Photo by Mami

I ruffled a few feathers over on Business of Design Online when I wrote about Why You Need to Be Organised to Be Creative. In the comments I was accused of writing ‘LIES!!! ALL LIES!!’ and ‘rubbish!’ because ‘Organisation and routine destroy creativity’ and ‘if you are organized you are probably not very creative’. It’s true that organisation and discipline are probably not the first thing that spring to mind when we think of creativity, but if you look at the actual working habits of highly creative people you’ll usually find these qualities in abundance. Hugh MacLeod puts it more pithily (and poetically) than I can:

Like making a fire from rubbing sticks together, creativity’s heat comes from work. Work requires dedication.

So I wrote that post (which became the first chapter of my e-book on Time Management for Creative People) to highlight the often-overlooked factor of organisation in the creative process - and I stand by it. But now I’m going to follow Roger von Oech’s advice to look at things in reverse and argue the opposite point of view.

Inspiration - the magic 1%

It’s all very well being organised and disciplined, but there comes a point where you have to let go of your carefully crafted structures. Creativity may be 99% perspiration, but without the magic 1% of inspiration, all your hard work will count for nothing. Just ask Salieri. And by definition it comes as a surprise, even a shock - we’re working away on a project or problem, and something unexpected pops into our minds: a line of poetry; a vivid image; a new idea; a catchy riff or rhythm.

Creativity is difficult, unpredictable and often frustrating - but once you’ve experience that ‘Eureka!’ moment of inspiration, it’s hard to imagine why you would devote yourself to anything else. That 1% makes the other 99% a worthwhile investment of effort.

Read the rest of this entry »

Having spent most of this series outlining the What and How of coaching, it’s time to consider the Why - the key benefits to a business where coaching is an integral part of managing performance and developing people’s talents.

I’ve left this till late in this guide because until we’re clear about what coaching is and how it works, it’s hard to consider its impact on an organisation. With all complex ‘people skills’, it is hard to draw a straight line between particular skills and practices and business results. This is particularly true of coaching, as it is essentially a facilitative approach. Whether managers or consultants, coaches act as catalysts for various processes within an organisation, so it’s often hard to separate the different elements that contribute to success.

However we can identify factors that coaching seeks to influence, and consider how it does this. In each case, note how the personal benefits (to both coaches and coachees) are intimately linked to the business benefits. Ideally a company should be looking for a dynamic balance between the two, especially in the context of a creative business.

Commitment

It’s impossible to create commitment - but you can encourage it by giving people an opportunity to (a) work towards goals they find personally meaningful as well as delivering business results, and (b) use their creativity and initiative to do the job in their own way. Coaching offers a wealth of options for doing both of these. In fact, the coaching approach is founded on the assumption that the coach’s role is to act as a facilitator, while the coachee has the biggest emotional investment in the goal and the responsibility for committing to action.

Creativity

Following on from Commitment, because the coach is a facilitator, asking questions, listening and giving feedback in order to stimulate the coachee’s thinking, it is a highly creative process. Not in an abstract, fuzzy way, but in challenging people to come up with ideas that are new, useful and practical - and then to put them into action and see them through. For more on coaching and creativity see How coaching creates creative flow and my next post on Why coaching is vital to creative companies.

Read the rest of this entry »

Having taken a few steps into the New Year and received some great suggestions about what you’d like me to write about in 2008, I’ll pause for a moment to give you an update on some old projects and what to expect over the next few weeks.

New tagline: ‘inspiring creative professionals’

If you look at the header at the top of the page, you’ll see I’ve changed the tagline from ‘coaching creative professionals’ to ‘inspiring creative professionals’. This was partly (ahem) inspired by the beautiful folders in the photo above, which were a present from a friend in Japan. Apart from the fact that my research project revealed that some people in the creative industries are virtually allergic to the word ‘coaching’, these days coaching is only part of what I do - albeit a very important part. As well as coaching, my work now involves blogging, training, presenting and writing e-books - all of which are designed to inspire creative professionals.

And as a poet, I couldn’t resist the double-entendre of ‘inspiring creative professionals’ as ‘creative professionals who are inspiring’. That would be you, by the way.

So I’ve decided ‘inspiring creative professionals’ is much more it.

Read the rest of this entry »

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Photo by givepeasachance

From the outside, the writer pottering around the house while the laptop gathers dust, and the performer shaking with fear backstage might look very different. But having personally experienced both writer’s block and stage nerves, as well as coaching many writers and performers through them, I’ve come to the conclusion that they are basically the same thing.

To see what I mean, let’s take the idea of a block literally, and look at the phenomenon of board breaking by martial artists.

To see someone break a board, brick or concrete block with bare hands or feet looks amazing, but the evidence suggests that it’s a question of technique rather than magical powers. Given the proper training, anyone can learn to do it. In the Kung Fu Science project, kung fu expert Chris Crudelli teamed up with physicist Michelle Cain to investigate the physical forces at work.

On the Kung Fu Science website, Crudelli explains the key points of the technique of breaking boards, one of which is particularly relevant to creative blocks:

Speed and Point of Focus

‘The most important thing is to make sure the hand is moving fast enough when it hits the wood. Advice often given is to imagine that what you’re hitting is actually well behind the board. This ensures the hand doesn’t slow down before the point of impact. Confidence is also important here; you have to believe that your hand is going straight through the board, or you will naturally slow down to avoid hurting yourself.’

Read the rest of this entry »

Photo by ButterflySha

Happy New Year! I hope 2008 will be a creative and fulfilling year for you.

The holiday has given me a little time to reflect on this blog and what I want to do with it this year. I’ve got plenty of ideas lined up - but as the blog is designed to help you realise your creative ambitions, I’d like to hear what you would like me to write about in 2008…

So it would be really helpful if you would leave a comment or send an e-mail with your answers to any or all of the following questions:

1. What were your favourite posts on Wishful Thinking in 2007? Why?

If you’re new to the blog have a look at the Best of Wishful Thinking 2007 to get an idea of the topics I write about.

2. What topics would you like me to write about in 2008?

I mostly write about creativity, managing creativity, emotional intelligence and the challenges faced by creative professionals. I also touch on specific creative industries and issues relevant to them. Have a look at the categories list in the right sidebar to get a sense of the topics I cover.

So if you would like more posts about particular topics, now’s a good time to speak up!

3. Are there any specific issues you’d like me to address?

I try to address the creative and work-related challenges faced by creative professionals, and to get a reasonable balance between the needs of freelancers and agency/company workers.

Are there any creative challenges, problems or situations you face in your work that you’d like me to address?

Photo by judepics: Planet Greenwich (home of Wishful Thinking)

Thank you for reading Wishful Thinking in 2007. It’s been great fun writing it and connecting with so many interesting and creative people - online and in person.

Here’s my personal selection of the best of Wishful Thinking in 2007, based partly on my own judgment, partly on the amount of visitors, comments and links they attracted.

I hope you (re)discover something to inspire you. Have a great New Year, see you on the other side…

January

How to Maintain Your Enthusiasm When Things Get Tough

7 Ways to Stop Worrying When You’re Under Pressure

February

7 Ways to Tap into Enthusiasm

Interview with David Amor, Creative Director, Relentless Software

March

David Armano on Management

An Introduction to Business Coaching

April

Chris Ritke Interviews Me at 49Sparks.com

The Manager as Coach

May

A Blog Is for Life, Not Just for Christmas - British Library Talk

Getting in Touch with Creativity - Roger von Oech’s Ball of Whacks

Brian Eno - 77 Million Paintings Read the rest of this entry »

Photo by Arlindo71

Well it’s been a busy month so far on Wishful Thinking and Business of Design Online - my e-book about Time Management for Creative People has been downloaded nearly 20,000 times and has attracted some great reviews and feedback.

A big thank you to everyone who has downloaded, forwarded, linked, commented or e-mailed to say they have found it useful. It’s been fantastic to see the book featured on some of my favourite blogs such as Copyblogger and Lifehacker, and Brian Wallace at Nowsourcing made the front page of Digg with his post about the e-book.

I’ve also enjoyed following the incoming links to new blogs and discovering people applying and adapting the ideas to their own situation. There’s not space to link to them all here, but have a look through the Technorati links pages for my post about the e-book and the ones on Business of Design Online.

If you haven’t seen it yet, feel free to download the e-book and share it with anyone who might find it useful.

Photo by michale

Conventional marketing wisdom says you should be ‘customer focused’ and do your best to satisfy consumers’ wants and needs. But it’s a different story when it comes to creative work. Many of the most successful artists achieved fame by provoking and offending public taste.

These days the Impressionists are safe choices for coffee table books and coasters, but in 1863 they had to resort to an ‘Exhibition of Rejects’ after their works were consistently refused by the major galleries in Paris. The exhibition attracted much scorn and ridicule, but gradually the public was won over and took the works to its heart.

In 1913, the first performance of Igor Stravinsky’s ballet The Rite of Spring ended in a riot. The ‘primitive’ and ‘violent’ rhythms of the music and dance shocked an audience used to a more sedate evening’s entertainment. Stravinsky left the theatre in tears - but the ballet’s impresario, Diaghilev, said the riot was “just what I wanted”.

In 1915 T.S. Eliot’s poem ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’ was published in the American magazine Poetry, its bold departures from the conventions of literary verse provoking outrage as well as delight. Eliot later observed that a writer must create the taste by which he is received - and proceeded to do just that in The Criterion, the literary magazine he founded and edited.

In 1985 the Jesus and Mary Chain played the North London Polytechnic. They stood with their backs to the audience and played a very short set, consisting mostly of loud guitars and piercing feedback. The inevitable riot ensued, earning them massive coverage in the music press, to the delight of their manager Alan McGhee, who had invited journalists to the gig.

All these artists show that sometimes the way to please an audience is to outrage it, gaining attention, notoriety and - later on - respect and admiration for following their own vision. On the other hand, artists (like some pop acts or Hollywood films) who are perceived as having been ‘manufactured’ to target a niche audience often fade away after an initial rush of success, as tastes move on. Audiences can show little respect for those who are too eager to please. Read the rest of this entry »

Photo by tj scenes

It’s notoriously difficult for artists and creatives to critique their own work - we put so much of ourselves into it, we find it hard to achieve the necessary critical detachment. As Flaubert said, ‘A book is essentially organic, part of ourselves. We tear a length of gut from our bellies and serve it up’.

Here are three basic strategies for getting some critical distance on your own work:

1. Distance in space

From Leonardo da Vinci’s advice to artists:

We know very well that errors are better recognized in the works of others than in our own; and often by reproving little faults in others, we may ignore great ones in ourselves… I say that when you paint you should have a flat mirror and often look at your work as reflected in it, when you will see it reversed, and it will appear to you like some other painter’s work, so you will be better able to judge of its faults than in any other way. Again it is well that you should often leave off work and take a little relaxation, because when you come back to it you are a better judge; for sitting too close to a work may greatly deceive you. Again it is good to retire to a distance because the work looks smaller and your eye takes in more of it at a glance and sees more easily the lack of harmony and proportion in the limbs and colours of the objects.
(Leonardo da Vinci, Notebooks)

Sometimes it helps to completely change the environment where you experience the work. In the film 24 Hour Party People, the band Joy Division sit in their manager’s car to listen to their album for the first time, as this is how their audience will hear the songs on the radio.

2. Distance in time

As well as physical distance from the picture, Leonardo suggests that the artist take a break in order to come back ‘better able to judge’. Even a short interval of time can be enough to break the connection with your work and approach it afresh. Poet and novelist Maya Angelou uses a similar strategy, devoting mornings to writing a draft and evenings to editing it:

if April is the cruellest month, then eight o’clock at night is the cruellest hour, because that’s when I start to edit and all that pretty stuff I’ve written gets axed out. So if I’ve written 10 or 12 pages in six hours, it’ll end up as three or four if I’m lucky.
(from Creators on Creating, Ed. Frank Barron, Alfonso Montuori, Anthea Barron)

3. Seeing through others’ eyes

The easiest way to find out how your work looks to others is to ask them. Make sure you pick someone you can trust and whose opinion you respect. I’m currently attending a brilliant poetry workshop run by Mimi Khalvati, mainly because she has an almost supernatural ability to see to the heart of a poem, even in early draft form, and suggest unexpected ways of improving it. She doesn’t hold back if the writing isn’t up to scratch, but she does it so skilfully that even if she’s telling me to rewrite the whole thing I come out of the class feeling inspired and eager to get back to the writing.

If you aren’t able to consult your audience or respected critics, the next best thing is to use your imagination. Put yourself in their shoes - how does that feel? How does the world look through their eyes? How does the work look? What would they have to say about it?

How about you?

What strategies do you use for assessing your own creative work?

My series on Time Management for Creative People is now available to download as a free e-book. It’s subtitled ‘Manage the Mundane - Create the Extraordinary’ as it’s designed to help you maintain your creative focus while dealing with your other commitments.

It’s published under a Creative Commons licence which means you are welcome to share it on a noncommercial basis with anyone you think would like it, as long as you keep it intact with my name on it. (N.B. the images are licensed from istockphoto, so you should obtain a licence from them if you want to use them in other contexts - photographer credits are on p.2)

A big thank you to Cat Morley and Neil Tortorella for prompting me to write the material and hosting it as a series on Business of Design Online. The final post in the series, on time management Resources, is up on BoDo now.

I hope you find the e-book useful - let me know your experiences in the comments or via e-mail.