Ignore Everybody: And 39 Other Keys to Creativity

Put the hours in, do it for long enough, and magical, life-transforming things happen eventually.

^^ Hugh MacLeodThis is a pretty smooth and direct inspirational book for anyone looking for a creative burst. The ground-breaking bits for me were the reminders about getting work done and on taking advice from others (Hugh's advice on advice: don't take it). A couple nuggets and gems below.

Ignore Everybody BY Hugh MacLeod

The following are excerpts taken from Hugh MacLeod's Ignore Everybody. Bold, italics, and notes are mine. Everything else is Hugh's.

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The more original your idea is, the less good advice other people will be able to give you.--If I were just starting out writing, say, a novel or a screenplay, or maybe starting up a new software company or an online retail business, I wouldn’t try to quit my job in order to make this big, dramatic, heroic-quest thing about it. I would do something far simpler: I would find that extra hour or two in the day that belongs to nobody else but me, and I would make it productive. Put the hours in, do it for long enough, and magical, life-transforming things happen eventually. Sure, that means less time watching TV, Internet surfing, going out to dinner, or whatever.--There’s a famous old quip:

“A lot of people in business say they have twenty years’ experience, when in fact all they really have is one year’s experience, repeated twenty times.”

--Beware of turning hobbies into jobs. It sounds great, but there is a downside. The late British billionaire James Goldsmith once quipped,

“When a man marries his mistress, he immediately creates a vacancy.”

--You can get the book here.