10 Ideas in January
I’m taking a break from the blog this week, because I need to put some glue in my chair and get some work done. I thought this would be a good time to take the ideas that have been maturing in the blog the past month and summarize. The ideas have been flying a mile a minute around here lately, and it’s time to slow down, reiterate and try to make these ideas stick in my head. (This is for me, but if it helps you too, I get brownie points.)
- Do something compelling. People are hungry for better. Make something better and people will notice. This is the best promotion.
- Message dictates the proper aesthetic. Figure out what you want to say and what is important to you, then let the style follow.
- Make hard decisions about what is important. Be ruthless. Most things aren’t important, just by the very nature of what “important” means. From this:
- Give emphasis to the important stuff.
- Deemphasize the unimportant.
- Put up barriers between you and the distracting.
- Be picky in work relationships. Realize that agreeing to unfair circumstances not only hurts you, but your peers as well, because it pushes what is acceptable behavior in the wrong direction.
- Talk and think about process. It’s important. Don’t worry, no one is going to steal your “secret sauce.” That only happens with recipes. And creativity isn’t a recipe.
- Simplicity in form. Clarity in concept. Conciseness in message. Now, more than ever.
- Learn to operate in a world of choices. Don’t paralyze yourself with analyzing opportunity costs. Think, move, assess.
- Two things can be incongruent, yet both partially true. Making two opposing elements play nice is the germ that fuels a lot of wonderful things.
- If you curate, add context and value. Add a perspective.
- Feedback loops: small and tight. Inspiration sources: wide and varied.
- Bonus idea! And, probably, the most important: substance, please.
