Archives: Creativity

Dmitri Shostakovich composed extraordinarily quickly. Once he heard the piece in his head, he would pour the notes onto the page. He could manage 20-30 pages of score a day and rarely made corrections.

I can’t write that fast. I can’t write music at all, but let’s leave that to one side. Words vs. music may be an indirect comparison, but even with the benefit of technology I can’t come close to that speed (or endurance).

Shostakovich, however, constantly worried that he worked too fast. He wrote a letter to a friend saying, “Undoubtedly this is bad… composing is a serious business.”, an idea that is so clearly ridiculous that it left me hoping his friend wrote back to tell him as much.

We must never get caught up in the idea there there is one right way to do something – a proper way or, even worse, the “done” way.

My wife and I make tea totally differently, but they usually taste the same. 

Lee Child’s writing process is totally different to Haruki Murakami, but they have both written bestsellers.

Clint Eastwood, when he directs a movie, shoots as few takes as possible, while David Fincher is renowned for shooting 20, 50, even 100 takes of a single shot before moving on. They’ve both made masterpieces. 

The way we succeed is not by doing things the way someone else does them, but by finding the way that suits us and owning it.

After all, for all his worrying, Shostakovich was a pretty solid composer all things considered.

Share your work, even when it scares you. Pick up the phone, even when it scares you. Tell someone what they mean to you, even when it scares you. Apply for that job, even when it scares you. Be honest with someone, even when it scares you.

Yesterday I sent the first draft of the first three chapters of my first ever novel to my wife and my brother. I’ve never written anything like this before and I’m not ready to share it yet. I’m not ready for other people to read it. I’m scared of what they’re going to say.

Which is why I had to share it.

Fear holds me back more often than I’d like to admit. It holds me back even in those times I refuse to admit to myself that I’m scared. In those times, fear manifests itself as perfectionism, it surfaces in excuses. Those are the times I need to share my art.

Not despite the fact that it scares me, because of the fact it scares me.

Doing things, even when they scare you, is a mantra I’ve had for myself for a long time. It’s also one I rarely listen to. So I’m trying harder.

When I’m pottering around the house, making tea, washing up, vacuuming or any of the other household tasks I don’t do often enough, I listen to podcasts. Yesterday while doing some extended kitchen cleaning after a messier-than-necessary roast chicken dinner, I was listening to Tim Ferris’s latest podcast with Seth Godin and it helped me to realise that I need to move on from my current state of fear, confusion or just plain laziness and start doing the work.

I frequently battle with Seth’s work. Some of it is inspired, inspirational and intrinsically motivational. Other books and posts seem more polemical, more dictatorial, more out-and-out instructional – the kind of thing that I bump up against. But it always makes me think, which is why I’m so addicted to listening to him talk.

What stuck in my mind listening to this conversation was the same thing that stuck with me in the first conversation Tim had with Seth on his podcast, the same thing that stuck with me the second time Tim had him on the podcast and the same thing that stuck with me reading Do The Work 1 , which seems like the least imaginative and best book title of just about any book you’ll find on the virtual shelves of the Kindle store (if, like me, visiting physical book stores it out of the question at the moment). The idea of showing up every day, doing the work and not making excuses for failing to do something every day has always, always resonated with me even as I’ve consistently failed to do it.

“Just do it” may be one of the best-known and most cited inspirational instructions in the world, but it’s also an inappropriate attitude, Seth says. “‘Just do it’ implies ‘what the hell’, ‘it doesn’t matter’ [which] pushes you to be a hack who’s not responsible for your own work.”

By contrast, “merely” doing the work takes us away from time spent catastrophising the work and its results. And catastrophising is what I do best, both in work and in life. I’ve shied away from continuing to post on here or on my YouTube channel because I’ve been spending too much time worrying about what image I want to project of myself. I’ve worried about how people will see me. I’ve worried about people disagreeing with me. I’ve worried about a lot of things and I am still worrying.

But the worry and the outright fear is stopping me from doing anything. It’s paralysing. So the time has come to start trying2 to spend some time everyday merely doing the work. Merely spending time each day on an act of creation, whether that’s written word on here, a video to share on YouTube or working on the edits to the novel I wrote during lockdown that I’m feeling massive resistance towards.

I don’t want to be afraid of making or sharing my art any more. But the only way I’m going to defeat that fear is, paradoxically, by making and sharing my art.

This post, then, is the first step. One step, every day, will eventually lead me somewhere. Where that is—for now—I’m not sure. I simply know that I can’t wait until I’m certain of my destination to set out because I’ll just spend all my time poring over maps and weighing up the options. Perfection will never happen. The sooner I understand that, the sooner I’ll be able to keep on keeping on.

This might not work. But it also might.

1. This is an affiliate link, which means I get a small amount of money if you choose to purchase the book. If you’d rather not do that, you can use this link instead. [↩]
2. Note: I try a lot of things that don’t work, so who knows where this will end up going? [↩]

A nice work-related smile today as we presented some initial creative concepts for a big piece of work that is rapidly descending on us.

Any creative will know presentation of concepts to a senior leadership team is always slightly nerve-wracking as you face that awkward “what do I do with this if they don’t like it?!” thought process.

Luckily they not only liked it, some of them even mentioned that when they first heard the concept they really didn’t get it and thought it would be a dead end, but seeing the execution and possibilities they got almost excited.

Score one for the creatives today!

January was a terrible start to 2015, but when it comes to the habit change I was looking for, I actually achieved quite a lot and am now meditating regularly.

For February, I’m looking to upgrade my writing practice and stop myself slipping, so I’ll be trying to get into the habit of writing at least 500 words per day.

Writing has taken something of a back seat for me in recent years, subsumed beneath the dense foliage of the working world where the lengthiest pieces I compose are emails on strategy and execution. I miss writing for the joy of writing, I miss writing to solve problems and I miss writing to get people to think, to provoke reactions whatever they may be.

Writing is where my passion lies, that’s where my talent lies, where I’m happiest – pouring out words onto a page to eventually engage and impact, in some form or another, the eventual reader, listener or viewer.

So this month I will be writing something every day. I don’t know yet whether I’ll come to focus on just one writing project or flit from thing to thing, but whichever it is, I will make progress one day at a time, 500 words at a time.

The only rule I’m setting myself is that the words I write must be easily countable (ie, written in a writing app of some kind) and therefore social media posts don’t count and nor does journalling at home, which I hand-write. Emails definitely don’t count.

If things go to plan I’ll be back here in 28 days with at least 14,000 words written for something, somewhere. Stay tuned!

Everyone has a story. If you’re sitting there thinking to yourself, “But I don’t,” – you’re wrong.

If someone asks you where you were born, do you have any brothers or sisters, what you do for a living, you answer them with the start of a story.

How you got to where you are today is your story. Everything we do in life is part of our story, each individual moment just waiting to be put into the context of a whole life.

So don’t try to tell me you don’t have a story.

How interesting your story is depends on many things, not least how good you are at telling it. In the hands of a masterful storyteller even the most uneventful of stories can be fascinating; the phone book can surpass War and Peace.

But stories also depend on living a life worth telling people about.

That doesn’t mean we all have to drop everything and go skydiving or bungee jumping just to have a story to tell. A life worth talking about is simply a life filled with rich experiences, things that make us grow and develop as people, whether they’re good or bad.

Vulnerability can be one of the most powerful storytelling devices. We’ve all read (and got bored with) stories of people doing amazing things, of achieving incredible heights in their lives, or splashing their success on fast cars and globe-trotting. But failing creates powerful stories, too.

Stories are all about connection – connection between the teller and the listener (or reader, or viewer) – and connection comes from creating emotional empathy. So making yourself vulnerable and sharing the things that haven’t gone so well is something we can all relate to: at some point or another we have all failed.

It’s that connection that I love most about stories. They give us the benefit of other people’s experiences to empathise with and learn from. I get so inspired by other people’s stories and I love to share both theirs and mine with the world.

I would love for Smile Through It to become a place for stories of change, of people who are embracing their second chance at life regardless of whether it came about through a huge, dramatic, external force (like mine), or through sheer force of will where they recognised a need to change and set about doing it.

Do you have a story to tell (see above: of course you do). Email me and let me know; I’d love to share it with my readers.

When I first started blogging, back in the dusty days of 2006, I began with a Statement of Intent. At the time, it was designed to remind me of the reasons I started the blog in the first place as well as letting people know what they could expect from me and it.

Over the years my blogs have changed faces many times, but this new facelift is something more. The simplified design and stripped-down visuals serve to remind me of the meandering thoughts and intentions that I let take over here and to keep me sharply, intensely focussed on what this blog is becoming.

You’ll notice the old name, SmileThroughIt1, is back because rack my brains as I may, I couldn’t think of a better way to sum up the purpose of this site or the ideas I live by.

What is SmileThroughIt? Put simply, it’s a philosophy of life that helped carry me through some of my toughest times. While waiting for my transplant, not knowing if it would come in time, I learned to focus on the good things in life. More than that, I learned that if I could find just one thing every day that made me smile, that day had been worth it.

This site is here to help me make the most of the second chance I’ve been given and if, through that, I can help, inspire or motivate other people, so much the better.

Before the lengthy break in updates, I’d started blogging to please others, to write what I thought people wanted, to ‘optimise’ my posts. But looking back over my archives, both on here and the original site’s archives, I saw that my best writing and the most effective posts came not from targeting an “audience”, but rather writing something for myself.

Although I hate to admit it, it’s not just my blog that has been through many twists and turns and a distinct loss of focus. Everything that’s happened in this blog has been mirrored in my day-to-day life and it bothers me that I feel like I’m letting this second chance slip past me without grasping every second.

This blog will reflect my change in mood, attitude and approach to my second chance at life and, hopefully, will help guide others through similar changes in their own life.

This story has no planned ending, no final goal, no means by which to measure its success or failure. This blog, like all of us, just is. And what it is comes from what’s inside and the people who read, contribute and support its aims, ideals and author (that’s me) along the steps of its journey.

Come along for the ride.

1. and I’ve moved all of the archives onto this single site, instead of stripped across two blogs [↩]

In yesterday’s post I talked about how mistakes are now open for public consumption thanks to the permanence of the internet.

What does that mean for innovation and leadership?

It means you have to fail bigger. Fail better. Fail publicly.

Too many people see the increased visibility of failure as a reason to go all out to avoid cock-ups.

Au contraire. The bigger, the more significant, the more noticed the fail, the quicker, the stronger, the more good-humoured the recovery, the deeper, the longer, the more profound the admiration will be.

Set an example. Tell the world it’s OK to fail before you get things right.

Such was the inspiration factor from the Gary Vaynerchuk video I posted yesterday, I’ve got two more posts looking at some of his ideas.

Today, I want to pick up on his phrase, “everything is exposed”.

Using the ‘net as extensively as we do, it’s so important to remember that every single act of ours in the public arena, from social networking sites to job sites to personal blogs, is being followed, copied and archived around the world.

We no longer live in a world where mistakes simply disappear, confined to the annals of history and remembered only by those most directly involved. Now, if you make a mistake, it’s everywhere.

Facing the reality of the permanence of our online interactions is key to making sure we always consider carefully what we’re saying, doing and thinking out loud. Posting a Tweet, updating your Facebook, uploading some photos? Think. Look before you leap.

Do you want your great, great, great, great grandkids to see what you’re about to put out there? Because they will.

Following on from yesterday’s post about faking it and how your inner confidence shines out through your actions, today’s post continues on the theme of perception.

I’ve just watched this video from Gary Vaynerchuk1 and it’s hard to do so without being inspired:

This is a guy who knows how he’s perceived, knows what people expect from him when they first encounter him, but flies in the face of it with wit and confidence.

Knowing how people see you is key to finding your personal – or corporate – brand. I’ve written before about the importance of recognising your place in the market to help drive your growth, but it’s just as important to know not just where you see yourself, but where others see you, too.

1. no, I didn’t really know who he was either until turned onto his stuff by Adam Baker [↩]