all by e-mail and I didn’t give the process a second thought. It seemed normal.

Technorati Tags: Creative Review, WeFail

I’m pleased to say Mrs Wishful Thinking and I both passed our aikido red belt grading last night.

I was impressed by the grading test - it was quite formal, we had to line up and perform the techniques in front of the rest of the class, black belts in front of us, brown belts watching from behind. And there’s something very satisfying about having passed the first test - like the first step on a long journey. Breaking things down into specific, measurable steps is good practice in setting goals, and aikido has evidently got this down to a fine art.

This is one of the things we had to do - we weren’t as fast or agressive as this though.

Here’s my third and final New Year’s Resolution, following on from No.1 - Make My Blogging More Like My Coaching and No.2 - Write More Poetry. As promised, I’ll follow up my own resolutions with a post about Why New Year’s Resolutions Fail - and what to do about it.

All this digital stuff is great fun, but you can have too much of a good thing. The more time I spend on blogging and related activities, the more I need to balance it out with some physical activity to keep me grounded in the real world. This became particularly clear to me last summer, when my MA research project took over my life and my visits to the gym petered out. So when autumn came round, I took the opportunity to start learning aikido - a martial art I had been curious about for ages.

I was fortunate enough to discover Meridian Aikido, a club within walking distance of my home (eliminating one excuse for missing classes) whose members have been very friendly and helpful. One of the things that attracted me to aikido was its un-macho emphasis on ethical self-defence - using an attacker’s own force and momentum to catch them off-balance and immobilise them without harming them. The spirit of aikido seems very evident in the relaxed, welcoming atmosphere at the Meridian dojo, and I’ve been very impressed with the members’ eagerness to help us learn the ropes. There’s something quite humbling about having a black-belt practitioner patiently spend 15 minutes showing me how to throw him properly, getting up again and again to show me where I’m going wrong.

I’ve been told that it typically takes longer to learn aikido than other martial arts. Having spent a term trying to get to grips with the basics, it certainly seems fiendishly complicated and difficult. But I’ve also had glimpses of something profoundly enjoyable, even exhilarating. A few times when ‘throwing’ someone has felt more like stepping out of the way and letting them fall by themselves. Or feeling the same effortless momentum being thrown off the end of a jo staff.

So my third New Year’s Resolution is to make a habit of aikido practice. Preferably every day. I obviously can’t practise on the mat every day, but I should at least be able to manage some of the warm-up and co-ordination exercises. Fortunately Mrs Wishful Thinking is also learning, so I’ll have a partner for practice. (Unfortunately this means she can now inflict severe pain on me with minimal effort…)

The philosophy of aikido is that it’s not just a fighting discipline but should be integrated into your whole life. My coaching work often involves untangling disagreements and resolving conflict, so I’m really interested to see what I can learn from aikido principles in this area. And because I believe creativity is a full-body sport, I’m hoping aikido will help to keep me in creative flow.

I’m posting this today partly as a way of focusing my attention for my first grading test tonight - for the rank of 6th Kyu (red belt). Wish me luck!

Technorati Tags: aikido, goals, New Year’s Resolutions

Thanks to Alfredo for this photo of his daily commute to work in Mexico, from his beautiful photoblog. In my Second New Year’s Resolution post, I asked how readers find time for creativity in the middle of a busy schedule - here’s his reply from the comments:

“My creative outlet is photography. I started a photoblog almost two years ago and soon found myself out of pictures to post and out of time to shoot. I started carrying my camera all the time and soon I was taking pictures of my daily commute, from my car. It has turned out to be an interesting, often unexplored subject matter for photography and kept the pictures and the posts coming.”

It’s an ingenious solution to the problem of finding time for creativity, and he’s taken some stunning pictures. Look at the In Transit category to see the commuting photos, but do explore the rest of his blog, it’s a treasure-trove.

We had an e-mail discussion about how scenes that are familiar and everyday to us can seem exotic and inspiring to others - although I doubt whether the views from my trip on the Docklands Light Railway would compare with the colours and sights in Alfredo’s photos.

“What you say about familair vs. exotic resonates very much. I don’t know how deep you want to go into it in your post, but one interesting thing about most of my work is that I’m a Venezuelan living in Mexico, so everything I see here IS very exotic to me. I’ve been here for four years already and find myself constantly amazed at what I see everyday. Of course, Mexico is a very colorful place, but I think there is also an internal excercise in keeping oneself permeable to what’s around.”

I love that phrase, “keeping oneself permeable to what’s around” - a good reminder for all of us, regardless of our creative medium.

The mesmerising Thousand-Hand Guan Yin - Chinese Goddess of Compassion.

Via The Directory of Lost Causes.

Very enjoyable coffee morning yesterday. Thanks to Russell for organising it and providing the badges. If you look at his second photo, he’s caught me wolfing down a muffin.

Lots of friendly and interesting people, a bit like blogging in real life. People I met included Paul, John and Noah. Noah organised pre-coffee coffee via Likemind I might try to get to that next time, if my system can stand all the caffeine. And Antonio made it down from Birmingham.

It was my first visit to The Breakfast Club which I thoroughly recommend. Especially the Breakfast Club Club (sandwich) - tastes as good as it reads.

Coffee mornings are most Fridays at 11 - details in the top left of Russell’s blog. It’s a great way to meet bloggers and other creative types, I’m planning on going more often this year so maybe I’ll see you there…

A big thank you to Cat Morley for featuring Wishful Thinking on Designers Who Blog today. She’s even gone to the trouble of creating a Wishful Thinking banner for the feature, which I’m proudly displaying here.

Designers Who Blog does what it says on the tin:

DWB features blogs discussing graphic design, web design, illustration, marketing, photography, branding, writing and advertising.

As a non-designer I’m particularly pleased to have made the cut. DWB has an excellent - and very extensive - selection of blogs. If you’re involved in any of the above industries I’d say it’s a must-read and must-subscribe. It was an instant addition to my blogroll and feed reader.

As well as the featured blogs, there are some great articles on DWB. At the moment there’s a New Year’s Resolution series, Learn to Write, which includes some good practical tips as well as thoughts on Why Designers Should be Writers.

Although I only ‘met’ Cat this week when she proposed the feature, I’ve been very impressed with her already - not only is she very passionate about what she does, she’s already been very helpful, offering suggestions and site recommendations on an almost daily basis.

Cat’s other projects include Creative Latitude, “a worldwide community that unites various creative disciplines for collective promotion, education and ethical business practice”, and NO!SPEC, a site on a mission “to educate the public about speculative, or ’spec’ work” (i.e. designers being asked to produce work with no guarantee of payment) on the basis that “that spec work devalues the potential of design and ultimately does a disservice to the client”.

I don’t know how she finds the time for it all, but judging from the buzz on her sites there are lots of people who are glad she does. Including me.

Technorati Tags: Designers Who Blog

Following on from my first New Year’s Resolution, here’s my second one. Once I’ve posted my resolutions, I’ll be writing about Why Most New Year’s Resolutions Fail - and what to do about it.

2. Write More Poetry

In terms of creativity, writing poetry is my ‘first love’. Over the past couple of years however, it’s had to take a back seat for several reasons: firstly, most of my writing time has been taken up with the MA in Creative and Media Enterprises at Warwick University, for which I’ve been studying part-time. Secondly, I had a fantastic opportunity to join the editorial committee of Magma, one of the foremost poetry magazines in the UK. I was an offer I couldn’t turn down, and I’m having tremendous fun and learning a huge amount by working with my colleagues on the magazine. The most intensive time was last year when I read thousands of poems as editor of Magma 34, which I’m very proud of. Finally, there’s been the small matter of attending to my clients’ creativity and keeping Wishful Thinking going.

So I took a conscious decision to put my own writing on the back burner temporarily - but I made a promise to myself that once the MA was over, I’d carve out some time for writing poetry again, hence this New Year’s Resolution.

The big danger of course, is that the poetry gets squeezed out by the pressures of business - what the Irish poet Louis MacNeice called “The perennial if unimportant problem / Of getting enough to eat”. So I’m making efforts to ensure that I keep my promise to myself. One of them is by posting the resolution up here - it’s amazing what a good reminder a public commitment can be!

And tomorrow I’m starting the Advanced Poetry Workshop run by Mimi Khalvati at the Poetry School. I’m really looking forward to it - as well as being an outstanding poet, Mimi is one of the best teachers I’ve ever had (for any subject) and her classes are invariably full of talented and interesting writers. So this feels like my creative ‘reward’ for all that time I spent studying strategy, marketing and intellectual property.

If you’re interested in poetry, you can follow my reading and writing on my poetry blog, Mark McGuinness | poetry.

And if you’ve got any tips on finding space for creative pursuits in the midst of a pressing work schedule, please share them in the comments.

Technorati Tags: creative writing, poetry school, New Year’s Resolutions

In my last post, How to Maintain Your Enthusiasm When Things Get Tough, I started answering a question from a comment on my post 5 Reasons Why Enthusiasm is Better than Confidence. Ludivine wanted to know what to do ‘when worrying about practical and financial issues stifles enthusiasm’.

I began by suggesting that:

1. Maintaining enthusiasm is key to overcoming such difficulties, particularly for creative professionals.
2. In order to maintain your enthusiasm, you need to stop worrying.

Worry is a many-headed beast, like the Hydra - it’s hard to stop it at the first attempt, but if you are persistent and try several different points of attack, you can overcome it in the end. It will probably take a few of the following techniques in combination - so experiment with them and see which ones work for you.

1. Physical activity

A few years ago I was dealing with a series of financial, work and emotional problems that I won’t bore you with here. My typical emotional state veered between anxiety (”What am I going to do?”) and depression (”It doesn’t make any difference what I do”). One of my ways of dealing with the situation was to run round my local park every day. I made myself do the run because afterwards I would feel significantly better than before it, and found it much easier to stay present and centred in my body. Because of this, I was much less prone to get lost in worry.

Physical activity is a great way to get ‘out of your head’ and recover a feeling of calmness and mental clarity. You’ll get most benefit from a really good workout, but any physical activity that engages your senses can make a difference - washing the dishes, walking down the road for a pint of milk, enjoying a hot bath or making something with your hands.

If you want a calming physical activity you can easily incorporate into your daily routine, here’s a walking meditation exercise I learned a few years ago from the monks at Amaravati:

1. Choose a time and place where you won’t be disturbed. Early morning or last thing at night are good for setting you up for the day or a good night’s sleep.
2. Pick two spots, from 6 to 15 feet apart, and clear the space so you can walk between them.
3. Stand on the first spot, close your eyes and focus on your feet. Notice how they feel right now - warm? cool? tense? relaxed? Feel the floor pressing against the soles of you feet. Don’t try to relax, just notice how your feet feel right now.
4. Gradually sweep your attention up your body - up your legs, your torso, down the arms and lastly up to the crown of your head. For each part of your body, just notice the physical sensations you’re experiencing right now.
5. Once you have your whole body in your awareness, from head to foot, expand your awareness to listen to all the sounds around you, near and far - while still keeping your attention on your body as well.
6. Lastly, open your eyes and notice all the colours and shapes you can see - while still listening and sensing your body.
7. Very slowly walk towards the other point you chose at 2., noticing how your muscles feel as you move them.
8. Don’t worry if your mind wanders! It happens to everyone. Each time you get lost in thought, bring your attention back to your body.
9. Keep walking up and down as long as you like. Doing this for even a couple of minutes a day can have a noticeable calming effect on you. The more often you practise it, the better you will feel.

Read the rest of this entry »

My post on 5 Reasons Why Enthusiasm is Better than Confidence has turned out to be the most popular piece I’ve written on Wishful Thinking. It’s been very encouraging to receive the comments, links and e-mails from people who say it resonates with their experience and they find it helpful in igniting their enthusiasm.

And of course, there are times when it’s not so easy to feel enthusiastic. Yesterday Ludivine raised a very good question in the comments:

what about when worrying about practical & financial issues stifles enthusiasm ?

I’ve worked with lots of clients facing exactly this issue. Plus I’ve faced a fair share of ‘practical and financial issues’ myself. It’s a situation most of us face at some point in our lives, and the artistic/creative disciplines have a particularly strong tradition of financial hardship on the way to success. So I think it’s worth taking some time to consider it and offer some suggestions.

I’m going to assume there’s no quick fix for the practical and financial issues, and concentrate on how to minimize worry and maximise your enthusiasm in the face of such difficulties in order to overcome them.

In this post, I’ll cover two key points:

1. Enthusiasm offers you a way out of your difficulties

2. To release your enthusiasm, you need to find a way to stop worrying (even before the difficulties are resolved)

Then in my next two posts I’ll offer some Practical Tips to Stop Worrying and Ways to Tap into your Enthusiasm.

1. Enthusiasm offers you a way out of your difficulties

Your enthusiasm is one of your most valuable assets - financially as well as emotionally. If you look at the description in my original post, you can see that enthusiasm is a state you achieve when you’re at your most energetic, engaging and productive. Work done with enthusiasm doesn’t seem like work - it’s something we do for the sheer joy of it. And I’m not talking about self-indulgence - if you look at the post above you can see that enthusiasm isn’t about being focused on yourself, but on the task and on other people.If you consider enthusiasm in blunt practical terms, when you focus on a task and its impact on others, and do it with the maximum energy and commitment, that’s when you deliver the greatest value in your work. Which of course is when others are most likely to sit up, take notice and reward you financially (and in other ways). Read the rest of this entry »