This probably wouldn’t be the title you’d expect if you were browsing the business section of your favorite bookstore, but we really shouldn’t judge books by their covers.  The book is indeed titled, Ignore Everybody And 39 Other Keys to Creativity, by Hugh MacLeod, and it brilliantly highlights ways to stay creative even if you are not all that confident in your ideas. 

Hugh had started out creating cartoons on the backs of business cards.  He didn’t think they would get noticed, until they did.  He is now a blogger on his site, Gaping Void, and is a successful lecturer and consultant.  He used his artful business cards to become highly successful doing what he thought to be right, and not what others thought he should be doing.

Ignore Everybody gives us courage to keep on keeping on with our creative endeavors by  providing witty inspirational tips we can adapt to our businesses.  Here are three key points you can begin digesting now while you wait for your own copy of the book to arrive after you order it today:

I. Everyone is Born Creative

In Ignore Everybody, Hugh addresses how corporations tend to, sometimes inadvertently, kill creativity and other times invite it.  Employees’ creativity is often left to the whim of corporate leaders who pronounce yay or nay to ideas.  Instead, Hugh suggests that we all learn to live with the oddball inspirational moments of creativity and run with them. 

This book is not a “normal” idea book for business.  Hugh’s writing style incorporates bathroom humor and language often found at a truck stop.  Still, when you can get past those bumps in the road, the meaning behind the delivery is inspiring and leads the reader with a sense of permission to create.

Key Point: Accept the permission to run with your ideas regardless of how outlandish they may at first seem.  Don’t put out the fire, but stoke it.

 II. Ignore Everybody and Begin Building on Your Own Ideas

Hugh discusses in the book about how when he first arrived in New York City, he would sit on park benches or in a bar and doodle on the backs of business cards.  He didn’t think anything of it at first until he began collecting them and found that he enjoyed what he created.  Everyone else thought it was just a waste of time, but Hugh persisted believing that he must be free to express his creativity and eventually he will make a success of his art.

In the book, Hugh suggests that creativity is not just an art, but it is about goals, problems and challenges and how you approach them.  He uses the illustration of imaging how you feel when trying to tackle your own personal Mount Everest.  Fear usually gets in the way, but striving for the ultimate goal, in this case the summit of the mountain, should help us to overcome the fear. 

Key Point: Focus on your own creativity and the outcome of it and not the fear of what others may think.

III. Do It For Yourself

Finally, Hugh saves what I believe to be the most powerful message in the book, for last.  Not only do we want to believe we are all creative and that we must ignore everyone else and embrace that creativity, but we must do it on our own.  On the surface this sounds like a given, but what Hugh explains is that we often desire positive feedback from others because of our creative ideas.  Instead, Hugh states that everyone has their own life to live and their own books to write, their own experiments to try, and their own businesses to launch.  It is as if, regarding our ideas, that we live in a bubble and the only person to please creatively is ourselves.

 In Ignore Everybody, Hugh states that we need to learn how to live with the odd-ball moments of inspiration and make them work for ourselves.  He points out that if we do this, we will find our true voice.

Key Point: Treat yourself to your inspirational moments.  Block out all the negative chatter that may come and instead learn to focus solely on what pleasure those creative moments bring.

Ignore Everybody is a different kind of book.  I personally didn’t care for the language Hugh occasionally used, but I gained a lot of insight and inspiration from his principles.  This is the kind of book that doesn’t give you answers and clear-cut paths to take, but it sparks thoughts and ideas that expands the mind and leaves you thinking about things in a different way.  To me, that is worth a read and then another one later in the year.  The information lights fireworks in areas of the mind that may have been dormant for a while.

Johnny Duncan, President of Duncan Consulting, Inc., is a business writer and consultant partnering with business leaders to provide workforce management solutions including leadership coaching, customer service training, people-to-job matches, copywriting, and conflict resolution.  He can be reached at johnny@duncanconsult.com or by calling 407-739-0718.