‘Ignore Everybody: and 39 Other Keys to Creativity’ is a book about creativity. It contains a collection of 40 tips on how to be creative. The book is an extension to the ‘How to be creative’ manifesto which the writer (Hugh MacLeod) published a few years ago, so a lot of content has already been available… but it’s still an inspiring book.

The way Hugh MacLeod describes creativity in his book is not in the sense of ‘talent’, but more in the sense of “how to do it”. The book assumes you already have what it takes to be creative (so if you don’t… you’re not going to learn it here). The 40 tips all revolve around getting into the mindset to create something which you believe is everything the world needs. You’ll read it in one evening and when you believe in this enlightening “holy shit” you’ll find a lot of inspiration and good thoughts.

Some advice

“Ignore Everybody” is the first, and perhaps the most important, piece of advice Hugh has to offer. When starting out on something new you, and only you, are responsible for getting things done. This also means taking responsibility for the idea that you’re trying to get out into this world. You need to trust your gut and not place too much value in what people are telling you what you should be doing.

“The more original your idea is, the less good advice other people will be able to tell you” – Hugh MacLeod

When starting out on something which has never been done before, the chances are that nobody will understand.

“Good ideas alter the power balance in relationships. That is why good ideas are always initially resisted” – Hugh MacLeod

Hugh reminds us to be on the lookout for “The Innovators Dilemma“.

One of his new tips is: “Savor obscurity while it lasts” the moment you make it. The moment you go from unknown schmuck to hot shit, the world will come knocking, demanding a piece of the action and there is no way to go back to obscurity. Once ‘fame’ happens you will have a whole lot of other responsibilities you have to deal with other then sustaining whatever you did to get you there in the first place. Responsibilities only slow you down when you’re trying to produce. Thats why a lot of famous people did their best work when they were relatively unknown.

Once you ‘make it’, your work is never the same.

The verdict

I liked it. Though the advice in the book is not exactly ‘new’, (his list on ‘How to be creative‘ has been around for some time now. The book is basically that list + 10 new insights.. but even so: the no-nonsense attitude and cartoons are great fun.

So why buy the book? Well I for one am a sucker for paper. It reads much better in a lazy chair in the sun then baggy eyed behind a screen. And if you’re new to MacLeod’s world then this will get you right into the good stuff. It’s also short, light, direct, funny and refreshingly practical.

A good read but nothing new.

Book details
Ignore Everybody: and 39 Other Keys to Creativity
author: Hugh MacLeod
publisher: Portfolio, 2009
details: 176 pages, hardcover

Indie developer Ian Dallas presented a tech demo of his latest project “The Unfinished Swam” to the world about a month ago.

The Unfinished Swan is a first-person painting game set in an entirely white world. Players can splatter paint to help them find their way through an unusual garden.

A lot has been said about this demo but what kind of game this is going to be remains a mystery. Whatever it will be; the demo for one shows us a great new way of exploring his virtual world. Like a blind man using a paintball like gun to feel around. I bet this will be one scary game.

The Unfinished Swan – Tech Demo 9/2008 from Ian Dallas on Vimeo.

“Every Thing Bad Is Good For You” is the title of the book Steven Johnson wrote in 2005. In this book he claims that “Against popular belief, pop culture is actually making us smarter”. And he explains this theory by using the term “The Sleeper Cuve” derived from the movie Sleeper by Woody Allan.

Johnson writes how TV shows have evolved from shows like Dragnet and Starsky & Hutch with a single plot line per episode to shows like The Sopranos and Lost with multiple plot lines intersecting and over 21 episodes. These new shows are challenging us to remember and connect multiple relationships over an entire season instead of just one show. This complexity was unthinkable 20 years ago. But in today’s society its different for we have been secretly trained to accept this complexity for the last decade. This is the Sleeper curve hard at work.

For decades we’ve worked under the assumption that mass culture follows a steady declining path toward lowest-common-denominator standards, presumably because the “masses” want dumb, simple pleasures and big media companies want to give the masses what they want. But in fact, the exact opposite is happening: the culture is getting more intellectually demanding, not less.

Complex games
Another fascinating thing which struck by me in this book is the way computer games influence us and affect our daily lives. Like popular TV computer games have become more complex for the last 20 years. Where Tetris and Donkey Kong require little time to “get”, we now have Grand Theft Auto IV and Medal of Honor. These games can be maddingly hard and present us with a lot more freedom and complexity then those early games. Computer games have been flexing our mental muscle for the last two decades which in turn has been helping us see the world a bit clearer.

Tetris for example trains our pattern recognition skills, while Sim City teaches us about the way economics work. Games in general help us with decision making and the way we analyze and solve problems.

Visual recognition
The book descibes a study at the University of Rochester where subjects were asked to perform a series of quick visual recognition tests like picking the color of a letter or counting the number of objects on a screen. The results showed that regular games consistantly outpreformed the non-gamer group, that the gamers turned out to be more social, more confident, and more comfortable solving problems creatively.

We as a culture are increasingly demanding more complexity and more intelectual challanges. We’ve grown to expect a certain “toughness” in the games we play and the things we watch on TV. We’re actively fostering a new generation of problem solvers, smarter, faster and more capable of filtering massive amounts of information, putting a strain on the way we develop new things. Creating a sort of “more-cleverer-then-thou” kind of culture among the designers and creative people alike. Always trying to one-up the competition with a newer snazzier way of doing things. How are we going to keep this up?

Top photo by: Jay Dugger