Thursday, June 11, 2009

Spring Forward, Summer's Here! aka Taking My Own Advice, Pt. Deux



Six months ago, also on a Thursday night, I began this blog.

On January 1, I said, echoing my own words from, oh, April of '82: If you're not doing it everyday, you're not doing it.

Then I promptly stopped doing it.

Not that I wasn't doing something else. There's your velvet lining.

Reading Seth Godin today, as I usually do, I got turned on to a new review of some old truths, recast, and true again, let's face it: Hugh MacLeod's Ignore Everybody: and 39 Other Keys to Creativity.

So, particularly if you're a Watkins Mill Class of '09 graduate, on this the 34th Anniv of my own gradiation from HS University, I offer some of Hugh MacLeod's advice:

#1. "Ignore everybody. The more original your idea is, the less good advice other people will be able to give you."

#2. "The idea doesn't have to be big. It just has to be yours. The sovereignty you have over your work will inspire far more people than the actual content ever will."

#3. "Put the hours in. Doing anything worthwhile takes forever. Ninety percent of what separates successful people and failed people is time, effort, and stamina. . .Put the hours in, do it for long enough, and magical, life-transforming things happen eventually."

#4. "Good ideas have lonely childhoods. . . The better the idea, the more 'out there' it initially will seem to other people, even people you like and respect. Good ideas alter the power balance in relationships. That is why good ideas are always initially resisted. Good ideas can have lonely young adulthoods, too."

#9. "Companies that squelch creativity can non longer compete with companies that champion creativity.
If you're creative, if you can think independently, if you can articulate passion, if you can override the fear of being wrong, then your company needs you now more than it ever did. And now your company can no longer afford to pretend that isn't the case.
So dust off your horn and start tooting it."

Sorry for the upstaging, Sampy!

Don't worry, nobody reads this thing. Unless I write it.

More to come . . .