April 25th, 2011

Creative genius doesn’t always strike when you want it to. For me, it never flows when I am sitting down waiting for it. Creativity comes from inspiration. Inspiration from what excites you. Locate that, and you’ve found your source for creativity. So find it. Then copy and steal it.

 

i didn’t come here to copy, i came here to steal.

If you’ve checked out my tumblr at all, you may recognize that line. It’s the header I’ve had on my tumblr since it’s inception. I started that tumblr as my digital dumping grounds for all the links, images, quotes, ideas, concepts, and articles I come across on the web. If you’re like me, you also email yourself these same things, where they end up in the endless archives of gmail, unsorted, unlabeled, lost. That can be quite useless.

 

Way back when, before Al Gore invented the internet, folks used a ‘commonplace book‘. Think of it like the junk drawer; where all the things you kinda think you may need or find amusing, end up. It may be practical or it may be worthless but easy on the eyes. The idea is that over the course of your life, you come across a diverse collection of inspiration. Keeping everything in one place for reference, even random browsing, can be enough to get those creativity gears grinding again.

 

“It’s not where you take things from, its where you take them to.”
-Jean-Luc Godard

Start now. Use tumblr, a private blog, even a moleskin. Just start. You’ll be happy when you can look back at a few hundred or thousand seemingly random posts, images, thoughts, ideas, all coming from what caught your creative attention at one point or another. The lifting off point is closer than you think.

“Start copying what you love. Copy copy copy copy. At the end of the copy you will find your self.”
- Designer Yohji Yamamoto’s advice to young people

 

 

April 20th, 2011

 

“[Television] won’t be able to hold on to any market it captures after the first six months. People will soon get tired of staring at a plywood box every night.”
— Darryl Zanuck, movie producer, 20th Century Fox, 1946.

 

Since I have no regular posting schedule, here is week two’s post from my ‘Ignore the Experts’ series.

The point of this short post is to give a little reminder that most people have no idea what they’re talking about. Particularly when it comes to what the future holds, we should question what the experts tell us.

 

In fact, I suggest we ignore the experts. Pick up that paintbrush, guitar, yoga mat, or personal finance book. Start that blog, your location independent venture; devour social media, define your limits. Then break them. Become the expert. And then take it to the next level.

 

April 19th, 2011

 

The year is 1620 and John Howland is a 29 year old indentured servant crossing the Atlantic on the Mayflower, working in return for free food and transport.

The frigid stormy waves smashed the wooden ship and John is suddenly thrown overboard. He struggles as the cold Atlantic waters swallow him, and somehow he manages to grab a trailing halyard (the ropes that hold the sail to the mast).

 

Fortunately he was eventually pulled to safety.

 

John Howland went on to get married and have 10 children and 88 grandchildren. His descendants include:

 

• U.S. presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt, George H. W. Bush, and George W. Bush.
• U.S. first ladies Edith Roosevelt and Barbara Bush
• Former Governors Sarah Palin (Alaska) and Jeb Bush (Florida)
• Poets Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
• Actors Christopher Lloyd, Humphrey Bogart, Alec Baldwin and Chevy Chase
• Founder of the Latter Day Saint movement Joseph Smith, Jr., and Brigham Young
• Opera singer and music educator William Howland
• Dr. Benjamin Spock

 

Had Howland been lost at sea during that storm, none of these people would have existed.

 

What will your story be?

April 13th, 2011

Okay, so consider this an addendum.

 

An astute reader pointed out that my last post was lacking something important. Brian from Lessons in Movement Making left a comment that really hit me. He added that it’s not just about Ignoring the Experts. It’s about becoming an expert yourself, and then taking it to the next level.

 

And he’s right.

 

The experts can’t see the future. There are no oracles in any field. No one knows the future. Perhaps only in astrology but you get the point…

 

The blogging platform is too saturated. The future of blogging is paid access. Become a success blogger. All this advice on how to make money online, create location independent income, and on and on and on…. It’s been heavily written about already- the noise of the internet at its finest.

 

 

But get this: The greatest minds have been saying this sort of thing for hundreds of years. The medium may have changed, but the message remains the same.

“The multitude of books is a great evil. There is no limit to this fever for writing; every one must be an author; some out of vanity, to acquire celebrity and raise up a name, others for the sake of mere gain.”
Martin Luther, German Reformation leader, circa 1530s.

 

 

Ignore the experts. Become one yourself.  Then take it to the next level.

 

April 11th, 2011

 

“Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?”
— H.M. Warner, co-founder of Warner Brothers, 1927

 

 

This is the first of a weekly series that seeks to highlight a thoughtful reason to ignore the experts. After all, history often proves them wrong. So do what you love and pursue it with an obsession and passion. Create your own otaku. It doesn’t matter what your friends and family, the experts, and the oracles say. To quote a hero of mine, “Nobody knows the future, and it doesn’t matter!”