Creativity is a balancing act, but it is also a show of strength, so size matters. This balance, this contest of strengths requires an opposite, a counterpoint, and that counterpoint can be found in fear. It goes by other names as well, some choose to call it resistance, or procrastination, and sometimes writer’s block, but at the core they are all a variation on fear. What is feared and the degree of it varies, but it is this fear that must be balanced out and defeated for creativity to triumph.

Here is where it gets tricky, and why size matters more than you might think in this battle between two very human forces. When we think of two balanced opposing forces, we think of evenly matched adversaries; that is how balances work. But I’m sorry to inform you that fear doesn’t play fair. Either fear is a denser and heavier creature than creativity, which is why it so easily weighs you down, or perhaps it has simply studied the laws of physics carefully to get itself more leverage and have a stronger effect. Fear takes a lot more than a balanced force to beat.

To guarantee a win against this negative, you need to do more than put in a satisfactory effort, or even a healthy competition of positive. Instead, you need to completely decimate and overwhelm the fear with your creativity, only then will your schemes succeed over those of fear’s. Your success will usually be in direct proportion to how overboard you go.

There are some fathomable reasons for fear’s disproportional strength over our hearts and minds, and they come down to two aspects that both fear and creativity share, that of imagination and emotion. Imagination is the content of what we see in our mind’s eye, what we dream and what we hope, but also what we fear. And no piece of imagination is devoid of emotion. How visceral and tangible that emotion is, decides how clearly and how honestly we imagine what we do. What we imagine and the strength of the related emotion can be both in the direction of fear or of creativity. The reason fear often wins is that what fear imagines is often so much more concrete and basic, and the feelings attached so much stronger.

The common subjects of fear are extremely real and go down to our simplest instincts for survival. Death, disease and destitution are practical things that stare us in the face on a regular basis, either overtly or on the fringes of our experience, making them difficult to dismiss without adequate force of will and hope. Hope comes in the form of our creativity, the things we wish to build, to do, to achieve and the strength of emotion with which we think about them. The scale of these dreams and hopes and the raw feeling behind them must massively outweigh those of our fears for us to ignore them, loosen their power over us, and get the ball rolling towards the positive side of this equation.

If you want to be creative, if you want that positive bent of mind, that urge to create anew and imagine fresh possibilities to define your being, dream big, think big, imagine at scales never imagined before. Then inject that imagination with a strength of feeling few reasonable people would dare dabble in, because there is no moderation in this contest. If you give in to being reasonable, you lose, and fear wins another easy victory.

There is a further warning to heed. If you are trying to do anything that is even mildly creative, you need to deal with not only your own fears but also those of others, for you see fear is quick to recruit allies. Eventually, someone you care about and who cares about you is bound to advise you in all seriousness and in utter concern that you must be reasonable in the things you wish for, hope for, and work towards. If you’re serious about your dreams, I can offer only one piece of advice: Smile, say no to them nicely, if an answer is required, and go out there and be us unreasonably creative as you can be.

Samir

In the trusty old paper dictionary that’s always lurking beside my bed, it says work ethic is a belief in the moral value of work. More recently, the term has come to mean something closer to work habits, as in a good work ethic, but this original definition has more depth to it and it gives us a lot to think about.

When I was in school, I usually studied on the last day before an exam. It was stressful and stupid but also prudent, because what were the exams but a gigantic memory game? You consumed as many facts as you could and hoped you’d retained enough of them to spit them out on paper on demand. There was a fixed deadline (the day of the exam), there were certain tasks to be completed (reading all your text books and notes without falling asleep), you did the best you could on the big day and then forgot about it for the next few months. The entire exercise encouraged you to run through the storm while having as few of your possessions blown away as possible, and then walk on, never looking back. It’s a great work ethic, for an employee.

While I was half way through college, I was often sitting up into the wee hours of the morning and forgetting to watch the sun rise, usually hunched over some big piece of drawing paper or mounting board, creating the latest master-piece project. All this so that I could get my full 10 points for presentation and move on to the next manic task. On one such night, I decided I didn’t want to be an employee. This was fine in theory but what I didn’t realise was that they’d been secretly training me to be an employee all my life.

After college I started freelancing full time, and time became a more fluid and chaotic resource. The structure of courses and semesters was gone, to be replaced by the ever-changing vagaries of client work, often with multiple projects in progress, with multiple people to please in each one, and with ever shifting time-lines and requirements. It was around this time that I became a very conscientious lister of things to do. I have these old, large wide sheets of perforated computer printer paper that I used for the purpose. Every morning, I’d write down the date, and a list of things to finish during the day, to be ticked off along the way. Of course, it’s rarely that simple on large projects. You work on things on the day but you rarely finish, so things you worked on are ticked and they still get added to the next day, because further atomisation of tasks isn’t always possible.

The only time I would stop making my lists was when I was on holiday in India. On one of those trips a few years ago, we visited the forests of Ranthambore (a trip I have always wanted to, but never written about here). It was just after the monsoons and the sanctuary was only just opening for visitors. The 5 days I spent there was probably the most intense experience I’ve had in a long time, in a good way. There was so much to see and take in that the rest of the world disappeared for those few days, and all there was was the little town of Savai Modhopur, the lush forest, the magnificent wild life, and the splendour of the thousand year old Ranthambore Fort. When I returned from that trip, making to-do lists just didn’t seem like a useful thing to do any more. Lists do help you get organised when you’re juggling various tasks, but their dark side is that the mechanical ticking-off of tasks everyday gives you the feeling of getting a lot done while not achieving anything. Unwittingly, I had become an employee of my unquestioned lists, and that had to stop.

The end of to-do lists in my life was not an isolated decision. It had to do with a more general shift in focus, away from purely chasing freelance work to attempting to originate ideas and projects for myself to work on. After working on client projects for many years, I had come to realise that while many were technically challenging, none of them would end up being of any practical use to real people in the long term. Advertising, brochures, smartly copy-written websites, all helping forward the cause of a disembodied corporation but rarely meeting any practical needs of individuals. It came back down to doing a lot, and getting paid, without accomplishing anything.

This idea of a busy state without accomplishment is the same wall I hit in school and has become almost the ideal of the employee’s work ethic. As I was thinking of this piece, in a strange case of synchronicity, my friend Zélia put up a Twitter comment on her frustrations with work and the fact that multi-tasking was a lie. I had to agree, and for me it made a mental connection with my days of making to-do lists. I did a lot of multi-tasking when I was making to-do lists. Strangely, I didn’t seem to achieve any extra results that way, other than leaving myself a bit wound up and frazzled at the end of days.

When doing any sort of creative work, multi-tasking is really just an illusion. You can pretend that it works but if you can’t tell the difference in your output while your juggling tasks as compared to when you’re focussed on one, you just need to accept that your tasks aren’t very challenging or that you don’t care one bit about them. In work that leads to something solid and tangible, work that is not based on simply doing the best you can before an artificial deadline and then moving on regardless, the only way that ultimately gets you results is to do your work on that one thing, do it thoroughly, and don’t consider anything else until it’s done. In the real world where you make real things that have to get real results, simply attending an exam and getting a satisfactory score does not mean you’ve completed anything.

To work with that sort of concentration though, you need to believe in what you’re doing, what you’re creating, and what you’re working towards. How else can you have a work ethic, a belief in the moral value of your work, if your work has no real value?

So as much as I feel despair on some days when the impulse to work leaves me with no warning, I realise that I cannot in fact buy a work ethic. You can buy a work habit, by sending your children to an expensive school where they will be brought up like good slaves, designed to hammer in that same nail every day without ever wondering what it was for. You can also buy a work habit by being an employer and proceeding to buy the talents of a good number of those human machines from good schools who will fill out all those forms which no one will ever read because that’s the way it’s always been. As part of that work habit, you can now be assured that your employees will spend most of their time in your workplace logged into Facebook or their equivalent choice of online distraction, and build a virtual farm, run a Mafia, respond to quizzes about their favourite Disney princess, and also fill out those Excel spreadsheets that you supposedly pay them to fill out, for no practical purpose. This after all, is multi-tasking at its best.

By a happy accident, some lucky employers will also get a rogue bunch of rebels in their mix, whose focussed work will carry the rest of the organisation on their very valuable shoulders for a long time to come. But, you can’t buy a work ethic, because believing in your work that strongly doesn’t come cheap; You pay in ways that even the richest cannot afford. So if you’re one of those few people who would like to have a work ethic rather than a work habit, if you would like your work to have real results for real people, if you believe in the real, practical value of what you do and are prepared to be an outcast amongst the well-schooled machines, put your head down, throw away all those books on multi-tasking and time management, and focus on the task at hand. Then stick to it until it is complete to a level that scares every employee you know. Don’t forget to hang on tight; It’s going to be a bumpy ride.

Samir

As human beings, we remember a surprising amount about the lives we have lived. As human beings we also have an astonishing ability to forget. We forget all manner of facts and events, happy ones, painful ones, and many which never make enough of an impression to stick. And then there are things we forget for convenience, a deep-seated need to avoid discouraging ourselves with memories of that which never came to be, the things we never did, the people we never became.

It doesn’t take much to refresh your memories of these matters. A casual afternoon reverie, thinking back to long lost friends, absent comrades, and fading conversations, and you will suddenly stumble into it, that vast graveyard of your abandoned plans.

In that moment, you will remember it all with startling clarity. The ideas, the musings, the conversations that led to them, and the people who were to be your partners in the various missions that lie in that hidden expanse of your mind, abandoned. Some of them are fresh and clean, some more ancient and decrepit, but almost all of them still gleam with that original promise, that possibility of something marvellous.

Alas, in most cases your cohorts have moved on, or maybe they were never serious to begin with, or they were serious and life led them down another path, or you were lazy, or they were lazy, or the idea was a bad one, or the idea was a good one but you or they or the collective We convinced each other that it wasn’t. Or you were scared.

What you never realise in time is that for everything and everyone to come together requires a miracle of nature, a stroke of luck against the odds, order in the musical chaos. So the graveyard of your plans grows ever more bountiful, with grand headstones proclaiming, “Here lies the greatest idea ever wrought, daughter of …” and there appears your name in stone, along with the names of the other progenitors of what lies forgotten beneath. As you walk from stone to stone, your name is repeated, those named with you change, and so to you the loss seems unjustly yours above anyone else’s.

Are we then to give up on the very urge to birth ideas and make plans? No, but one solution is in being selfish and keeping some plans for yourself. Make them not the offspring of fortuitous pairings but instead a part of you, an inseparable piece whose development is tied to your being. Have some plans that are yours alone, and which you alone can mould. Have some plans whose success and failure are your burden, and whose abandonment is your considered decision.

Have more of these plans and act on them. With a little will, and the sheer mathematical certainty of having reduced the variables in the equation, some of your plans will flourish, and new things will grow. Whether small thorny bushes, or a sprawling canopy, it will be life and other life will appear in its shade. Some lost opportunities will become new possibilities, your actions will encourage others, erstwhile cohorts and curious strangers alike, and graveyards will be forests.

Samir

As human beings we assume many things, but there are a few basic assumptions we make about that collective everyone, which are always contradictory. These assumptions have to do with what we have to offer to the world, and what we accept from the world in return.

1. I am different from everyone

We like to assume that we are different from everyone else, uniquely talented and gifted in ways that are beyond the abilities of others. It bolsters our sense of individuality and purpose, and it makes us feel at least a little superior. In our contribution to the world, we assume we are not like everyone else.

2. Everyone is like me

We also like to assume that what we like is exactly what everyone else wants. We often use our own opinions as a measure of public opinion, to figure out what people want out of life, love, entertainment and any number of other human activities and interests. When it comes to what we accept from the world, we use our own feelings as a barometer of the feelings of everyone. In our likes and dislikes we assume everyone is like us.

3. Everyone does it

Everyone has been used by the individual to justify all manner of human stupidity, injustice, and irresponsibility since the beginning of time. Because everyone does something or thinks a certain way, this line of thought makes it an imperative that you follow suit, irrespective of the consequences or better judgement. Too often, everyone is used as the ultimate measure of right and wrong.

Unique like everyone else

On the one hand, we act self-assured in our uniqueness, separate from the rest of humanity. On the other hand we expect the rest of humanity to share our desires and choices, and use the choices of the unnamed masses to justify our actions. We go so far as to be disappointed when the majority disagrees with our pronouncements of aesthetics and good and bad, and hence holds back on their approval of us.

Assumption conundrum

In science and society we are warned not to make assumptions, but making assumptions is the way the human mind works. It is a strong evolutionary safety mechanism that helps us learn from past experiences and extrapolate the results to future events. Decisions could never be taken without assumptions because verification by direct observation is limited in its usefulness in many situations; By the time you have had the chance to observe something, it’s often too late to act on it.

Assuming a position of acceptance

Assumptions are necessary, but contradictory assumptions toss you into a confusing and counter-productive frame of mind. Either celebrate your uniqueness, accepting the inevitable mismatch of thoughts and ideals with others that results, or accept that you are part of the herd, and while you will live in the comfort of knowing you are in agreement with everyone out there, you are not as unique and radical as you would like to believe.

Don’t make assumptions

There is no right choice here, because each of us as has varying views on the balance of power between the individual and the system. To believe that you are both completely unique and also just like everyone else is not only the first step to a lot of suffering, it is also impractical and immensely silly.

So don’t make assumptions for everyone, and be comfortable with who you are, as unique or conforming as that might be.

Samir

As animals go, human beings are not particularly unique. There are other creatures with considerable brain power, there are others that have a fair amount of dexterity, and there are many others that surpass us on every level of physical strength and prowess. One thing that does make us different from the rest, is our habit of storing memories.

Along the road, we found a way for every generation to not need to re-learn all the old tricks, but instead to build on what came before. We were able to learn from the past because, from the very beginning of our history, we endeavoured to record and pass on our memories.

Animals pass on instincts to their young and in some cases, the elders teach the young by example, but the idea of storing knowledge for the benefit of those to come seems to have been a human innovation. Even with our increased ability to communicate, and therefore to teach our offspring, before technology, remembering perfectly was not an option.

The human mind is designed to forget all but the most important material. In our relatively long lives, facts and trivia are lost in the cavalcade of random memories of daily existence. Sure we can answer a question when asked, but there is no singular compendium of memory waiting to be poured into the awaiting next generation at a moment’s notice.

In this journey of storing our memories, and hence our knowledge and understanding of the world, we have come very far, from colourful scratchings on rocks to tiny USB storage devices that we now throw around like detritus, filled with email backups, address books, journal entries, video clips and digital snapshots galore. Now everything is on permanent record, and yet it is more fragile than it ever was. A flick of a switch and decades of carefully collected memories can be lost in an instant, a small technical error in equipment that is ever making itself obsolete, and entire branches of thinking can be struck for good from human record. So, on both a personal and a societal level, the act of recording, sorting and collating memories has become a major portion of our lives.

I myself have written on this topic before, from my erstwhile hunt for personal information management(PIM) software, to my reflection on the benefits of looking back over your old text messages. For there can be no doubt that all this record-keeping and memory-collecting has its benefits; The development of the entire human race has depended on these things and will continue to do so. But it must be asked, that as we get involved in this process of personal record-keeping on an unprecedented scale, how much of active living do we miss? In honouring the past, don’t we sometimes dishonour the present?

Let’s clear one thing up at the outset, record-taking is not a creative accomplishment. It is simply necessary administrative paper-shuffling. In the far past we had storytellers who were the guardians of memory, and then we had historians. Their accomplishment was in the interpretation and the presentation of the memories they possessed, and they continue to play an important role in fixing our collective memories, in being our conscience for past deeds, and a warning for the future. Today, however, we are all historians, building up the perfectly constructed picture of our own little worlds, gathering an amount of data that will be impossible for any human being to consume in a life time.

It is not far fetched to imagine that at some point a new function will be created in society, those that honour the dead by reliving their memories, all multiple quadrillion terabytes of them. Then, we as a culture will truly have perfect memory, irrespective of whether or not what is remembered is significant or useful. The question is, will there be enough people around capable of learning from it? For reliving the memories of the past can be so much more enticing than trying to create your own.

Samir

The Durian is hard thorny fruit on the surface with a soft flesh inside. It is purported to taste divine and smell foul, and it gets its name from duri in Malay, which means thorns. A very conflicted fruit for sure.

A dust bath is exactly what it sounds like. Birds often push dirt into their feathers to dislodge parasites that take up residence there. Other animals do this too. Who’d have thought flinging dirt could help make you cleaner?

These two seemingly unrelated things came before me yesterday, and they brought to mind the general perception of accepting the unpleasant, the hard, and the arduous to get positive results. It struck a cord because I had just finished skimming through an article on Homoeopathy, with all the usual one-sided arguments that I often see. They are always arguments, in the worse sense of the word, because writers on contentious topics like Homoeopathy have made up their mind a long time before they put down the first sentence. It’s a belief thing.

For example, this particular writer, who was playing the scientific intellectual card, ended with an appropriately horrific story of an infant dying of eczema because the parents stuck to homoeopathic treatment. This was meant to be a cautionary tale about the dangers of Homoeopathy. Yet as always, these shock tactics did not consider the opposing facts, like how many people suffering from not so fatal ailments are killed by secondary complications and the effects of religiously sticking to conventional medicine and not trying alternatives. When such obvious arguments are brought up against any established norm, the idea of having to pay the price for the greater benefit always comes up as validation. Everyone wants you to eat that mythically perfect durian, with the hard thorny shell, and the horrid smell. It’s good for you.

Keeping within the realm alternative health therapies for now, let’s consider something like massage. Its therapeutic prowess cannot be measured in any practical way while accounting for the placebo effect; There is no such thing as a placebo massage. A massage is a massage, and it affects mind and body, whether you like it or not. Which brings to fore the artificiality of the imposed mind-body divide in these examples, and the artificiality of similar strict binary divisions of various other aspects of life and thought.

These differences in opinion are often slated as an argument between scientific thought and blind faith, but what this sort of arm-chair science ignores is that science is, and always has been, as much about considering all the possibilities and being open to new radical hypotheses, as it is about proving things. We should never forget that science has been responsible for as many missteps, and a supporter of as much dangerous misinformation, as blind-faith. Today’s science is often tomorrow’s superstition. On either side, it is the assumed infallibility that is the true danger.

It comes down to two opposing belief systems. One that states all things worth doing or experiencing come with a hefty price to pay in suffering of some sort. The other states that everything of worth flows smoothly and naturally into its perfect state. Whether we realise it or not, most of us hold one of these beliefs to be true, and apply this logic to how we see the world. You could grossly simplify it down to pessimism and optimism, but it really is more than that. These are mental models of how you think world works, and frankly, they are both wrong. Both paradigms start with the assumption that there is some morality to existence, and that paying the price has some intrinsic moral value.

If you are a creative person and deal in the currency of ideas, this issue is a more important one that you realise. In formulating, evaluating, and deciding between sometimes opposing creative ideas, this belief system plays a key role in the choices you make. Are you making the right choices, or simply the ones you believe in? That is the question you need to be asking yourself at all times.

Which neatly brings us to the question of what the “right” choice is and if it can be clearly defined. As with all things, there exist some grey areas here, but of all the decisions I’ve talked about here, I think the decision between right and wrong choices might be the simplest to referee. There are no universally right choices to be sure, but the majority of creative thinking is applied to the solution of a problem. This problem might be a practical one or an abstract one, but every idea you define is in answer to a question. In the specific situation and context that you need that question answered, there most certainly is a right choice, because one meets with all your objectives and one doesn’t. There is little ambiguity there.

So when you’re dabbling in the realm of creative thinking, which you should be doing no matter what your work or life entails, make sure you are choosing what ideas to pursue based on what is right for your needs, rather than what is difficult or easy. There is no mystical blessing of rightness that goes with pursuing a difficult idea, nor is there a similar guarantee when you go with what seems like the easy solution. Judge ideas based on their own merit and what they provide in results, not based on whether or not it involves you showering yourself with enough dirt along the way.

Samir

This post was brought to you by the letter D. Well, at least that page about the letter D in my trusty old dictionary that I ended up on while brain storming for ideas about what to write. I spotted the words durian and dust bath, and this is what resulted.

This sort of thing happens regularly in everyday life, there’s always someone trying to sell you something. It could be a product at your door, a project at work, an idea amongst friends. The selling never stops. You try to sell people on your ideas too. That’s the way we work. What gets us into trouble is that we are scared, or shy, or feel guilty to simply say no. This compulsion to agree with everyone and accept everything thrown at you is the cause of more troubles in life than any other single trait.

Learn to Say No

There have been numerous articles, books, and much self-help gobbledygook written on the subject of saying no. They go into techniques, and strategies, and tips, and tricks, when the simple fact of the matter is that to say no, all you need to do is SAY NO. It’s a one word, one step process, and no amount of delaying it by studying techniques is going to help you muster the courage to make the leap.

Growing up, we learn to like pleasing people, because it makes them like us. Even if we don’t like pleasing people, we still find that it is much more convenient than disappointing them. This makes saying no an up-hill struggle, because if nothing else, we are a species of convenience. We’ll go to any lengths of inconvenience for the sake of some token convenience. It doesnt make any sense, but that’s the way it is. Have you seen people driving around in their car for half an hour trying to find a parking near the front door of where they’re going, rather than parking easily elsewhere and walking for ten minutes? Exactly, you’ve probably done it yourself.

Saying no is like finding a parking at a distance and walking. Sure it means facing the inconvenience first and head on, but it’s all good after that. By not saying no when you should, you’re just driving around in circles, trying to delay the inevitable inconvenience for as long as you can. Most likely, you’ll have to eventually give in and make that long walk to the mall anyway, only now the inconvenience has grown because you couldn’t make a decision. Not only do you need to walk, not only are you now aggitated and cursing unknown drivers who cut you off, you’ve also wasted 30 minutes you could have spent relaxing indoors. Suck it up and just say no!

Once you have made that mental decision to say no, all the techniques in the world are useless, except one which also requires very little explanation: it pays to say no nicely. Unfortunately, that’s rare too.

The No Tantrum

We hate saying no, but we’re often pushed into it by sheer necessity, so most of us don’t do it very well. How many times have you heard these: “Stop wasting my time!” or “That’s the worst idea I’ve ever heard!” or “I wouldn’t use your magical gold spinning services if you were the last magical gold spinner on the Earth!”? … not exactly those things maybe, but something similar. No matter who you are, or what you do, those should sound very familiar, either because you hear them often, or because you say them often. But what they all mean, is “No, thank you.”

Instead of saying “No, thank you”, what most of us actually say is, “I won’t go, I won’t go, I WON”T GO! And you can’t make me Mommy!”, and then we proceed to stamp your feet and try to hold your breath until we pass out. The act of saying no often turns into a childish tantrum, and a childish tantrum is an act of helpless frustration rather than one of strength and confidence. It’s natural for children to do it in some situations, they are often helpless and frustrated, as are many cluless parents, which is why they get into tantrum stand-offs with their kids so often, but I digress. A tantrum means you know you’re going to have to give in eventually. A tantrum either pisses the other person off, or it tells them that you’re likely to waver if they just push a little harder, neither of which helps. Saying no while indicating that you might not be so sure, is not the best way to go about it.

Saying No Nicely or The Polite No

A firm and polite no is more final. The fact that you aren’t trying to asphixiate yourself in protest or shout your lungs out in anger usually means that you are sure of what you’re saying, and you aren’t going to budge. If you aren’t going to budge, the average salesman or woman knows you’re a waste of their time. Their best option then is to return the politeness and move along to better prospects. This is all human nature, whether or not you’re being sold a 36-volume encyclopedia, the same principles hold.

Beyond the convenience and time-saving of saying no nicely, there is also the fact that it engratiates you to the person you said no to. Remember how I said we hate saying no? Well, the fact is most of us hate selling too. We’re embarrased by it, although the best sales people learn to hide that embarrasment behind a veneer of savvy confidence. When someone fights their embarrasment to “sell” or ask for something, berating them for it will just make them more embarrased or angry. Being polite is often a bit of human consideration that they don’t expect but welcome. Now they are thankful to you for saying no the way you said it. How can you possibly let go of that opportunity?

Saying No to Yourself

The most difficult no to say is to yourself. Every decision you make, no matter how big or small, often involves a bit of internal dialogue between your own conflicting opinions. This is really no different than the situations I’ve described above. One part of you, or several parts of you, are trying to convince you to do something, but the CEO of your mind, you, can’t get yourself to refuse, even though you know you shouldn’t indulge whatever it is you’re about to. We often indulge our destructive fancies, and just plain unhealthy or unreasonable tendencies, just because we can’t say no even to ourselves. Especially to ourselves.

Again, our first instinct is to shout at ourselves or shake our arms about in self deprecation for considering such things. But, even when it comes to the salesmen within, all you need to say is “No, thank you”, nicely. The same benefits apply.

I keep hearing that being a jerk is easy. I think it’s too much work. There are all those cutting insults to invent, all those forceful tirades to go into, and all those blood-pressure-raising arm movements to execute to convice your victim you are serious. As I said, too much work. If you’re refusing something, does it really help to call the legitimacy of anyone’s parenthood into question? Sure, maybe the guy you’re saying no to really is the illegitimate son of a three-humped camel, as you boldly claim, but does it matter when you are saying no and won’t have to deal with him further? Probably not.

First, learn to say no. It’s essential, and the only trick to it is to jump right in and say it as quickly as possible. And then, learn to say no nicely. Practice the fine but simple art of the polite no, and you will save youself a lot of time, suffering, and driving around in circles to get where you actually want to go. Sold? Good.

Samir

The whole world is out to get you. All the signs are there. You never get a lucky break. People always treat you like dirt. And the few people who are nice? They’re after something, obviously. Everyone else is on a life-long personal vendetta to make your existence slightly more unpleasant: the people at the bank, your boss, politicians, that team you support who always loses just to spite you, and random children & animals who insist on walking in front of you when you’re so busy mulling the sorry state of the world.

Go on, admit it. You’ve had all this go through your head at some point. But some of you have this going through your head all the time. There, you see, you were just thinking it right now. To you, ladies and gentlemen of the persecuted elite, I tip my hat in awe. I would like to come up to each one of you personally, and shake your hand. Because to truly believe and live with the faith that the entire human race and stray rocks are out to make your life miserable, requires a level of self-confidence and ego that is tremendous. With that level of confidence in yourself you must all be the most creative and productive people in the world!

Why the awkward silence? What is this you say? You’re neither creative nor productive? I think I can explain the problem. Like all good human stories it starts a long time ago, on a tree far far away. The early mammals were likely always running away from dinosaurs. Hey, I don’t care if it’s true, it just looks much cooler in my head this way. So anyway, since they had to always keep an eye out for the supporting cast of Jurassic Park around every tree bark, they developed a drug habit. Every time there was the possibility of danger, their brain sent out a signal which pumped their blood with a wonderful energy drink called adrenaline. Suddenly they were filled with the instinct and energy to fight or escape whatever threatened them (fight or flight).

This drug habit worked out well for them. It meant more of these little mammals survived and avoided becoming buffalo wings for some hungry dino. Of course, back then they weren’t called buffalo wings because buffalo hadn’t been invented yet, but I digress. Eventually the dinos died out for having played too dangerously on the cosmic stock market, and the little scurrying creatures survived due to their frugal lifestyle. But the drug habit continued, because there were always new things to be threatened by.

Over the aeons, those mammals evolved and moved into caves to get away from deadly predators, and then into buildings. But while the old predators had died out and been forced into the entertainment industry, our drug lust didn’t stop. It’s quite difficult to break a 100 million year old habit. It still has its uses, of course, when you’re trying to save yourself from a burning building, or you’re trying to throw yourself out of the way of a runaway bus, but how often do those things happen to you? Not regularly, I hope. The rest of the time, our adrenaline-junkie brains make up imaginary dinos for us to run from.

Back when we were still in the caves, one or two trouble makers found a solution. They were the first to say things like, “To hell with all that hunting, man!”, and, “I’m never going to work for THE (cave) MAN,” and, “Make finger paintings not dangerous bare-fisted battle with a woolly mammoth.” Those were the first human beings that realised there was a way without the drug they had been used to, and that there was a drug with a much bigger high: creativity. Not only did they realise that getting rid of the adrenaline gifted them with the spark of creativity, but also that the spark of creative thinking helped set them free from the flight and fright feeling. This is why they went on to invent spears, solid walls, fortresses, and eventually frozen chicken.

Obviously, the rest of the population of fine upstanding cave dwellers thought these proto-artists and proto-inventors were nuts. Sure they went on tours of the neighbouring painted cave on their holidays, and sure they started copying those strange spear things the weirdos had come up with because it made the hunt less tiresome, but they weren’t falling for any of this creativity rubbish. No, they were still old fashioned, traditional people, and they preferred their drugs in adrenaline shaped bottles, thank you very much! So while the art and invention was being developed in one corner they created something more sinister in the other: gossip, and the news. You see, now it didn’t matter if dinos were chasing you, you could just hear about how dinos allegedly chased someone else and the adrenaline would taste just as good, the stress would feel just as real, and you could constantly scurry around like it was the good old days on the trees.

It was inevitable, because giving in to baser instincts is easy. Creativity is also an instinct, but one that only flourishes when the parasitic influences of fear and aggression have been removed from the equation. The cave painters knew that. Giving in was easy for them too, but keeping their heads and being creative human beings in spite of all the chemicals rushing through their blood that told them otherwise, was hard. Like those early pioneers, even today some people choose this hard path, in whatever field of endeavour they might be, because painting is not the only creative act. They choose to ignore the most powerful antagonist, their own basic natures, to do more and be more. Who would you respect, someone who always takes the easy way through everything, never achieving their best, or someone who takes the hard route, ever striving towards their best? Are there any doubts as to why the whole world is not jumping with joy every time they see you?

So, embrace the fact that you are human and meant for more than scurrying around headless. First I suggest you go break your ridiculous addiction to the news and current events, and then come back and talk to me when you are sober. I promise, I will welcome you with a warm embrace, each and every one of you. We can sit together and laugh about the good old caveman days, when the whole world was out to get you.

Samir

Few amongst us take stock of our lives regularly, if ever. But, there are those occasions when life forces us to rethink and re-evaluate where we have come from, and where we are heading. These are significant, pivotal moments when drastic changes compel us to take a few moments in thought and see the forest for the trees. Wouldn’t it be better if we were asking ourselves these questions and answering them honestly when there wasn’t a proverbial gun held to our heads? I think so, and I wanted to share with you one of the ways I do it.

My madness you are familiar with, but one of the current methods to this madness I stumbled upon quite by accident. A few years ago I got myself a new mobile phone. I still use the same one today, but back then it was state-of-the-art with an infra-red connection and 12 whole megabytes of memory. It still had a limit to how many text messages it could store though. I like keeping a record of my conversations, so when the phone first filled up, I figured out how it could connect to an old laptop I had and back up all the messages stored on it. I was very happy with myself, but when I had to repeat the performance a few months later it didn’t work, and it never has since.

At the time, in a moment of boredom, I decided on a strange solution: I would write down all the messages in my inbox and sent folder in an old diary I had lying around. Back then I thought it was a one-time thing until I figured out the connection glitches, but I’ve been writing down messages with pen & paper in that old diary ever since. I’m glad I do, because what started as an act of desperation has proved to be a very useful exercise over the years. Let no man ever claim that failures of technology have no benefits.

I’m not one of those obsessively texting teenagers (or any sort of teenager for that matter), so every few months my phone hits its limit and starts warning me that it’s running out of space for messages. This happened continuously over the past weeks. During a particularly procrastinatory mood a few days ago, I decided to sit down with my diary and do the needful.

Looking through my old messages in the correct chronological order is like a telegraphic recap of my life over the past few months, and I always find it fascinating. As I read through the vague shadows of past conversations and events, more comes flooding back, the short text acting like mnemonic triggers, and I inevitably start asking myself some useful questions:

Where was I back then?

My current batch of messages started towards the end of December 2008. At the time I was very busy churning out articles and layouts for the regular magazine project I was working on. We were behind schedule and it looked like work would continue well into the first week of the new year, which it did.

When I finally laid that project to rest, I got a call from another designer friend who wanted help with some of her more technical work, and we had a meeting in which we discussed the looming deadline this work was to be completed by. As I read our messages arranging the meeting, I realised it had been 3 months since that meeting, the project had never quite materialised, and I had forgotten.

There were plenty of other tales in those snippets: College friends who were back in town for a quick visit after many years, online chat appointments with clients, design issues for an artist friend’s website, trips to the airport, long lost school buddies. A lot happens in 3 months of your life, even a quiet life like mine. A lot happens, and at the same time many things stand still.

Where did I want to go?

The magazine project was a business boon that provided some regular work over the last year, but every time I was working on it I looked forward to finishing it so that I could move on to other things. Writing and laying out a magazine, even a small one, can be all-consuming. So with the magazine done, I was glad I wouldn’t have to worry about that for another 2 months.

I had a handful of ideas for websites and other things I wanted to get started on. the plan was to build them up over the coming months, and have them ready and running so that regular work and updates on them could continue.

My other big to-do was to get back to writing some fiction after a hiatus of many years. Writing has always been a passion, and fiction especially so. Over the years though, I have had more occasion to write non-fiction articles and my more fanciful writing gradually took a back seat until it completely vanished. In January, I decided I must tackle a short story at worst, or ideally start writing one of the many ideas for a full sized novel I had in my notebooks.

Am I getting there?

I look back at all those things and in a word: no. I have barely put up a few place-holder pages for the web site ideas. I have done almost nothing on my other schemes, and I have yet to write a single sentence of fiction.

An honest evaluation of your progress, such as this, is very tough to face, but completely necessary if you want to seriously re-evaluate things as they stand.

Do I still want to go there?

Yes I do. I haven’t changed my mind about anything I wanted to do when my phone’s message archive began. There have definitely been refinements in some of my ideas, and the thrust of some others have been altered in my head, due to new things I’ve learnt or changing priorities. But the essentials stay unchanged.

Changing priorities and rethinking whether your old dragons are still ones you wish to slay is an important question to ask yourself, and the one question we often lie about. It is usually easier to chase our old aims in a half-hearted way than to admit to ourselves that those goals and dreams no longer interest us. Always a tough call to make, but don’t think of past time spent pursuing something you’ve changed your mind about as time wasted. It rarely is, and lessons learnt are ever applicable to new situations.

What stopped me from getting there?

These questions of ourselves get more and more difficult to answer honestly because our own minds get more treacherous and self-aggrandizing as we dig deeper. In my case the simple answer to this question would be: laziness. But, laziness and procrastination are usually symptoms rather than causes. The causes can be several:

Did I over reach?

I always do, and I am aware of this. But we aren’t always aware of our impractical demands upon ourselves. A fair measure of whether or not something we wish to do is doable usually escapes us until much later and that is a tendency to fight, for our own sanity.

Did I under perform?

Yes again, and the trick here is always to specifically think about the mechanics of how you didn’t do enough, rather than think in generalities.

Did I just not know clearly where I was going?

Also true, and in my case it is often from wanting to go too many places at once. That need not be true for everyone. It is perfectly possible to be unclear of what you want to do even when focussed on a single task. It falls upon us to recognise that and correct it in time before too much is lost in the process of finding your way in the darkness.

What held me back? What distracted me?

Not being focussed on a manageable number of things for one, runaway research, and there is always my need to carry out elaborate conversations with people using any and all mediums at my disposal. I enjoy it and I still wouldn’t give up on it, but like all things it needs to be done in a controlled and organised way. It’s just too easy to wake up in the morning, get straight into your email or Twitter account, and only realise at bed time that the day is over and you did none of the ‘work’ on your to-do list.

All things in moderation, is a worthy motto in life. The same can be said for whatever distracts you regularly from what you want to be doing.

What pushed me in the right direction?

In spite of all the critique and self-criticisms that are a necessary part of any healthy self-evaluation, taking stock of your life should emphasize equally what has worked well, and what is working to take you towards your goals.

I mentioned runaway research as being one of the things that distracted me; It is my personal favourite form of procrastination. But, I also need to admit that not all that unplanned and un-metered research was a waste. A lot comes out of my aimless wanderings and devourings of technical trivia. Many new ideas are born this way, and over the past few months, my reading has gained me insights which will very positively affect all my projects in the future. I will also save myself a lot of grief and failures due to things I have learnt that I didn’t know before. Also, some of these research marathons provided the immediate stimulus for me to do whatever little I did get done.

Never forget to look at what is working well. If something is working for you, do more of it, and if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!

How does where I wanted to go back then gel with what I now know, to change my path forward?

While I’ve always loved my long conversations with people, I was nowhere as active in online social forums at the beginning of this year. While that provided one of the main distractions against my progress it has also taught me a lot and changed my mind about some of my plans.

Back then I was planning on working on my various ideas and website projects in isolation, and letting my own site languish for want of a good reason or audience to keep it going at a healthy pace. Now, I am convinced my own site is still a key element of my various plans, without which all of it will never quite work at its full potential.

While I’ve always though in a big-picture, interdependent sort of way when it comes to my plans and ideas, the past few months of online social activity and the very interesting and dear people I have met, has changed my perspective on my plans a bit. Now I’m thinking in a more organic way as to how the various pieces of the picture should grow, and how I should never lose sight of my own personal web site, and the people who grace it with their attention along the way .

As I closed my diary of short message wonders after a few hours of diligent transcription, my fingers were sore and I needed to stretch to get my limbs working again. In that itself, I came to the realisation that I almost never use a pen to write any more. Continuous keyboard use had let my writing muscles atrophy to a sad state. And with this I decided that any fiction writing that was to happen would happen on paper. In writing as in other things in life I guess ‘use it or lose it’ holds true.

My ritual stock taking of life was now over and I would not return to it for a few months. As always I found the process enlightening and educational. In the rush of everyday life we forget to step back and think of what it is we are doing, and such rethinks and re-evaluations are a must if you are one of those who want to do more than merely survive for the length of your life.

I clicked on the over-used keys on my phone, and navigated the menus to the fateful choice that said: Clear All Messages. After warning me of the permanent consequences and asking for my approval, the phone froze for a moment and then the messages were gone. My phone was clear, my mind was clear, and the future was filled with possibilities.

Samir

Go forth and have an affair to remember. I’m not advocating promiscuity in your relationships, but rather in your creativity and your ideas. The good thing is that ideas don’t have feelings that can be hurt, or self esteems that can be crushed. Your mixing it up a bit with your ideas is not going to make you a bad person, just a more creative one.

In a few more days we will be at the vernal equinox. Spring is here, and in this age of global warming, you might as well take advantage of the weather to have a summer fling a little early. A spring fling with a new idea is the perfect way to kick start your creativity and be happier in the process.

Why is it then that so few of us take this plunge into a whirlwind romance? There are usually three reasons we get stuck in a rut when it comes to ideas:

1] Too few ideas

If you haven’t yet perfected your own method of generating new ideas at will, it is likely you are a bit uptight about the few ideas you have. Possessiveness is a negative emotion, as much with ideas as with people, and sometimes you have to let go. To get more comfortable, discover some new ways to brainstorm and generate ideas. Once you realise there are more fish in the sea, perhaps you will loosen up a little and take the odd chance on a casual fling.

2] Too many ideas

You could have the opposite problem. You’re spoilt for choice and so you’re never quite sure which of the thousands of ideas to choose to select wallpaper with, and which to consider as temporary distraction to have a little fun with. I have news for you, there is no magic bolt from the sky which will make these decisions for you. If you have too much to deal with, choose one promising idea at random and pursue it like a lovestruck teenager. Maybe it is a short affair, a minor infatuation, but at least you will enjoy the time you have together and maybe you’ll even be friends for life. We can all use all the friends we can get.

3] Too serious about ideas

The most common reason for freezing up with your ideas is that you are too embroiled in them. You think too much and take every idea too seriously. Just barely have you laid eyes on a vaguely pretty face of a new concept, and you’ve already started planning your future together, and how you’ll spend your long weekends, and who’ll take out the trash. All this before you’ve found out if the object of you attentions is worth your attention in the first place. To take your ideas too seriously prematurely is as deadly as being frivolous about them once they develop. You have to realise that every idea you come across is not your soul mate, and you must also realise that engaging these temporary distractions helps you grow and gives you happiness that is as important in the long run as that big idea you’re still waiting for over the horizon.

All these possible scenarios lead you to be overly attached to your ideas and that blocks everything. You could be out there in the golden spring Sun courting a beauty and accepting that it’s not meant to last, and instead you are sitting in here worrying over who will take care of whom when you get old.

Get over it. Pick an idea and run with it. A quick and breezy romance is often just what the doctor ordered for the creative type. Something that doesn’t require too much thought or planning, or guessing and second guessing. Something that is fun while it lasts and enriches your experiences for ever more. At worst it teaches you a few valuable lessons, but you can’t abstain from these in fear of the future if you hope to continue being creative.

Spring flings and quickly executed ideas are good for you, like a stint of quick exercise, or an unexpected surprise. Indulge in these without guilt because your spring flings with ideas will gift you with spontaneity, courage, and self confidence, all of which will be invaluable when you do want to tackle a serious idea which you would like to spend the rest of your life with.

You know that little hottie you’ve been flirting with or eyeing cautiously from afar? Take them out for a spin. Take a chance, make your move in good faith and with good humour. Delay too much and some other creative devil will swoop in while you’re blushing and dilly-dallying and sweep them off their feet. You would have missed an opportunity, an experience, and things will never be exactly the same again. Times change. At best you’ll be invited to their whirlwind wedding and enjoy some free food. At worst you’ll be stuck with baby sitting their pesky kids forever. Doesn’t a casual fling sound like more fun?

Samir