creative maverick

I love this business card belonging to web designer and social media consultant San Sharma. It has no contact details whatsoever!

It gets some strange reactions though as San explains,

My business card makes people think I work for Google and/or wonder what the “I’m feeling lucky” button does

Of course, it only works if you have a relatively rare name (ie, not for me).

For more business card inspiration, check out these Creative Business Cards That Will Make You Look Twice.

Every year at the Holy Trinity Church in East London, there is a service held to bless working clowns and commemorate the clowns that died in the previous year.

The mix of religious service and being surrounded by outlandish clowns makes it quite an experience.

What struck me was just how many members of the press were present, both photographers and TV cameramen.

What it shows is how great a hunger there is for people to see something out of the ordinary. The quirky will always get press. That’s why in my consulting sessions I often look for what’s unusual in a client’s business that we can use to make it stand out and get free publicity. What’s unusual about your business or project?

Watch the video below of the clowns entering the service.

Why don’t people change? Why do we struggle on with the same old problems, wanting to be happier, more successful, to have better relationships, but not getting very far?

To explain why I think this is, I need to talk about Bono, lead singer of U2.

A lot of people find Bono annoying, particularly in Britain where hating Bono has become something of a national sport. There are T-Shirts, blogs and more than one Facebook group.

Why do people hate Bono?

Whatever you might think of his music, when the strength of feeling is far out of proportion to what he does you can be sure it’s not simply a matter of taste. (Let’s face it there are far more despicable people out there in the world)

Bono is hated in Britain in particular because he breaks the rules of British culture. He gets ideas above his station, he behaves as if he actually is all that. And this is the great taboo of our country - to boast, to be arrogant, to believe you have the right to change the world.

The cost of this taboo is that we Brits err towards being apologetic, downplaying our abilities, and suppressing our own power. It is a culture of playing small.

When a natural part of our personality (in this case, our confidence and willingness to acknowledge our own talents) is suppressed at an early age, we see it all the larger in others. And we hate it.

It’s a universal (and uncomfortable) truth that our salvation lies in that which we hate. Wherever your life is stuck, whether it’s wanting more confidence in your work, making more money, allowing yourself to relax, or having a better sex life, you have locked away the part of yourself you most need.

How do you find out what this part is? Look at who you hate. Whoever you find most irritating or infuriating will represent the part you have hidden. If you’re suppressing your own confidence, it might be Bono. If you’re suppressing your sexuality, it might be Russell Brand, Helen Mirren or Belle de Jour. If it’s allowing yourself to relax, it’s the guy at work who seems to do no work at all and gets away with it.

The solution

Don’t worry, I’m not suggesting you become exactly what you hate. You may not want to start wearing wrap-around shades. Indoors. Mixed in with your prejudice, there may be some very valid reasons for disliking someone. But you can still use that person as a pointer to what you need.

Look at this person that irritates you, ask what it is that gets your goat, then ask yourself “If I could have a more palatable version of what they represent (confidence, ease with making money, more access to my own sexuality), would that help me get what I most long for in my life?”

I bet the answer is yes.

The question now is how to do you find a more attractive model for this quality? If you want confidence but hate Bono, don’t try to emulate him. Choose a model you can respect. Perhaps the quiet assuredness and brilliance of Bonnie Greer facing Nick Griffin on Question Time.

Keep them in mind whenever you want more of this part of yourself. Find a photo of them on google images, print it out and keep it visible as a reminder of this quality. Let them be your virtual mentor. When faced with your challenge ask “What would my mentor do?” and let them inspire you to do the same.

Leave a comment and let me know what you think.

For a lot of us, particularly creative people, conventional goal setting and planning techniques just don’t work.

So how do we engineer a great year for ourselves without all that SMART goal crap? One doing the whole variety of stuff we enjoy while making a good living at the same time?

I gave a talk at January Scanners Night on exactly this topic.

Listen now and discover the 3 steps to creating your own Back Of An Envelope Plan for the year that’s simple, exciting, effective, and doesn’t box you in.

Scanners Night is my monthly London event for creative people, entrepreneurs and scanners.
If you can make it to London, come along on February 10th and discover “The creative personality - a user’s guide“.

Being a careers coach I inevitably meet a lot of people unhappy in their job who want to do something else. But I also occasionally meet people (at social events) who love their job. And it’s funny how shy they are about it.

I ask what they do and they sheepishly reply “Oh very boring, I’m a solicitor” or “I’m in IT I’m afraid” and when I scratch beneath the surface it’s obvious they love it. Why the apology? Well I guess it’s actually quite revealing to show our passion for something, particularly if it’s not something a lot of people understand - ”Actually, I am just crazy about object oriented programming”.

But when we do show our enthusiasm for what we do, we give permission to others to do the same, we take another bite out of the myth that we all like the same things, and we inspire others to dare to do what they really enjoy.

(I met one woman who had engineered a job where all she did all day was pore over figures in a spreadsheet and she was in heaven. What was really pleasing is that she didn’t apologise for it.)

So if you do love your job (even if it isn’t a sexy one) shout it out!

I’ve just been reading about the Pomodoro Technique which is a simple system to improve productivity created by Francesco Cirillo. Here’s a summary of the technique as shown on the website:

The basic unit of work in the Pomodoro Technique™ can be split into five simple steps:

I’ve tried similar things before to great effect and included a similar recommendation based on Mark Forster’s time management systems in my book.

You can download the complete book about the Pomodoro Technique for free.

I’ve also just installed a free timer application called Focus Booster which is based on the Pomodoro Technique.

I first met novelist Matt Whyman when he gave a talk at London Writers’ Club on what he calls Sustainable Writing. He very kindly agreed to write this guest blog post on the topic.

Sustainable Writing

When it comes to filling in forms, I never enter ‘novelist’ under my profession. Nor do I say that’s what I do for a living when people ask.  It just sounds a bit poncey, I think. Also, if I’m being honest, I do more than write novels. I have several works of non-fiction to my name, plus I write for magazines, newspapers and blogs such as this. Over the years I’ve even spun copy for the back of cereal packets. Hell, some of my best work has been featured in recruitment literature for the Girl Guides.

I consider myself to be a writer, pure and simple. That’s what I do to put food on the family table, and what it says on my children’s birth certificates. Wi

thout a doubt, my first love is telling stories. I can happily lose myself in a plotline, and there’s no prouder moment than seeing the first copy of a novel I’ve written to the best of my abilities. It’s a creative endeavour, but it isn’t a privilege. A book can become a runaway success or a crashing failure for countless reasons that often have little to do with the words on the page. Whatever the reason, the devil is in the sales figures. Sure enough, there have been times that had I sat around expecting a contract renewal to materialise then frankly I would’ve gone bust.  To avoid living in skips, all but the well-branded, best-selling writers need to watch out for trouble - and be prepared to reinvent.

Sustainable writing means being flexible in how you fill the page. This might mean a change of style, subject or genre, or it could just be a willingness to take on other writing work to keep you afloat. There is money to be made at the typeface. Maybe only a minority make a fortune, but if your aim is to simply enjoy earning a living from crafting words together then it can be a realistic career. The key is to write with your eyes wide open.

More about Matt

Matt Whyman is a distinctive, contemporary voice in children’s writing. After graduating from the University of East Anglia’s MA in Creative Writing, Matt’s career has taken him from advice columns (as the agony uncle for Bliss magazine and AOL) and teen self-help guides, to the cutting edge of both adult (Man or Mouse and Columbia Road) and teen fiction (The Wild, Inside the Cage and Goldstrike).

His acclaimed young adult novel, Boy Kills Man, was short-listed for several awards, including the 2004 Teenage Book Prize and is currently in development as a feature film. In addition he was the author of Eve magazine’s regular Him Indoors column, and is currently a monthly contributor to Marie Claire. Matt is married with four children and lives in West Sussex, England.

Read Matt’s blog here, check out his books on Amazon, or follow his very amusing updates on twitter.

I started this blog exactly one year ago and billed it as a one year experiment in creative living - an experiment to do what I love doing most, worry a little less about where it might lead, and see if I can end up getting “paid to play”.

Did it work?

Well in April of this year, I was contacted by a colleague, Chris Wild, who had been talking to a publisher about writing a book. During his own discussions, the commissioning editor at Pearson mentioned she was interested in writing a book about Scanners (creative people with many interests). Since I run a monthly event for Scanners, Chris suggested I get in contact. (Thank you Chris!)

I met Pearson and as we discussed possible book ideas, it became apparent that the topic was really about play as a way of living (which is a trait many scanners share). I realised that I had already been writing on this blog on the topic of playing all day and getting paid. I went away and wrote a proposal which included some of the ideas here and lots of other good stuff I use with clients. And I’m glad to say, Pearson gave me a book deal. (The book is called Screw Work, Let’s Play: How do to do what you love and get paid for it. It’s now finished and due for publication in June 2010)

I started this blog a year ago not knowing where it would lead or what it would become. I started Scanners Night 2 years ago without knowing where I was going with it. I started coaching clients 4 years ago, knowing that I would need somehow to develop my own style of coaching that bore little resemblance to how I was trained. The combination of all these imperfect, unplanned, experiments led to the book deal.

This seems like a great illustration of what I call playing out your interests and passions. You don’t need to know where it’s going to lead but if you keep your eyes open, and notice what people need from you, you’ll likely end up in a far better place than if you drag yourself through some tedious process of setting ‘SMART’ goals.

Scrap your career plan, give up goals, ditch your New Year resolutions, and start playing.

Have a playful 2010.

John

I’ll be talking about how to do all this in more detail in London on 13 January.

I hope you have a good break coming up over the next few days. If you’re currently assessing what to do with your work next year, here’s a little something to ponder while you’re off…

Try this trick of asking yourself a question and then forgetting about it while you’re off work. Your subconscious will continue to work on it while you’re distracted having fun and celebrating. You might be surprised what pops into your head over the next few days.

Here’s the question:

What part of your work have you most enjoyed in 2009?

What project was most exciting? What activity have you discovered you really enjoying doing? What client did you most enjoy working with? Was there something that is not a central part of your work but which you loved doing (chatting with colleagues, brainstorming, playing a part in design or branding, making people laugh, playing around on twitter)?

Keep a piece of paper in your pocket and whenever something occurs to you, write it down.

That’s it.

Then in the New Year just ask yourself this second simple question, “How can I do more of this work in 2010?”

If this is not currently a central part of your work, ask yourself “What are all the ways I could get paid for doing this thing I enjoy?” You might not have an immediate answer. Just allow the question to percolate and note down any ideas that pop up.

Going on a long trip?

Are you going on a long drive or train journey for Christmas? If you’d like to know some of the tricks to discovering the work you love and getting paid for it, download my free audio class on the subject as an MP3 and take it with you. Put it on your iPod or burn it to CD. Or just listen to it in the kitchen while you’re cooking!

Here’s the link to the free audio download “How to do what you love and make it pay”

Whatever you’re doing I hope you take some time to relax and have some fun.

Merry Christmas,
Happy Holidays,
and have a great 2010

Here’s something Barbara Sher put on her blog a while ago which explains the dilemma of the creative person who hates to do any one thing for very long. If you’re a Scanner, or a Creator (in Wealth Dynamics terms) you’ll understand this very well.

She talks about scientist Clifford Stoll’s TED Talk:

He’s had some exciting adventures; he’s famous for finding KGB spies and stopping them from hacking classified information, but in his talk he explains that these days, things that used to interest him have become boring.

And she quotes Clifford’s wonderful statement from early in his talk:

The first time you do something, it’s science.
The second time it’s engineering.
Third time you’re just a technician.
I’m a scientist. Once I do something I want to do something else.

This is a great thing to quote next time someone asks you why you don’t just keep doing what you’ve done before!

Barbara’s post “On Eclectics, critics and how to grow up and quit fooling around” is here