Cartoon of two teachers. One holds a box of craft materials. Another holds a stopwatch. She says,“Okay! You have some petroleum jelly, popsicle sticks and several TP rolls. You have ten seconds to make a spiritually meaningful craft. GO!”
The photograph he uses makes an effective point. What changed in seventy years since the first photo was taken? A lot, or did it?
This got me thinking about a business man I knew who passed away recently. He was a great guy and the picture of health. Yet he passed away at age 74 from surgery complications. It wasn’t even a life-threatening procedure. One minute he was here, the next, he was gone.
He will be remembered not for his business accomplishments, but for what a nice guy he was. He always had a smile. He was encouraging and a man of common sense. You could rely on his advice.
His Facebook profile is quiet now. Not many people will remember him for his Facebook account or for past business deals. What he will be remembered for was how he was a man of encouragement and integrity.
As I write and illustrate today, I’ll be thinking about Dan’s post and my friend. What will I do today that will build a legacy?
This is good advice whether you want to write, illustrate or pursue any creative endeavor. When you treat your creative pursuit as a form or exercise, it will free you up to be creative.
Whenever I have faced writer’s block, the one thing that has kept me creating was to write and draw in my sketchbooks whether I felt like it or note. Pretty soon, those creative juices come back.
Don’t wait for the muse to strike you. Get creative in your journal or sketchbook today, whether you feel like it or not.
I’ve been working on getting an MBA. You may ask, “You? An illustrator and designer?” Yes. One day I woke up and realized if I was going to be successful in business, I should know a little more about it.
In my organizational behavior class, we’ve been talking about groupthink. It brought to me reminders of George Orwell and “1984.” Groupthink is when people within a business legitimizes their decisions because everyone wants to get along and think the same way. A company thinks their decisions are fool-proof, only to realize later they were actually foolish.
I thought of a flock of birds all chirping in harmony. Sure, it sounds pretty, but once in a while, shouldn’t one of the birds pipe up and say, “Wait a minute! Is this the best tune for this occasion?”
Creativity can suffer under groupthink. We’re all victims of it. It’s hard to see a book without paper pages. It can be difficult for a business used to printing paper books to try electronic publishing. Publishers can cringe whenever an author embraces self-publishing and questions the old model’s legitimacy. Yet, technology marches on and is challenging groupthink in some rough ways.
What are some ways you escape groupthink? How can you challenge the status quo today?
Do you want to enhance your creativity? Take an accounting class! No, I never thought I’d say that either. In fact, I never thought I would be in one until this year.
I’m not saying we should get creative and cook the business books either. What I am saying is I learned there was this whole world I knew little about. Sure, I run a a business and balance my books, but there is so much more to it.
I’ve learned how to read an annual report. I now know how a balance sheet balances, and I learned different terms mean the same thing. But even more important, I have some more knowledge that helps creativity.
Whenever you learn something new, you have have new possibilities for writing, and new metaphors for design and illustration.
What is something new you want to try today?
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