Lateral Action

Have you ever had the experience of getting tantalisingly close to a big opportunity in your creative career – but not quite making it? Maybe it was a pitch, or a competition, a publishing oppo...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/are-you-in-the-ballpark/

When the Covid 19 pandemic struck in 2020, human life on earth was massively disrupted. Not only the human tragedy of millions of lives lost, but also the social and economic damage caused by the...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/creative-disruption-pandemic/

Welcome to Episode 10 of the Creative Disruption season of The 21st Century Creative, where we are hearing stories of creatives around the world who came up with a creative response to the challe...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/marks-pandemic/

Welcome to Episode 9 of the Creative Disruption season of The 21st Century Creative, where we are hearing stories of creatives around the world who came up with a creative response to the challen...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/ichi-hatano/

Welcome to Episode 8 of the Creative Disruption season of The 21st Century Creative, where we are hearing stories of creatives around the world who came up with a creative response to the challen...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/nicky-mondellini/

If you work on your own – in your office or studio, or your bedroom or at your kitchen table – it can feel like no one is watching. So it doesn’t matter whether you show up. If you skipped ...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/all-arts-are-performing-arts/

Welcome to Episode 7 of the Creative Disruption season of The 21st Century Creative, where we are hearing stories of creatives around the world who came up with a creative response to the challen...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/laura-davis/

A few months ago I was listening to the DavidBowie: AlbumtoAlbum podcast, a terrific show about Bowie hosted by Arsalan Mohammed. In Season 3 episode 11 Arsalan spoke to Donny McCaslin, the leade...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/grind-the-work-out/

Welcome to Episode 6 of the Creative Disruption season of The 21st Century Creative, where we are hearing stories of creatives around the world who came up with a creative response to the challen...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/charlotte-abroms-music-manager/

Last week I suggested that if you’re serious about achieving your creative ambitions, you need to think in terms of projects, not tasks. Because if you get up every morning and ask yourself ‘...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/multifaceted-projects/

Welcome to Episode 5 of the CREATIVE DISRUPTION season of The 21st Century Creative, where we are hearing stories of creatives around the world who came up with a creative response to the challen...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/creative-parenting-kay-lock-kolp/

When we think of productivity we typically think about tasks and to-do lists, working habits and routines. We focus on how to make the most of our time on a daily or at most a weekly basis. All o...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/focus-on-projects-not-tasks/

Welcome to Episode 4 of the CREATIVE DISRUPTION season of The 21st Century Creative, where we are hearing stories of creatives around the world who came up with a creative response to the challen...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/mojo-box-amrita-kumar/

Marketing is a word that strikes fear into the heart of a lot of creatives. It’s an area where a lot of us feel we don’t have a natural talent – we’re far more comfortable making work tha...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/marketing-media-dashboard/

Welcome to Episode 3 of the CREATIVE DISRUPTION season of The 21st Century Creative, where we are hearing stories of creatives around the world who came up with a creative response to the challen...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/remote-production-hometeam/

A lot of creative professions involve submitting work to gatekeepers of various kinds: agents, editors, publishers, gallerists, funders, producers, studios and competition judges and so on. Yes, ...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/what-rejection-means/

Welcome to Episode 2 of the CREATIVE DISRUPTION season of The 21st Century Creative, where we are hearing stories of creatives around the world who came up with a creative response to the challen...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/lockdown-series-earl-abrahams/

‘Eat a live frog first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you for the rest of the day.’ This quote is often attributed to Mark Twain. Apparently there’s no hard evidence ...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/eat-cake/

Today we kick off Season 6 of The 21st Century Creative, the podcast that helps you thrive as a creative professional amid the demands, distractions and opportunities of the 21st Century. The the...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/rocky-road-steven-kunis/

I hope this finds you as well as can be. Here in the UK we’re bracing for what we are assured will be a large wave of Omicron. I know things may be very different for you, depending on where yo...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/video-career-advice-for-creatives/

Today is the launch of my new podcast, and it’s something I’ve been planning and dreaming of sharing with you for years. It’s called A Mouthful of Air. And in several ways, it’s the oppos...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/my-new-podcast-a-mouthful-of-air/

Last night I was about to go to bed when I suddenly remembered an idea I’d had for an article a few months ago. Though I say so myself, it was a great idea, and I was keen to revisit it, so I o...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/ideas-are-leprechauns/

Today’s guest on The 21st Century Creative is Michael Bungay Stanier, a returning guest whose interview way back in Season 1 proved very popular. And his book The Coaching Habit turned out to b...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/michael-bungay-stanier-advice-trap/

A lot of productivity advice tells us that we need to stop procrastinating, beat Resistance, and get things done. The Americans like to talk about ‘shipping’, meaning finished and sent out fo...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/creative-project-revolving-door/

Today’s guest on The 21st Century Creative is Krystal Lauk, an illustrator who took an unconventional path by creating illustrations for tech companies, and founded a studio that counts Google,...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/krystal-lauk/

I’ve recently started taking one-to-one Japanese conversation lessons. It hasn’t been easy. In fact, it’s been a bit of a humbling experience. Between work and family responsibilities, I on...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/be-bad/

Today’s guest on The 21st Century Creative is Cynthia Morris, a coach for creatives who shares insights on the book-writing process, based on her latest book The Busy Woman’s Guide to Writing...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/cynthia-morris/

If you think about overhearing something, you probably think of listening to someone else’s conversation, whether deliberately or accidentally, and picking up a titbit of information that you w...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/overhearing-yourself/

Today’s guest on The 21st Century Creative is Emily Kimelman, a thriller author who has travelled the world in a boat and criss-crossed the USA in an Airstream trailer while writing and publish...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/emily-kimelman/

Today I want to persuade you that systems can set you free. You might not associate systems with freedom, but bear with me while I explain. This morning I’m writing this article for you. The on...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/systems-freedom/

This week’s guest on The 21st Century Creative podcast is Naomi Dunford, a contrarian marketing guru who has been ‘helping weirdos sell things on the internet’ for many years. So if you’r...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/naomi-dunford/

Like many people you may have a love-hate relationship with your phone. On the one hand it gives you a world of information, entertainment and diverting pastimes at your fingertips. But it can al...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/pick-up-a-poem/

This week’s guest on The 21st Century Creative podcast is Steve Lawson, a musician described by Bass Guitar magazine as “Britain’s most innovative bassist, no contest”. Instead of playing...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/steve-lawson/

This week’s guest on The 21st Century Creative Podcast is Joanna Penn, an Award-nominated, New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of thrillers and dark fantasy, which she writes as J.F...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/joanna-penn/

This is something I’ve found myself saying over and over to coaching clients in the past few weeks. For some of them, it’s because they’re being challenged to reinvent themselves in the fac...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/normal-rules-suspended/

This week’s guest on The 21st Century Creative Podcast is Nick Hand, founder of The Department of Small Works and The Letterpress Collective, where he does amazing work with antique letterpress...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/nick-hand/

This week’s guest on The 21st Century Creative podcast is the eminent Mathematician Marcus du Sautoy, who takes us on a voyage through the weird and wonderful world of artificial intelligence (...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/marcus-du-sautoy/

Our world has been turned upside down. It may be broken forever, given that we may never get back to the life we had before. And right now, the entire world is dependent on creativity. Across the...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/crucial-creativity/

Today we kick off Season 5 of The 21st Century Creative, the podcast that helps you thrive as a creative professional amid the demands, distractions and opportunities of the 21st Century. Our fir...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/john-t-unger-21st-century-artist/

After months of work, and having to rewrite large chunks of the show in response to the pandemic, I’m pleased to say that Season 5 of The 21st Century Creative podcast will launch next Monday. ...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/season-5-coming/

Back in 2016 I outlined a fundamental strategy for your career as a 21st century creative professional: forget the career ladder, start creating assets. The argument I made, and that I make week-...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/make-the-most-of-your-creative-assets/

This week’s guest on The 21st Century Creative is Monique DeBose, an award-winning singer-songwriter and playwright, who has toured throughout America, Europe, India and Asia. Her third album, ...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/monique-debose/

Have you ever had the experience of solving a big problem, or removing a major source of stress from your life? Before you solved the problem it dominated your life for weeks or even months on en...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/conveyor-belt-of-worry/

This week’s guest on The 21st Century Creative is Ilise Benun, known as the Marketing Mentor. Ilise has spent over 30 years helping ‘the creatively self employed’ to succeed in business, an...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/ilise-benun/

When I started out as a self-employed psychotherapist and coach, in the mid-nineties, I was completely clueless about marketing. I thought it was the antithesis of my work – something commercia...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/creative-marketing/

This week’s guest on The 21st Century Creative is Deborah Henry-Pollard, a creative coach based in London who describes her work as ‘Using my skills to support creative people who make us see...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/deborah-henry-pollard/

Today I want to talk about two types of entrepreneur. When you think of an entrepreneur, maybe you think of someone like Richard Branson or Mark Cuban or Elon Musk. Or going back further in time,...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/be-an-enterprising-creator/

This week’s guest on The 21st Century Creative podcast is Robert Vlach, a business consultant who specializes in supporting independent professionals and business owners, and the author of a ne...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/the-freelance-way-robert-vlach/

If you’re a self-employed creative, maybe you recognise this experience. You meet a business expert and get into conversation about your work. At a certain point they give you a sympathetic loo...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/your-business-utopia/

This week’s guest on The 21st Century Creative is Erik Bork – a screenwriter, producer, script consultant and coach who has won two Emmy and two Golden Globe awards for his work on the HBO se...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/the-idea-erik-bork/

Well, do you? I’m asking because I’m guessing you probably don’t. And that therefore you could probably benefit from establishing a Credit Practice in your life. Now you may have heard of a...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/credit-practice/

This week’s guest on The 21st Century Creative podcast is Maria Bovin de Labbé, a Swedish drummer, artist and teacher, living on a peninsula in the Fjord of Oslo, Norway. She is best known for...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/maria-bovin-de-labbe/

I once attended a meditation retreat led by a Buddhist nun. One evening she told us the story of the day she ran away from the monastery. She’d been working and meditating and keeping the disci...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/have-you-given-up-yet/

This week’s guest on The 21st Century Creative podcast is Peleg Top, an artist, a writer, a speaker and an inspired guide who coaches creative professionals to succeed and become extraordinary ...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/peleg-top/

When I was young, I questioned everything: Why does it get dark at night? Where does the sun go? Why do I have to go to bed? Why can’t I be a dinosaur? Why do I have to go to school? When I gre...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/question-everything/

This week’s guest on The 21st Century Creative is Nadia Shireen, an award-winning and bestselling children’s author and illustrator. Her books include Good Little Wolf, The Bumblebear, The Co...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/nadia-shireen/

For many people, globalization is one of the scourges of modern life. It’s why the shops in the high street all look the same, wherever you go. It’s why McDonald’s is everywhere. It’s why...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/creative-globalisation/

This week’s guest on The 21st Century Creative is Alastair Humphreys, a British adventurer and author whose latest book, My Midsummer Morning, recounts his attempt to busk his way across Spain ...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/alastair-humphreys/

The poet Philip Larkin said that all his best poems were written in rooms on the top floor of a building. He once had to live in a basement flat, and got writer’s block. He didn’t elaborate b...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/where-does-your-creativity-thrive/

Today we kick off Season 4 of The 21st Century Creative, the podcast that helps you thrive as a creative professional amid the demands, distractions and opportunities of the 21st Century. Our fir...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/brian-clark-unemployable/

Just about every creative I’ve ever coached has had a very sharp and active Inner Critic. And you know what? That’s a good thing. If you find yourself resisting this idea, maybe because you k...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/be-thankful-for-your-inner-critic/

This week’s guest on the 21st Century Creative podcast is CJ Lyons, a New York Times and USA Today thriller author who has sold more than 2.5 million books. She has won numerous awards, includi...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/cj-lyons/

Have you ever got yourself tied up in knots while working on an important piece of writing? You spend ages staring at the screen, writing, deleting and rewriting, over and over again. The harder ...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/writers-block-solution/

This week’s guest on the 21st Century Creative podcast is Emily Cohen, a consultant who provides strategic advice to principals of creative firms, and author of the book Brutally Honest. I firs...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/emily-cohen-brutally-honest/

If you’re committed to achieving your creative ambitions, then you’re probably prepared to make sacrifices – to work hard, to invest time, to spend money or go without it, and to face down ...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/ridicule/

If you’ve ever looked at a blank screen or canvas or an empty rehearsal room or auditorium and felt paralysed with fear and self-doubt, then this week’s interview with David Kadavy is for you...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/david-kadavy/

If I asked you whether you want to dream big and play full out and achieve amazing things in your career, I’m guessing you’d give me an enthusiastic ‘Yes’. And if I asked you if you’re ...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/success-means-losing-control/

This week’s guest on the 21st Century Creative podcast is Vicki Saunders, an entrepreneur, mentor, author and a leading advocate for entrepreneurship as a means of positive transformation in th...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/sheeo-vicki-saunders/

Have you ever started work on a big creative project and found yourself paralysed by listening to the voice of your Inner Critic, giving you all the reasons you should give up? Who do you think y...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/inner-critic-technique/

This week’s guest on the 21st Century Creative podcast is Rich Litvin, a coach who specialises in taking high achievers to the greatest levels of success. Rich’s coaching clients include Olym...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/rich-litvin/

Reading is one of the easiest, most powerful and most enjoyable stimulants to creativity. Which is why so creators are voracious readers. I know I am. Since I was old enough to go out on my own, ...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/reading-system/

This week’s guest on the 21st Century Creative podcast is Christina Patterson — writer, broadcaster and consultant, author of The Art of Not Falling Apart. I first came across Christina’s w...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/christina-patterson/

If you’re a creative service provider of any kind, then to sign the right kind of clients — for the right kind of projects at the right kind of fees — then you basically need to do two thin...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/clients-creative-business/

This week’s guest on the 21st Century Creative podcast is David Hieatt, entrepreneur, author, speaker and founder of The Do Lectures. In 1995 David and his wife Claire Hieatt founded Howies –...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/david-hieatt/

This week’s guest on The 21st Century Creative podcast is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling thriller author, under the name JF Penn. Meanwhile as Joanna Penn, she is an expert on writi...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/healthy-creative-joanna-penn/

Have you ever found yourself looking at one of the rising stars in your field and thinking: What’s so special about them? My work’s at least as good as theirs! Why are they getting all the at...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/envy-creativity/

This week’s guest on The 21st Century Creative podcast is Tyler Hobbs, a artist who creates stunning images by writing a computer program to generate each new artwork. A few months ago I was ta...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/tyler-hobbs/

One of your first tasks as a creative is to find your primary medium — your means of expression. This is composed of the raw materials and artistic forms you use in your work. If you’re a nov...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/medium-media/

Today we kick off Season 3 of The 21st Century Creative, the podcast that helps you thrive as a creative professional amid the demands, distractions and opportunities of the 21st Century. A new f...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/steven-pressfield-the-artists-journey/

Today I publish my new book, 21 Insights for 21st Century Creatives. You can pick it up from the usual bookstores. So what’s the book about? It’s a compilation of the most powerful insights t...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/21-insights-for-21st-century-creatives/

This week’s guest on The 21st Century Creative podcast is Patricia van den Akker, the Director of The Design Trust, an organisation based in London with a mission to help designers and makers �...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/patricia-van-den-akker/

This week’s guest on The 21st Century Creative podcast is Sara Milne Rowe, one of the leading performance coaches in the UK and the founder of the company Coaching Impact, and the author of The...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/shed-method-sara-milne-rowe/

This week’s guest on The 21st Century Creative podcast is Josh Szeps, a TV and radio host, political commentator and comedian, and creator of the podcast #WeThePeople LIVE. Josh hails from Aust...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/josh-szeps/

This week’s guest on The 21st Century Creative podcast is Gabriela Pereira, a writer and teacher who is on a mission ‘to empower writers to take an entrepreneurial approach to their education...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/diymfa-gabriela-pereira/

This week’s guest on The 21st Century Creative podcast is Daniel Boettcher, the founder of The Intrepid Wendell, a bespoke jewellery salon in Washington, DC. If you visit Daniel’s website you...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/the-intrepid-wendell/

This week’s guest on The 21st Century Creative podcast is Jarie Bolander, a serial entrepreneur, living in San Francisco who has started and run several businesses in the tech, medical and PR s...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/entrepreneur-ethos/

This week’s guest on The 21st Century Creative podcast is Mimi Khalvati, one of the foremost poets currently writing in the UK. Mimi was born in Tehran, Iran and grew up on the Isle of Wight in...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/mimi-khalvati/

This week’s guest on The 21st Century Creative podcast is Todd Henry, a speaker, advisor to creative companies, and the author of a string of best-selling books for creatives, including The Acc...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/todd-henry-herding-tigers/

This week’s guest on The 21st Century Creative podcast is Javier Weyler, musician, composer and music designer. Born in Argentina and raised in Venezuela, he achieved national fame with the ban...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/javier-weyler/

Welcome to the start of Season 2 of The 21st Century Creative, the podcast that helps you thrive as a creative professional amid the demands, distractions and opportunities of the 21st Century. I...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/tina-roth-eisenberg/

As a creative coach I spend my days talking to inspiring creative professionals about their dreams, ambitions, trials, tribulations, breakthroughs and successes. It’s a dream job – and an unu...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/21-years-creative-coach/

This week’s guest on the 21st Century Creative Podcast is Aileen Bennett, Roving Creative Director and Idea Thinker Upper. In today’s interview, we tackle a question that many creative people...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/aileen-bennett/

This week’s guest on the 21st Century Creative Podcast is Kristin Linklater, the world-renowned teacher of voice work for actors and speakers, and the author of Freeing the Natural Voice and Fr...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/freeing-the-natural-voice-kristin-linklater/

This week’s guest on the 21st Century Creative Podcast is Nick Dunin, co-founder of Beyond Rest, a company that operates float centres in three Australian cities. Nick is on a mission to help p...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/floatation-tank-nick-dunin/

This week’s guest on the 21st Century Creative Podcast is Jocelyn K. Glei, Founding Editor of 99U, author of Unsubscribe: How to Kill Email Anxiety, Avoid Distractions, and Get Real Work Done, ...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/unsubscribe-jocelyn-glei/

This week’s guest on the 21st Century Creative Podcast is Michael Bungay Stanier, Founder and Senior Partner of Box of Crayons, a company that helps people and organizations all over the world ...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/the-coaching-habit-michael-bungay-stanier/

This week’s guest on the 21st Century Creative Podcast is Joanna Penn, a best-selling, award-nominated thriller writer, as well as a publishing expert and host of The Creative Penn Podcast. Joa...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/joanna-penn-successful-author-mindset/

This week’s guest on the 21st Century Creative Podcast is Laurie Millotte, designer and founder of Outshinery.com. On a round-the-world tip, Laurie spent time in Vietnam, Thailand, Japan, Hawai...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/laurie-millotte-outshinery/

This week’s guest on the 21st Century Creative Podcast is Fabrice Bourrelly, artist, architect and Virtual Reality designer.   As Fabrice talks about his development as a creator, the conversa...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/virtual-reality-fabrice-bourrelly/

This week’s guest on the 21st Century Creative Podcast is Steven Pressfield, author of the creativity classic The War of Art and a string of other bestselling fiction and nonfiction books. In t...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/steven-pressfield-truth-and-fiction/

Today is the launch of my podcast The 21st Century Creative. It’s designed to help you thrive as a creative professional amid the demands, distractions and opportunities of the brave new world ...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/21st-century-podcast-scott-belsky/

When you follow a creative path, you won’t find any of the usual milestones of success. Unlike your friends who enter traditional jobs, with clear routes to promotion, finely calibrated pay gra...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/creative-assets/

My new book, Productivity for Creative People, has just been published. You can pick up a copy of the ebook edition from Amazon, Apple, Kobo, Barnes & Noble, Google Play and Smashwords. How to ge...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/productivity-for-creative-people/

The book I recommend most often to my coaching clients is The War of Art by Steven Pressfield – based on his own struggles en route to becoming a best-selling novelist, it’s indispensable rea...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/steven-pressfield-nobody-wants-to-read/

After 18 months, four drafts and countless cups of coffee, my new book Motivation for Creative People is finally complete. You can pick up the ebook edition from Amazon, Apple, Kobo, Barnes & Nob...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/motivation-for-creative-people/

Kabuki star Ebizo Ichikawa XI in action, from Ebizo’s YouTube channel Last Christmas I visited the Kabuki-za theater in Tokyo to experience kabuki—one of Japan’s traditional forms of drama,...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/kabuki-creativity/

How much should I charge? I hear this question a lot from creative coaching clients wrestling with the perennial question of how much a unique piece of art, or a stylish design, or an engrossing ...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/emotional-pricing/

The Nine Muses Once upon a time it was taken for granted that the source of creativity was not the artist but the spirits, gods, or Muses, via inspiration. The word “inspiration” comes from t...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/find-inspiration/

Why do you create? For love? For money? or both? Balancing creative inspiration and professional ambition The surprisingly creative potential of business models Selling books – getting the basi...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/making-living-creativity/

What are the biggest challenges facing creatives who start out in business for themselves? Should you quit your day job or start building your creative enterprise in your spare time? How are your...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/business-for-authors-joanna-penn/

Image by nikkytok via BigStock As Gregory Sampson awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found his bed transformed into a gigantic slab of stone. He couldn’t see the change – the room was pi...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/creativity-crisis/

In recent years the term ‘digital nomad’ has become a buzzword for a new way of living and working – travelling the globe with a laptop and living in a succession of exotic countries, all t...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/suitcase-entrepreneur-natalie-sisson/

If you want to succeed as a creative professional, sooner or later you’re going to have to stand up in front of an audience and persuade them of the value of your work. If you’re a writer you...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/public-speaking-introverts/

Image by digitalista via BigStock When I teach my workshop on ‘Fundraising for Artists,’ we play this game: I give the class an imaginary check for $10,000 and I ask an artist to come to the ...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/start-finish/

Are you the type of creative person who only generates ideas and solutions when you’ve had your full eight hours of shut-eye? Or perhaps you find your mind firing off with so many bright ideas ...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/interrupting-sleep-creativity/

I love crime dramas, especially ones where the protagonist appears to have a psychological edge over everyone else, such as The Mentalist, Sherlock and Luther. The way they look at the crime scen...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/creative-questions/

If you subscribe to Lateral Action via email… You can relax, there’s nothing for you to do. 🙂 You’ll keep getting the latest blog posts as usual. Sorry to bother you, and have a great we...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/new-feed/

How can you find your creative focus in a world that seems purpose-designed to distract you? Can you trick your brain into creativity? How can you establish a daily routine that works with the gr...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/manage-your-day-to-day/

Image by SeDmi via BigStock After 25 years in the music business, I’ve probably seen it all when it comes to musicians being ripped off – by managers, labels, promoters, venues, websites and ...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/music-business/

Image by Albund via BigStock You’re smarter than a simple snake, right? You rarely start your sentences with, “I wish” or “If only I could find some inspiration.” Right? I thought I was...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/finding-inspiration/

Since I released my book Resilience: Facing Down Rejection and Criticism on the Road to Success for Kindle and other e-readers last year, lots of people have asked me for a print edition. I’m p...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/resilience-paperback/

When I decided to publish my first book, I read a whole stack of books about self-publishing. The one that made the biggest impression was Let’s Get Digital: How to Self-Publish and Why You Sho...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/lets-get-visible-david-gaughran/

If you’re an independent artist or small creative business, a website is essential for showcasing your work and finding customers. But building and maintaining it is challenging for several rea...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/wordpress-for-creatives/

Since I published 4 compelling reasons for creative people to start using Google Plus, lots of you have responded: “OK I’m sold! I’ve signed up for an account. But what do I DO with it?” ...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/google-plus-101-creative-people/

If you want the internet to bring you an audience for your creative work, opportunities for your creative career, and/or customers for your creative business, I recommend you get a Google+ accoun...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/google-plus-creative-people/

Painting by Natasha Wescoat licensed to Murals Your Way When I began as an artist, I was really enjoying the experience of selling my work directly to people. It was so much more exciting than ha...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/art-licensing/

Let me guess: You’re busy. You receive too many emails. You’ve got people coming at you every day, asking for things, urgently. You’ve got a head full of great ideas, but there’s never en...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/deal-with-overload/

In this video Joanna Penn interviews me about dealing with rejection and criticism when you’re pursuing your creative dreams, drawing on insights from my book Resilience. (If you’re reading v...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/video-rejection-criticism/

Image by Oleg latsun via BigStock Did you set a ‘Big Hairy Audacious Goal’ this morning? No, me neither. What about your ‘Great Work Project’? No? OK, what about deciding ‘How will you ...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/motivation-feelings-desire/

After a terrorist attack destroyed New York’s World Trade Center and left lower Manhattan a shambles on September 11, 2001, utility company Con Edison faced a herculean task: rebuilding the uti...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/visual-thinking-creativity/

Image by Dennis Jarvis Three years ago… I was trapped in a job I no longer loved, struggling to get by on a wage that could no longer support my family. With hindsight, I think I was on the ver...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/create-ipod/

Ah, there you are! Do come in. Make yourself at home – Meph will take your coat. Please have a seat. Yes, I do apologise, it is rather warm. We’re having a devil of a job with the thermostat....

https://lateralaction.com/articles/seven-deadly-sins-creativity/

Image by Kevron2001 via BigStock When a pristine new year is laid out before you, it’s a great opportunity to think big and set yourself exciting goals. I hope and trust you are doing just that...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/how-to-build-resilience/

Does professionalism stimulate or stifle creativity? When research is essential for your creative work, how do you avoid it becoming an excuse for procrastination? What does it mean to ‘turn pr...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/steven-pressfield-turning-pro-interview/

If you’re interested in the potential of blogging to open up opportunities for your creative career or business, I recommend you spend some time with a new free guide from Rajesh Setty called B...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/blogtastic/

Image by Minerva Studio via BigStock Have you ever received encouragement about your creative work only to be left feeling more discouraged than ever? “Your day will come” – well-meaning fr...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/flourish-now/

Image by Andreas Fischer via BigStock Cliff Young is the most famous runner you have never heard of. Cliff is a legend among endurance athletes. He made his mark in 1983 when – a sheep farmer b...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/endurance-motivation/

If you want to achieve something original with your life, sooner or later you will have to face up to rejection and criticism. Whether you’re an artist, creative, freelancer, athlete, entrepren...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/resilience/

Four years ago I wrote a guide to the Top 10 Social Networks for Creative People that turned out to be one of the most popular things I’ve ever published here on Lateral Action. But four years ...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/social-networks-for-creatives/

I’m pretty sure that up in the clouds there lies a ‘Dream Bank’ that has way too many deposits in it, from years of people’s dreams being left untouched. It’s time we started drawing do...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/100-change/

Image by Hugh MacLeod We are condemned to be free. (Jean-Paul Sartre) The great thing about working on your own is that there’s no-one to tell you what to do or when to do it – when to start,...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/freedom-freelancing/

Being stuck in the same routine day in day out can narrow your creative vision. You see the same things, hear the same sounds and life feels a little mundane. When you sit down to brainstorm idea...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/creative-travel/

Clarity of thought, creative breakthroughs and inner peace whilst having a vacation from your overactive mind? Sound good? You need to sharpen your pencils. An all-too-familiar creative roadblock...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/creative-block-drawing/

Modern society has conditioned us to believe that having a job is the safe route; that the artist’s or entrepreneur’s life is only for those fearless few who don’t mind the risks. Balderdas...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/self-employment-risk/

In the mid-nineties I made a decision to dedicate my career to helping creative professionals. At the time I was working as a hypnotherapist in a fancy West End therapy clinic. As well as the usu...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/steven-pressfield-turning-pro/

Image by Khristich Yury via BigStock Venturing out on your own to start a creative business can be a scary experience. There are so many things that could go wrong. What if you fail? What if you ...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/creative-entrepreneur-fears/

This article is about a moment in time that changed the course of Western civilisation forever. An era that began a new way of thinking. When imagination flourished and artists were thought to be...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/leonardo-da-vinci/

Illustration by Oscar Ramos Orozco We all know vegetables and exercise are good for our health – but who’d have guessed boredom was good for creativity? My latest piece for The 99% is about W...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/99-percent/

The list of business books I can wholeheartedly recommend to artists and creatives is sadly very short. Most of them don’t take account of the fact that creative people are more interested in f...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/100-startup-chris-guillebeau/

When I first saw Pinterest, it almost made me wish I were a visual artist. “What a fantastic idea!” I thought. It brought to mind all my artist coaching clients who had said to me: Twitter’...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/pinterest-artists/

If you’re a writer, this is a great time to be alive. Don’t be fooled by the wailing and gnashing of teeth emanating from the publishing industry. Just because traditional publishers are in c...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/self-publishing-orna-ross/

Image by danadauta How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world. Anne Frank People often ask me why I decided to share my eBook From Apps To Zen:...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/business-karma/

One of the biggest problems creative people face isn’t a lack of time or money. It’s a lack of confidence. If you love writing, drawing, composing, designing, or any other creative activity, ...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/creative-confidence/

Many of us have love/hate relationships with our smartphones. On the one hand, it’s amazing to have so much media and so many gadgets and connections at our fingertips – news, sports, weather...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/smartphone/

Image by Radhika Bhagwat Are you spending the majority of your time keeping up with business-related tasks rather than creating? Are you lacking the passion you once felt for your business? Is yo...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/business-drowning-creativity/

“I discovered at an early age that all I’ve ever wanted to do is design” Jonathan Ive in his New Year Honours press release (Image by David Blackwell) It makes me want to puke. On reading t...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/goal-setting-problem/

Drawing by Hugh MacLeod The tortured artist is one of the great cliches of creativity. And like all cliches, it contains a grain of truth. Look at the work of any truly great artist, and you will...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/suffer-for-art/

When the iPad was launched, amid all the huzzahs and hoopla, there were a few murmurs of discontent from the creative community. “Sure, it looks slick, but you can’t make anything with it.”...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/table-computers/

Drawings by Will Kemp Ever wanted to learn to draw? Have you daydreamed of just picking up a pencil and sketching? But inside there is a lingering doubt. A distant memory of a school teacher who ...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/learn-to-draw/

Ask any writer or artist who has spent hours (or days) staring at a blank sheet of paper and they will tell you how paralysing creative freedom can be. And the freelance life may sound idyllic to...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/panic-early/

Thank you to everyone who entered the What Inspires You? competition by leaving comments on the original post about your inspirations. Fittingly, the comment thread turned out to be an inspiratio...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/competition-winners/

Photo by lulemon athletica Let’s face it. We all get out of creative shape from time to time. Just as an athlete quickly loses fitness without training, so your creative stamina will fade away ...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/creative-endurance/

EDIT: The competition is now closed for entries. Mike will choose the winners and we’ll announce them here on the blog shortly. OK the holiday season is upon us, so it’s time for some fun. �...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/sing-in-me-muse/

When you set out to earn a living from your creative talent, you will inevitably encounter obstacles. Over the past week, I’ve been hearing about plenty of these, from students in the process o...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/creative-entrepreneur-success/

EDIT: Registration for the Creative Entrepreneur Roadmap has now closed for 2011 and I’ve started working with the group to take their creative businesses to the next level. If you’d like to ...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/roadmap-2011/

Photo by raneko A few years ago I felt like a liability to my business. I was working as a consultant, running coaching and training programs for large corporations. I worked really hard to do a ...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/creative-branding/

The book industry is in turmoil and many publishers are tearing their hair out. But the changes have created some amazing new opportunities for writers – and CJ Lyons is living proof. CJ is a P...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/cj-lyons-novel/

Once upon a time, I saw business as The Enemy. As an aspiring young writer and poet, my worst nightmare was becoming a corporate zombie, sleep-walking to work in a faceless office block. I wonder...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/business-creativity/

If you could choose any place and time in history in which to live and realise your creative ambitions, which would you pick? A few years ago, if you’d asked me that question, as a poet, I’d ...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/time-to-be-creative/

Photo by Andrew Magill When Charles Schwab became President of Bethlehem Steel in 1903, he made an unusual offer to his consultant, Ivy Lee: Show my staff and me a way to get more done in less ti...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/100-million-dollar-productivity/

If you earn your living as a creative professional, you’ll be familiar with what Todd Henry of Accidental Creative describes as “the pressure to be brilliant at a moment’s notice”. While ...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/accidental-creative-todd-henry/

Creativity is exciting, but it’s also scary. Whenever you set out to do something new, you never know how it’s going to turn out – you can’t predict it, plan it, or control it. Creativity...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/uncertainty-jonathan-fields/

Photo by Szilveszter Farkas Once upon a time, I was frustrated on a daily basis by my computer. It kept crashing, refusing to connect to the internet, and interrupting me with asinine pop-up mess...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/just-work/

Live, work, travel. The motto of modern nomads – professionals who, carrying a laptop and a mobile, are able to do their work from almost any place in the world. Breathtaking nature sceneries�...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/digital-nomads/

Out of all the blog series I’ve written over the past six years, I’ve never had so many requests for an ebook version as for the Creative Blocks series. And your wish is my command. 🙂 I’...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/free-ebook-creative-blocks/

We creatives love to think of ourselves as revolutionaries and rule-breakers, thinking outside the box, breaking free of convention and plucking inspiration out of thin air. Formulas, rules and t...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/creativity-template/

Buy a book, save someone’s life. How often do you get to do that? Seth Godin Well today’s the day we all get to do it. End Malaria: Bold Innovation, Limitless Generosity, and the Opportunity ...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/end-malaria/

I’m serious. It might sound a strange claim to make after having written an entire series on overcoming creative blocks, but there really is no such thing. Think about it. Have you ever seen a ...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/no-creative-block/

You need to be tough to succeed in a creative career. Unless you’re the exception to the rule, you will be criticised, rejected, ridiculed, cheated and disappointed – many times. So I wasn’...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/creative-zone-brick-wall/

Maybe you have a dream – something you’ve always wanted to do. And maybe, today, you are doing something to make that dream happen. Or maybe you’re putting it off, doing other things today ...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/dying-to-do-letterman/

Photo by EvelynGiggles This room looks like a tornado went through!  How on earth do you ever find anything in this mess? Sound familiar? Most creative people have had a version of this conversa...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/productivity-personality-types/

What? How can you get sued for not being yourself? Writing for Rolling Stone, music journalist Don McLeese explains: Neil Young is the only artist in the history of modern recording to be sued fo...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/neil-young/

If you ever feel stuck on a problem or overwhelmed by the challenges you face, here are five powerful tools that can help you get unstuck fast. I’ve tried and tested them with hundreds of coach...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/creative-coaching/

This photo shows me at the threshold of the room where the Japanese haiku master Matsuo Basho wrote his first book of poetry. There’s practically nothing in it, beyond the tatami mats covering ...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/basho-shakespeare/

Once upon a time, all art was mainstream art. Because materials were expensive and skilled artisans were relatively rare, and there was no mass media to boost profits via economies of scale, only...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/money-avant-garde/

OK it’s time for some solutions to the artistic and financial conundrums we’ve been discussing in the Creativity and Money series. 🙂 Having talked about the reasons creative people don’t...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/money-skills-creative-people/

Creative people are terrible with money We’re dreamers, pie-in-the-sky merchants. We’re no good with numbers. We’re an accountant’s nightmare, turning up with a shoebox full of receipts �...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/creative-money-mistakes/

You can’t buy creativity, any more than you can buy love. But if you ignore money matters, as we saw earlier this week, it can seriously hurt your creativity. The good news is that although mon...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/money-supports-creativity/

Creative people have a love/hate relationship with money. We love it, because – well, who wouldn’t want it? But we also hate it, avoid dealing with it, and avoid even talking about it. Here a...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/creative-people-money/

I’d be very suspicious of any artist or creative who claimed they didn’t want an audience. Yes, we may start with the inner creative impulse, but we also want to connect, to share, to hear an...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/find-your-audience/

Success is hard. And we usually think of it as the finishing line, the end of the story. But once they achieve success, many people are surprised to find it brings a whole new set of challenges. ...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/next-big-challenge/

Once upon a time there was a clear distinction between our personal and professional identities. Our professional lives started punctually at 9am on Monday morning, when we walked into the office...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/online-identity/

Here on the Lateral Action blog, I do my best to provide you with useful advice to boost your creativity and productivity. I also provide a free 26-week course where I teach you the fundamental s...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/creative-workflow-optimizer/

Everyone knows ninjas were assassins in feudal Japan who wore special black outfits to hide themselves on night missions. But apparently the word ‘ninja’ was rarely used in the past – the m...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/memory-technique/

One Sunday afternoon in 1920s England, two schoolboys were walking across the fields near their school. One of them asked the other whether he’d ever considered writing poetry. I never had, and...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/creative-vocation/

If you ever struggle with seeing a creative challenge through from concept to completion, you’ll want to listen to this audio interview I’ve just recorded with Steven Pressfield, bestselling ...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/do-the-work-steven-pressfield/

Creative people tend to have wide interests – it’s part of what makes us creative. But sometimes this blessing can turn into a curse, when we feel pulled in so many different directions that ...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/creative-ambitions/

Every so often, someone unsubscribes from my blog or my free Creative Pathfinder course and leaves me some angry feedback. The gist of their complaint is that they signed up for some help with th...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/turtle-mustache/

Photo by Pablo Contreras. Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again but expecting different results. Rita Mae Brown We cannot continue to do the same thing every day and hope to remain...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/creativity-entrepreneurship/

Illustration: Oscar Ramos Orozco. It’s holiday season here in the UK (apparently there was a wedding somewhere) so I’m taking a little blog interlude. But if you’d like a little creativity ...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/eccentric-creative-people/

Don Draper, the legendary ad man, is facing meltdown. His agency’s clients are deserting. The partners are squabbling. Redundancies will have to be made. Adland has got wind that Sterling Coope...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/mad-men-creativity/

Photo by Julian Fong. If it weren’t for procrastination, we’d all be superheroes. When you think of the creativity, talent and energy in every human being, and what we achieve on the occasion...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/reasons-for-procrastination/

If you like Lateral Action, I hope you’ll (ahem) Like the new Lateral Action Facebook page. 🙂 By clicking the ‘Like’ button at the top of the page, you’ll receive updates from Lateral ...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/lateral-action-facebook/

Have you ever wondered what to do with your life? You have talent and skills. A little knowledge and experience. Maybe a job, maybe a few freelance gigs. But what you don’t have is a Big Idea t...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/curiosity/

Photo by Jeff Pang. Each morning before dawn, novelist Nicholson Baker would slip out of bed without waking his wife, creep downstairs without stirring his kids, make a pot of coffee, light a fir...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/creativity-twilight-zone/

Last week I saw an unusual busker at the railway station. Taro Hakase is a household name in his native Japan. As a violinist, he is equally at home in the worlds of classical and pop music. He�...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/japan/

I often say that there are two types of creative people: those who create things themselves; and those who help others create – as facilitators, directors, producers, managers, coaches or teach...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/jen-louden-interview/

Creative careers come in all shapes and sizes. They include classic artistic paths, in the fine arts, literature, music, drama and other performing arts. There are also traditional crafts and des...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/creative-careers/

Regular Lateral Action readers will know I’m a big believer in the power of focus. When it’s time to produce, it’s time to eliminate distractions – switch off the phone, e-mail, internet ...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/creativity-distractions/

1. A Story Is an Archetype Experienced storytellers will tell you there are no new stories, just endless variations on old tales. That was certainly Shakespeare’s attitude, who would probably h...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/story/

Tim Siedell – a.k.a. @badbanana – is the only person whose Twitter page I catch up on, by scrolling back to read the Tweets I’ve missed. I do this because Tim is funny. Seriously, consisten...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/tim-siedell-badbanana/

There is a myth that you need inspiration to strike before you can be creative. The truth is that you can use techniques to kickstart the muse and power through the process to complete a first no...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/write-your-first-novel/

Image from Wikimedia Commons When Nathaniel Lee, the 17th century English dramatist, was confined to Bedlam – the original mental asylum, in London – he is reported to have uttered these word...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/futile-idea/

EDIT: Registration for the Creative Entrepreneur Roadmap has now closed, and the latest group of students have started working their way through the course. If you’d like to be first to know ne...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/creative-entrepreneur-roadmap/

Here’s a creative thought experiment for you: Go to this page on the official Orbital website, scroll down and hit ‘play’ on the track ‘Halcyon + on + on’. Listen to the music before yo...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/orbital/

Whenever people say to me “It’s all very well for people making digital products to have an online business, but I make real products/artwork,” I tell them about John T. Unger. John makes h...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/john-unger-interview/

Illustration by Joan Vincent Canto, licensed from istockphoto A creative person needs three things to be happy: Freedom – to do what you want, when you want and how you want it. Not just in hol...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/freedom-money-time/

Jean Miélot, 15th Century writer I’ve always wanted to be a writer. Not just a hobbyist or dabbler, but a professional, earning my living from my writing. Over the holidays, the thought occurr...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/professional-writer/

Photo of Piranesi engraving by Evil Preacher They say Rome wasn’t built in a day. And it was a full-time job. Think of lugging all that marble, laying pipes and foundations, raising columns and...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/build-an-empire/

Image by Hugh MacLeod This is a golden age of opportunity for artists and creatives. Never before have you been able to get your work in front of so many people, at such a low cost, with so few g...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/artists-internet-marketing/

If last year was difficult, make this year different. If last year was fear, make this year fight. If last year was glum, make this year glad. If last year disappointed, make this year deliver. I...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/make-this-year-different/

Image by Tambako the Jaguar It’s time to take a break for the holidays, so here’s a selection of the best of Lateral Action in 2010, the second full year of the blog. A big thank you to all o...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/lateral-action-2010/

Image courtesy of The 99 Percent OK the holiday season is upon us and Lateral Action will – like you, I hope – soon be taking a break for inspiration (and mince pies). Later this week I’ll ...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/post-it/

Sitting at a computer desk may look like a soft option compared to working in a factory or on a building site. But a growing body of research suggests it can be downright dangerous. Information w...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/computer-ergonomics/

Image by Mary Anne Enriquez There’s something hypnotic about organization systems. Reading a productivity blog, I can feel myself swelling up with virtue. “From now on, there will be no misse...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/get-organized/

Image by O Palsson We have all had the experience of taking our mind off a problem only to have the solution come to us like manna from heaven. Whether it is a creative answer to a difficult brie...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/grow-your-imagination/

General knowledge is overrated. Yes, it can help you feel clever playing quiz games, in arguments with friends, or shouting at the TV during a game show. But when was the last time there was any ...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/memory/

If you normally read Lateral Action on the main site, you may have noticed a few changes recently. And if you read it via e-mail or RSS, you might like to pop over to the site today, while I give...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/lateral-action-2/

How do you make a MacBook Pro crash? Install Windows Vista. Sadly, I’m not joking. I’m a Mac convert, and like many converts, I started out full of evangelical zeal for my new faith. Having e...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/windows-vista-creativity/

The first bridge made entirely of iron spans the River Severn in Shropshire, England. It was erected in 1779, when new blast-furnace technology made it cost-effective to produce large quantities ...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/ironbridge/

Image by Saxon Ever wondered what drives art thieves to risk it all for the sake of a masterpiece? I was thinking about this the other day and I really couldn’t come up with a good answer. Sure...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/artwork-that-sells/

Image by Hugh MacLeod Drink and drugs. A writer’s key to inspiration? Or a demon to your creative success? One of the hottest debates surrounding inspiration is that of the effect of drink and ...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/inspiration-creativity/

“If you only read one book about getting creative work done,” I tell my coaching clients, “make it The War of Art“. Regular Lateral Action readers will know I’m a huge fan of Steven Pre...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/the-war-of-art/

Image by losmininos In 2005 I began puzzling over the success of some elite professionals I was fortunate enough to meet. They did not match any of my categories and yet they were more successful...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/freelance-success/

Water, water, everywhere, Nor any drop to drink. These are the words that swam into my mind when I learned about the theme of this year’s Blog Action Day: Water. They come from Samuel Taylor Co...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/blog-action-day-water/

Mind maps are a powerful tool to get yourself unstuck, focused and organized to do your best creative work. Tony Buzan is the person best known for coining the term mind map and helping to educat...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/mind-maps/

As you read these words, your brain is being changed. Every day, as you surf the internet, clicking on hyperlinks, opening new tabs and windows, flicking between e-mail, Twitter, Facebook and wha...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/internet-brain/

Image by Jeff Medaugh I’m sure you are more successful than I am. I’m struggling to learn everything I can to make my online business a success. I’m reading and learning everything I can ab...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/no-excuses/

Not only is The post 10 Business Lessons from the Man Who Fell to Earth appeared first on Creative Coach | Mark McGuinness | Since 1996 .

https://lateralaction.com/articles/the-man-who-fell-to-earth/

“A muse?” you ask. “You mean some kind of invisible spirit that dumps creative inspiration into my mind?” “Exactly,” I answer. “A genius. A daimon. An independent force in your psyc...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/muse/

Photo courtesy Chris Guillebeau Today sees the publication of a book that is essential reading for anyone who wants to create a lifestyle and business around their own passions and interests: The...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/chris-guillebeau/

Image by Jeff Medaugh 1 There are moments when we step into our highest selves. We are lost in our activity and performing at our peak. We’re smarter. We contribute more. We connect to the hear...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/creative-element/

Image courtesy of The 99 Percent Are you ambitious? Or do you think ambition is a dirty word? Is it possible to have big ambitions without turning into an egomaniac? Are you hiding your light und...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/ambition/

Image by Stephen Boisvert Brainstorming is the best technique for generating great ideas. Brainstorming is the worst technique for generating great ideas. Both sentences can be accurate depending...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/better-brainstorming/

Image by wsilver We entrepreneurs are a pragmatic bunch. Meaning, we love to solve problems. Entrepreneurs almost always have a deep, unconscious need to find elegant, easy and fast solutions. No...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/entrepreneur-happiness/

What’s the most important big task on your schedule today? And the most urgent? Are they the same thing? If so, then you’ll have no problem deciding what to do first. But if not, then you’r...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/urgent-versus-important/

I’m pleased to announce the launch of a major new Lateral Action course: The Creative Pathfinder – Your Guide to Success as a Creative Professional. And this one is completely free. 🙂 It�...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/creative-professional-success/

Image by Genista Two years ago this month, Brian Clark, Tony D. Clark and I were putting the finishing touches on the videos and articles we had prepared for the launch of a new website, Lateral ...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/future-lateral-action/

I’ve been meaning to write about procrastination for ages, but I never quite got round to it. 🙂 This is one of the most frustrating and puzzling obstacles we encounter whenever we set out to...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/procrastination/

Earlier this week I recorded a podcast with fellow creative coach Cynthia Morris, about what it takes to become a Linchpin, riffing on the ideas in Seth Godin‘s latest book. We’ve done our be...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/linchpin-podcast-worksheet/

As soon as I came across Michael Bungay Stanier’s work, I knew I wanted to feature him on Lateral Action. The subtitle of his book Do More Great Work is a perfect fit with our approach to work:...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/michael-bungay-stanier/

Seth Godin’s Linchpin is one of the two books I recommend most often to clients in search of career advice (the other one is Ignore Everybody by Hugh MacLeod). So I thought it was a great idea ...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/linchpin-questions/

Image by digicla This article is part two in Cynthia’s series on making feedback a positive and empowering part of the creative process, following on from How to Ask for Feedback (without it Bl...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/deal-with-criticism/

Drawing by Hugh MacLeod Last month I wrote a piece at Wishful Thinking called Why Artists and Creatives Have an Unfair Advantage at Internet Marketing, which generated a fair amount of buzz. So w...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/internet-marketing-artists/

Image by treehouse1977 Once upon a time there was a boy named Milton H. Erickson, who lived on a farm in Wisconsin. Walking home from school one day, he and his friends were overtaken by a runawa...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/creativity-unconscious/

If you have a creative block you’d like some help with, tell us about it – details in the first article in the series. There’s a moment in the movie Lost In Translation where Bob (Bill Murr...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/children-creativity/

If you have a creative block you’d like some help with, tell us about it – details in the first article in the series. The internet is a wonderful thing, especially for creative people lookin...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/information-overload/

Image courtesy of The 99 Percent This week I published a couple of guest articles that tackle the perennial challenge for creators: How can you find the time, focus and resourcefulness to create ...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/create-masterpieces/

Passion takes inspiration and turns it into something you’re proud of. Passion motivates you in the morning and fires you up when you are immersed in your work. Passion is an unlikely breeding ...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/passion-perfection/

We’ve all been there. Staring down the barrel of some crazy, ambitious goal, some dream, wondering how the heck we’re ever going to pull it off. A trend I notice in my own life is a lot of am...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/sell-your-art/

EDIT: These workshops were very well received when I ran them in 2010 – if you’d like to book my time management training, motivation training or presentation skills training workshops for yo...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/workshops-creativity-productivity-motivation/

If you are a creative professional, you may be more of a magician than you realize. Stage magic, tricks, illusions, sleight of hand… they are all the products of intense planning and practice, ...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/creativity-magic/

Why is it when some people hate you, you’re doing something right? What’s the most effective form of online marketing? How do you decide what to make and sell? Why is doing less the key to ac...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/jason-fried/

Why is it so hard to pursue our dreams, and get started on the creative challenges that mean so much to us? How can we overcome our inner Resistance to doing the things that matter? What rewards ...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/art-of-remarkable/

If you have a creative block you’d like some help with, tell us about it – details in the first article in the series. If you’re not careful, one of the greatest blessings of the creative m...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/create-more-do-less/

You’ve probably had it happen to you: eager, excited, ready to share your article or painting or blog design, you show a friend and ask, “What do you think?” The friend, being the honest an...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/how-to-get-feedback/

I’m pleased to say that Age of Conversation 3 – Time to Get Busy is now available on Amazon. It’s a compilation of practical advice on using social media to make things happen in the real w...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/get-busy-age-of-conversation-3/

We are delighted to welcome best-selling novelist and Hollywood screenwriter Steven Pressfield to Lateral Action. Steve is known for the combination of meticulous research and gripping narrative ...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/the-war-of-art-steven-pressfield/

Image by eleanor.black Admit it. You hate math. Algebra gives you chills. Statistics makes you queasy. Calculus makes your blood run cold. In college I took Calculus for Non-Science Majors. It ju...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/business-metrics/

Image courtesy of The 99 Percent My latest guest article for The 99 Percent is called Build a Business, Not Just a Client List. It’s a summing up of my thinking about creative entrepreneurship,...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/build-business/

If you have a creative block you’d like some help with, tell us about it – details in the first article in the series. Inspiration is the Holy Grail for creative people. All of a sudden, some...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/inspiration/

Image by Hugh MacLeod What moments of your life do you remember most vividly? The ones where you felt most alive? What difference have those moments made to your life? Is it possible to recapture...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/remember-yourself/

Bronze sculpture of Daedalus Seth Godin says anyone can be an artist. Without even becoming an artist: Art isn’t only a painting. Art is anything that’s creative, passionate, and personal. An...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/seth-godin-linchpin/

If you have a creative block you’d like some help with, tell us about it – details in the first article in the series. Many creative people hate to feel themselves constrained by the rules an...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/creative-block-sex-drugs-rock-n-roll/

If you want to turn your creative ideas into finished artworks, products or services – instead of allowing them to evaporate into thin air – you’ll want to get hold of Scott Belsky’s new ...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/making-ideas-happen-scott-belsky/

Creative entrepreneurs are driven by a passion to create remarkable things and meaningful relationships. They come in various types: Artists and creatives who make a living from their artwork Ent...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/blogs-creative-entrepreneurs/

If you have a creative block you’d like some help with, tell us about it – details in the first article in the series. Supposing you had a secret. And supposing that secret carried a big soci...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/creative-block-taboo/

Yes folks, it’s that time of year again — Age of Conversation returns in its third incarnation, with the theme “It’s time to get busy”. If you’ve not come across it before, Age of Con...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/age-of-conversation-3/

Image by John Kratz If you want to know how creativity (and the business of creativity) really works, you need to look at the examples of people who are engaged with it day in, day out. That’s ...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/art-heroes-radio/

If you have a creative block you’d like some help with, tell us about it – details in the first article in the series. Last week, we looked at the problem of getting started, when you “don�...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/creative-block-nothing-left-to-say/

If you have a creative block you’d like some help with, tell us about it – details in the first article in the series. Every creative medium has the equivalent of the writer’s blank page �...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/creative-block-dont-know/

The other day on Twitter, I accidentally nailed down what I’ve been trying to say on this blog for the past 18 months: We so easily associate creativity with creative thinking that they are oft...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/creative-doing-vs-creative-thinking/

If you have a creative block you’d like some help with, tell us about it – details in the first article in the series. NOTE FROM MARK: I was about to start writing about the Inner Critic last...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/inner-critic/

If you have a creative block you’d like some help with, tell us about it – details in the first article in the series. Artists and other creative people are not renowned for their powers of p...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/creative-block-disorganisation/

If you could do with a little more clarity and focus in your creative work, have a look at What Daily Meditation Can Do for Your Creativity – my latest guest article for The 99%. One of the mos...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/meditation-creativity/

I was walking down the street near my home in Berlin a few days ago when the image at right caught my eye in a shop window, and I couldn’t resist snapping a picture through the glass. ‘Kreati...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/genius-tortured-artist/

As human beings, we love stories. We love to hear them and we love to tell them. We are always telling stories – sometimes to others and sometimes to ourselves. All else being equal, the best s...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/storytelling/

With the coming of the information age a fad called multi-tasking was also born. Somehow it was perceived efficient to be able to do many things at the same time; read your emails, talk with your...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/productivity-ultradian-rhythms/

Image by eschipul When Mark tossed out the challenge of sending in our creative blocks, I hit the keyboard faster than a speed demon in a red wagon. I was determined. I was going to tell someone....

https://lateralaction.com/articles/stage-fright/

Image by the sea the sea We’ve all heard someone say things like, “Everyone is an artist” and “We’re all born naturally creative.” But most of us smile and nod (and think to ourselves...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/switch-on-your-creativity/

Image by Bryant Hill If you’re a creative entrepreneur looking to make connections and promote your business on the web, Chris Brogan is one of the people you need to pay attention to Chris is ...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/chris-brogan-trust-agent/

If you have a creative block you’d like some help with, tell us about it – details in the first article in the series. Sometimes it can feel like a constant battle to earn enough money to jus...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/creative-block-creativity-cash/

If you have a creative block you’d like some help with, tell us about it – details in the first article in the series. One of the biggest challenges facing many creative people is simply find...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/creative-block-lack-of-time/

If you have a creative block you’d like some help with, tell us about it – details in the first article in the series. The fear of making a mistake and getting something ‘wrong’ can be pa...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/creative-block-fear-of-getting-it-wrong/

If you believe you’re “Just not the creative type”, there’s no point even trying to think or act creatively. You’d just be setting yourself up for failure. This is one of the biggest an...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/creative-block-im-not-creative/

EDIT: The creative blocks series is now closed to new submissions. At the foot of this post you’ll find links to the articles published so far – and if you sign up for free updates you’ll g...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/smash-your-creative-blocks/

Image by Elizabeth Audrey New Year is a time for looking back and reviewing the events of the past 12 months – and that goes for blogs too. 2009 was the first full year of Lateral Action, and w...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/best-of-lateral-action-2009/

Not all Christmas guests are welcome; not every Christmas game is harmless fun. King Arthur’s Court had seen many marvels, but all agreed they had seen none as strange as the visitor who appear...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/adventure/

Supposing you came across a website selling works that looked very similar to yours. To you, it looked like a straightforward case of copyright infringement. So you asked the owner to stop. But i...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/john-unger-copyright/

Image by Brian Hillegas Imagine you have no head. I’m serious. Imagine you have no head. Right this instant. You can feel your arms, legs, hands, feet, stomach, chest and back. But your bodily ...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/thinking-is-overrated/

Image by watercolors08 Far above the streets of Paris, scattered across the rooftops, parapets and pinnacles of Notre Dame Cathedral, is a collection of monuments to perfectionism. These are the ...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/too-good/

You might like to check out the guest article I’ve just written for online magazine The 99% – RSS Creativity: Routines, Systems, Spontaneity. If you like Lateral Action, you should enjoy The ...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/rss-creativity/

The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. (Albert Einstein) Are you attempting to unleash creativity through familiar, comfortabl...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/multiple-intelligences/

Image by Dina Regine There has never been a bigger, badder or better rock band than Led Zeppelin. And there never will be. Now we’ve got that straight, let’s take a look at how they did it �...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/led-zeppelin/

UPDATE: We’re sold out. Thanks! Hey gang. Just a quick note to let you know the Creative Entrepreneur Roadmap is now live and accepting enrollments. You can immediately check out all the detail...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/lateral-action-entrepreneur/

Image by Hugh MacLeod I never wanted to be an entrepreneur. I just wanted to write poetry. Twenty years ago I would have told you “Business Is Evil”. I associated entrepreneurship wi...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/reluctant-entrepreneur/

When we last saw Jack , he was just about to sign a deal with Lou to start a business. But suddenly, Marla showed up at the last minute. Did Jack do the deal? If so, why is Marla giving...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/marla-mentors-jack/

Image by Muffet If you think the Unique Selling Proposition (USP) is something only marketers need to worry about, have a look at this snippet from a letter to T.S. Eliot, by his boss. Geoffre...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/unique-selling-point/

Image by Hugh MacLeod Of all the painfully funny cartoons on Hugh MacLeod's Gapingvoid blog, for me this is the funniest and most painful. It's painful because I know exactly how Eric feels...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/inner-whining-artist/

This video of a conversation between Brian Eno and SimCity game designer Will Wright (via Fresh Creation ) reveals a surprising truth about creativity. The most beautiful, complex and appare...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/brian-eno-will-wright/

Dan Pink has been one of the presiding spirits of Lateral Action from day one. Specifically, his book A Whole New Mind provided inspiration for the very first article we published - Innovate ...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/dan-pink/

Miffy has always been there. If you met her as a child, you won't have forgotten her. Each time you see her iconic face - two simple dots and a cross for her mouth - in books, on posters, in ...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/miffy/

Photo by miyukiutada Once upon a time there was a Buddhist master called Ajahn Chah, who lived deep in the forests of Thailand. He and his monks lived a frugal life of discipline and meditatio...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/climate-change/

When Australia's version of the Wall Street Journal takes notice of a local artist, it's a pretty good indication of a reputation on the rise. Three years ago, as nearly every Australian newspape...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/hazel-dooney-interview/

When you set out to do something remarkable, sooner or later you realise you can't do it all on your own. You've got a great idea for a new business - but you only have a fraction of the skills...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/seven-samurai-team-building/

Photo by AZAdam Computers are very smart, but they have no imagination, right? They can only slavishly follow instructions and rules - which means they can't think for themselves and generat...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/computers-creativity/

Photo by j. botter Some believe that creators need a firm guiding hand to help them create their best work. Others will swear that a nurturing friend will help a creator make the most of their...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/mentor-drill-sergeant/

cm 27 Mark McGuiness Interview from Creative Momentum on Vimeo . If you've ever wondered about the faces behind Lateral Action, one of them is revealed in this this video interview I recorde...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/video-creativity/

Photo by Okko Pyykko Everyone knows critical thinking kills creativity. Suspending judgment in order to come up with new and unusual ideas is one of the sacred cows of the creativity movemen...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/critical-thinking/

Have you noticed there's an epidemic sweeping the globe? I'm not talking about swine flu. I'm talking about the wrong kind of ideavirus . The kind of negative thinking that's highly contagious...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/rajesh-setty-upbeat/

A few weeks ago I was due to run a workshop on Time Management for Creative People, based on my e-book of the same name. Normally, I arrive for presentations at least an hour early, to set every...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/productivity-parenthood/

Photo by Leonski Have you ever walked into an art gallery and thought "I COULD DO BETTER THAN THAT!"? Or are you a contemporary art enthusiast, tired of hearing people criticise things they ...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/fake-artist/

Business is rewarding itself to death, according to Dan Pink . He's not just talking about 'fat cat' pay and bonuses. He's talking about something much more pervasive - and more destructive. ...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/dan-pink-rewards/

Rajesh Setty’s columns for Lateral Action have been a big hit with our readers – so you’re in for a real treat with his new free e-book Defiant: Practical Tips to Thrive in Tough Times. Raj...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/defiant/

Photo by nicogenin Did you realise you probably know Johnny Depp's films better than he does? That's if we can take this interview at face value, where he claims not to have seen his latest...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/johnny-depp/

Photo by Hazel Dooney If you liked our interviews with artist-entrepreneurs John T. Unger , Natasha Wescoat and Hugh MacLeod , you should check out Hugh's recent interview with Australian art...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/hazel-dooney/

> You have to be absolutely determined, otherwise you might just as > well write poetry.  >  > (Sir Terence Conran, quoted in The Creative Economy >  > by John Howkins...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/eliot-success/

Sometimes surfing the web leads to buried treasure. That's how I felt when I found Lateral Action . The tag-line said it all... CREATIVITY + PRODUCTIVITY = SUCCESS IT JUST ADDS UP My wife an...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/hollywood-success/

Photo by ChrisL AK There's an old saying that "the pen's lighter than the spade". Back when going to school was a novelty for families used to toiling on the land, adults said it to children...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/exercise/

To keep it simple, we will consider buzz as something people want to and will talk about. The social media phenomenon has lowered the barrier to creating buzz. There are so many tools (most of ...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/buzz/

Photo by amandabhslater You love your friend, I know that. But it doesn't disguise the fact he's getting on your nerves. Once again, you're sat listening to the same old complaints about the...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/other-peoples-problems/

If you have any ambitions to use the web to grow your reputation or business, you need to download and devour Brian Clark's new free report: Authority Rules: The 10 Rock Solid Elements of Effect...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/authority-rules/

There are so many articles about how to influence your audience. This article will talk about six degrees of how you may be influenced by consuming online content. Let us look at each one of th...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/online-influence/

Jonathan Fields is obsessed with the process of creation. Over the last decade, he's created, built and sold two companies, helped launch nearly a dozen brands, launched the popular blogs Awake@T...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/jonathan-fields/

David Airey, a graphic designer from Northern Ireland, has been involved in the creative arts since the 1990s when he enrolled on his first graphic design course. Having honed his skills working ...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/david-airey-graphic-designer/

You wouldn't drink and drive. But would you drink and write? Maybe a glass of wine could be just the thing to get you started on that poem to your sweetheart. But how about a few beers before...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/multitasking/

The charming “Heart and Soul” melody plays a starring role in this delightful clip from the 1988 Tom Hanks movie, Big. But there’s more going on in this magical scene than meets the eye....

https://lateralaction.com/articles/heart-soul-success/

Photo by inottawa Once upon a time, a creativity researcher asked a group of schoolchildren to write her some stories. She encouraged them to write about whatever they liked and let their imag...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/iphone-creativity/

German-American poet, novelist and short story writer Charles Bukowski consciously absorbed the world around him as he inhabited the bars and rooming houses in the seedy underbelly of Los Angeles...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/bukowski/

Image copyright The Mervyn Peake Estate. Please do not reproduce without permission. You know that dream you've had, at the back of your mind, forever? The one you've been promising yourself...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/gormenghast/

Creativity guru Roger von Oech recently listed his choice of 10 Blogs to Stimulate Your Creativity at Blogs.com. It’s a great list, featuring several of my favourites plus some new discoveries:...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/roger-von-oech-creativity-blogs/

Photo by dr_vaibhavahuja It doesn't matter how good you are. If your face is unknown and your name doesn't ring a bell, success will be a struggle for you. Your work will be rejected by ed...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/who-you-are/

Activity is not productivity - we all know that. But why do we keep engaging in activities that are not productive? One answer: SIMPLY BECAUSE IT IS EASY TO ENGAGE IN ACTIVITIES THAT ARE NOT ...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/engagement-conversations/

Photo by Simon Blackley A few months ago a psychologist and conductor collaborated on an unusual psychological experiment - using a full symphony orchestra. In an article for Miller McCune ...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/mindfulness/

When I was young, I wanted to be a rock star. Not a pseudo-celebrity social media rock star... A real rock star. I didn’t become a rock star because I didn’t try. I told myself I coul...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/dont-settle/

Photo by jcoterhals Imagine I could show you a simple technique that would take just 20 minutes out of your day and was scientifically proven to boost your productivity by 34%. Would you try i...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/working-wimps/

Hugh MacLeod's book Ignore Everybody has just landed . Not content with giving Lateral Action a terrific interview about his work, Hugh was kind enough to send me an advance copy of the book a...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/ignore-everybody/

Photo by JeffBelmonte Some people say the recession means the end of business as usual. I disagree. Of course, if your idea of business as usual was like Lou 's - a steady job, predictable m...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/motivation-recession/

Blogs and Twitter have almost eliminated any barrier to publishing. You have an idea and in a few minutes your thoughts can be online. Think about it – with every person thinking about more tha...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/9-responses/

Image by Mr J. Doe WARNING: SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION MOVIE SPOILER. One of the most dramatic and effective flashback endings in cinema comes at the end of The Shawshank Redemption - SO LOOK AWAY...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/stubborn-succeed/

One of the most eye-opening experiences of my life took place one afternoon in Amsterdam, in the summer of 1990. A hundred years after the death of Vincent van Gogh, his paintings had been gather...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/commercial-success/

I had a sense of déjà vu when I read the recent New York Times article 'Genius: The Modern View' by David Brooks - it echoed so many of the themes we've been discussing here on Lateral Action ...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/mentoring/

Natasha Wescoat 's vibrant, whimsical contemporary artworks grace over 1,000 private and corporate collections worldwide, and have garnered her a devoted following by collectors of all ages. With...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/natasha-wescoat/

This TED talk by Sir Ken Robinson is one of the most popular videos about creativity on the internet. In it, Robinson argues passionately that as children we are all naturally creative, yet by t...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/is-everyone-creative/

Image by Marcie Vargas I see lots of things that no one else does. Some of them are even really there. I get a lot of my ideas by looking at things and wondering "what isn't it," or "what di...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/art-mistakes/

Image by hyuku As a child, I remember being shocked to learn that Walt Disney was a person. To me, Disney was a mysterious entity, symbolised by the magical castle that appeared at the start...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/walt-disney/

Image by Hugh MacLeod For many of you, Hugh MacLeod will need no introduction. Others will be intrigued to discover a creative entrepreneur who has built an unlikely and utterly idiosyncratic ...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/hugh-macleod/

Image by Johanne Brunet Cambridge University, 1953. At two o'clock in the morning, a student is sitting at his desk. He has been there for hours. In front of him is the beginning of an essay...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/your-talent/

Image by h.koppdelaney Wouldn't it be nice to get paid to just exist? I think so. In fact, that's my gig right now . I exist. And I get paid for it. And it's pretty awesome. So how is th...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/get-paid-to-exist/

Image by Hugh MacLeod Hugh MacLeod recently published an interesting take on the difference between creativity and innovation : > One of the buzzwords you hear a lot in the busine...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/creativity-innovation/

This is the first of an occasional series of interviews with creative entrepreneurs who are living the principles we write about at Lateral Action. We are delighted to start the series with Jo...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/interview-john-unger/

Lost in Translation came out just before I went to Japan for the first time. Watching it in the cinema, I was entranced by the otherworldly atmosphere I was hoping to find in the real Tokyo. No...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/lost-in-translation/

Roger von Oech is one of my favourite writers about creative thinking, so when I heard he had produced an iPhone version of his Creative Whack Pack cards , I asked if he'd be willing to answer so...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/roger-von-oech/

If you take your creative work remotely seriously, you probably pride yourself on your good taste and critical judgement. Just like Max Harris. In the 1940s, Harris was one of the leading fig...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/masterpiece-fake/

Photo by ezioman It's time for another of our irregular roundups of Lateral Activity elsewhere on the web. Creative entrepreneurs who enjoyed our list of the top 10 Social Networks for Creat...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/lateral-activity-3/

These days, plenty of people are facing “involuntary entrepreneurship.” They’ve lost their gig and need to reinvent themselves as self-sufficient solos or small business owners. Others ...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/creative-sleep-and-daydreams/

Photo by cesarastudillo Lateral thinking is such a familiar concept that it's virtually synonymous with 'creative thinking'. The phrase 'lateral thinking' is frequently used interchangeably wi...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/lateral-thinking/

Photo by Abulic Monkey In my last article I reviewed the speech recognition functionality of Dragon NaturallySpeaking . Now I'm going to focus on the creative side of things, by looking at fiv...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/speech-recognition-writing/

Do you ever struggle to type out your thoughts as quickly as they come to you? Do you get tired of sitting hunched over your laptop for hours on end? Or is spelling a bugbear that sucks all the...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/dragon-naturallyspeaking-speech-recognition/

If you take creativity remotely seriously you need to know that cartoonist Hugh MacLeod has a book coming out . You probably know already. Either way, you'll want to download the sample chapters ...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/hugh-macleod-sex-cash/

My name is Mona Lisa. I reside in Paris, the revered Lady of the Palais du Louvre. By day, crowds flock to look upon my face. By night, lasers and bodyguards keep vigil over me. I have conq...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/mona-lisa/

Like most fans of Alan Moore's graphic novel Watchmen , I'm looking forward to the feature film version with a mixture of excitement and trepidation. One of the articles that caught my eye whi...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/watchmen/

Image source: Mark Hayward “Whether you think that you can, or that you can’t, you are usually right.” ~ Henry Ford ARE YOU LOOKING TO TAKE LATERAL ACTION AND MAKE A LIFE CHANGE OF SOME...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/how-to-achieve-your-goals-through-reverse-engineering/

Regular readers of Lateral Action will know we're pretty sceptical about the idea of creative genius . You've probably noticed we preach a gospel of creativity-as-hard-work rather than the prover...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/elizabeth-gilbert-creativity-divine-inspiration/

Photo by Canon in 2D OK it's time to spread the link love with another roundup of Lateral Activity elsewhere on the web. If you're wondering how Armageddon the current economic crisis is lik...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/lateral-activity-2/

Photo by JustABoy Everyone knows Shakespeare is the greatest writer in the English language. But did you know he was also a highly successful entrepreneur? Like Dick Whittington, the young S...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/shakespeare-entrepreneurship/

Photo by a.drian I discovered a fantastic blog at the weekend — Daily Routines: How writers, artists, and other interesting people organize their days (via Undead Pixel). It contains what it sa...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/daily-routines-famous-creative-people/

One of my favourite writers on creativity is the psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. In this video of his TED talk , he explains the concept of FLOW for which he is famous. Flow is his answer t...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/mihaly-csikszentmihalyi/

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Mark McGuinness is a poet, creative coach and co-founder of Lateral Action. Subscribe today to get free updates by email or RSS. The post How Does Twitter Affect Your Creat...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/twitter-creativity/

Photo by fdecomite In his book The Post-American World Fareed Zakaria argues that there have been 'three tectonic power shifts over the last five hundred years'. Each of these shifts profound...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/creative-cultures/

Photo by star5112 What's the worst thing that could happen to a writer? If you're a writer, I'm guessing you'd put 'not being able to write' pretty high on your list of potential disasters. ...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/rsi-productivity/

Photos in this article courtesy of Floatworks Did you hear the one about the microwave bed? Eight hours' sleep in ten minutes! The nearest thing I've found to the microwave bed is a floata...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/floatation-tank/

She was beautiful. I couldn't believe my luck. She took my hand on the dance floor and smiled an ultraviolet smile. The pounding dance beat morphed into the beating of my heart as we found oursel...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/be-original/

Photo by kasrak Seth Godin posted some interesting thoughts on creativity this week: > What does it mean to be creative?  >  > You could watch the most non-creative, linear-...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/seth-godin/

Monday's post on whether brainstorming is a waste of time provoked an excellent debate in the comments . In this post I want to highlight one of the threads in the discussion, as it touched up...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/creativity-professionals/

Photo by jurvetson Richard Huntington, Director of Strategy for Saatchi & Saatchi in the UK, has a pathological hatred of brainstorming : > I hate brainstorms.  >  > I hate running ...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/brainstorming/

Cartoon by Hugh MacLeod It's time to spread the link love by highlighting some great examples of Lateral Activity elsewhere on the web... You can tell the economy is in a bad way when we cau...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/lateral-activity/

When the HMS Beagle sailed into Falmouth, England on 2 October 1836, after a five-year voyage around the world, she carried a new scientific celebrity. The ship's naturalist Charles Darwin had le...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/darwin-theory-of-evolution/

Photo by Vibragiel In the first article in this series, I asked the question How Did Darwin Get His Big Idea? . I considered a popular theory, based on Edward de Bono's lateral thinking, as to...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/darwins-voyage/

> If you had an idea that was going to outrage society, would you > keep it to yourself? This question is at the heart of the Natural History Museum's Darwin Big Idea Exhibition...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/darwins-big-idea/

Photo by interrupt Earlier this week I switched on the TV halfway through a documentary about the late, great Stanley Kubrick . Presenter Jon Ronson was obviously a huge Kubrick fan, and was t...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/creative-obsessions/

Family Guy. It’s crude, rude, and, according to its detractors… badly drawn. But the show has a rabid fan base that’s brought it back from the dead not once, but twice. And it’s the bas...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/family-guy-business-creativity/

Photo by alexsey.const Happy New Year everyone! The Lateral Action team would like to wish you all a creative, productive and fulfilling 2009. To help you kick start your enthusiasm for the ...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/motivate-creative-people/

David Bowie is most famous for his glam rock creation Ziggy Stardust, but his best and most interesting work centres around his 'Berlin period' - the three years he spent living in Berlin, produ...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/bowie-in-berlin/

Twas the night before Christmas, when all through Corp. House Not a keyboard was stirring, not even a mouse. The screens were on standby, the hard drives as still As the stars in the sky and t...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/to-do-list-before-christmas/

Jack just gave two weeks notice to the boss. He's really looking forward to the freedom, travel, and new experiences his new business will provide him. Lately, Lou has been giving Jack al...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/will-jack-make-a-deal/

A creative person looks at the same thing that everyone is looking at from a different perspective. He or she can 'notice and observe' better than others. This is where 'awareness' comes into the...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/awareness-tests/

In our last article, Mark demonstrated why thinking INSIDE the box is actually good for creativity. In other words, imposing constraints on your thinking or a project can result in better and fa...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/creative-constraints/

Here's a little thought experiment for you. You'll need a watch or timer with a second hand. You have exactly 30 seconds after reading the instructions, to see what you come up with: > Think ...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/thinking-inside-the-box/

Last week, I watched the FOX Premiere of "A Secret Millionaire ." The premise of the reality series is that a multi-millionaire lives in some of the worst poverty-stricken communities in the ...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/what-the-secret-millionaire-can-teach-you-about-creativity-and-inspiration/

'Think outside the box' is one of the biggest creativity cliches. The basic idea is that to be creative you need to challenge your own assumptions and look at things from a fresh angle. You need ...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/thinking-outside-the-box/

When you think of success, what comes to mind? One might say success is bringing home lots of money. Another might say that success is feeling like you're satisfied. A third person may disagree a...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/how-do-you-define-success/

Something interesting is happening over at Merlin Mann's blog 43 Folders . As many of you will know, the name 43 Folders comes from David Allen's Getting Things Done productivity system, and Mer...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/43-folders/

Have a look at the picture below and answer this simple question: WHICH SQUARE IS DARKER - A OR B? (Don't scroll down and read the text until you've answered the question.) Easy huh? That...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/black-and-white-thinking/

Photo by José Encarnação Duff left a thoughtful comment on my post about creative rituals , highlighting a potential danger of incorporating ritual into your creative process: > the yin...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/ritual-or-routine/

Photo by Esparta What do the following people have in common? THE PRIESTESS OF APOLLO - GREECE, 403 BC She has fasted for several days prior to the 7th of the month, which is sacred to her ...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/creative-rituals/

Which way is the dancer spinning... clockwise or counter-clockwise? Most people will see her turning counter-clockwise, which apparently means you're more left brained (logical). I see her spi...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/left-brain-or-right/

Photo by Sebastian Bergmann On a cold winter's day shortly before his death, the artist Michelangelo Buonarroti gathered a large sheaf of drawings from his studio and carried them outside. As ...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/you-dont-need-to-be-a-genius/

Photo by iBrotha Have you ever spent a whole day doing absolutely nothing, either for productivity or pleasure? The closest I've come has been on silent meditation retreats at a Buddhist mon...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/getting-nothing-done/

It’s a bit of a cliché… the artist’s loft with soaring ceilings as the ideal environment to unleash a masterpiece. But does that type of space really have anything to do with creativity? ...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/high-ceilings-creative-thinking/

The Beach Burner Portable Bonfire by John T. Unger ARTIST, ENTREPRENEUR AND CREATIVE ROCK STAR JOHN T. UNGER LEFT SUCH A GREAT COMMENT ON THE POST THE DARK SIDE OF CREATIVITY: BURNOUT WE THO...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/john-t-unger-creative-burnout/

Lou went to graduate school for business administration. Lou knows how to administer business, and that’s what Lou does. In fact, Lou’s a master at it. Says so right there on the wall...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/lou-has-a-killer-idea/

Let's face it: in the online arena, distractions are imminent and inevitable. There are just too many online properties that beg for your attention -- and before you know it, hours have passed an...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/personal-productivity-toolbox/

237 authors from across the globe have contributed to The Age of Conversation 2 , a book published today in aid of the children's charity Variety . Rock stars Drew McLellan and Gavin Heaton h...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/age-of-conversation-2/

There’s no doubt that rock stars can be creative entrepreneurs, just like entrepreneurs can be creative rock stars . But Kurt Cobain? It may seem a stretch to call Kurt Cobain and Nirvana e...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/kurt-cobain-startup-success/

Serious question. This is the final post in a series that has looked at creative rock stars - the creative entrepreneurs who get paid to do what they love and to wow their audience . When th...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/make-a-living-from-creativity/

It's a cliche for artists and creatives to say 'I love my work so much I'd do it free' - but unfortunately there are people out there prepared to take us at our word. Just ask Howard Tate. In 1...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/the-flip-side-of-fame-exploitation/

Photo by computerhotline Who wouldn't want to be a creative rock star ? After all, rock stars astound their audience , they get paid to do what they love , they are worshipped by adoring fan...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/the-dark-side-of-creativity-burnout/

Contrary to appearances, stars are not superhuman. Although we (and they) love the image of the star, in lots of ways they're just like the rest of us. I should know. I’ve had a few of them...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/the-difference-between-the-stars-and-the-rest-of-us/

It is also part of Blog Action Day , which this year is about Poverty. Charity is one of the nicer rock-and-roll cliches. These days, it's easy to be cynical about celebrities who talk abou...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/creative-rock-stars-give-something-back/

Even stars get starstruck. I remember hearing David Bowie talk about the time John Lennon dropped in on the recording sessions for Young Americans. He was thrilled at meeting one of his heroes a...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/creative-rock-stars-get-to-work-with-other-cool-dudes/

Photo by exfordy When Bowie sang 'Who Can I Be Now?’ it wasn't a hypothetical question. The Chameleon of Rock achieved fame by playing a series of alter egos, including Major Tom, Ziggy Star...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/rock-stars-reinvent-themselves/

Photo by aleksey.const Who doesn’t want to be adored? To have others think you’re talented, cool, interesting and sexy? Even if you can live without hordes of screaming fans, I’ll bet yo...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/creative-rock-stars-attract-fans/

Money doesn’t buy happiness but it does buy time. And time spent on creative work can be bliss. One of the main reasons we’re so envious of rock stars is they don’t have to trade off time...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/paid-to-do-what-they-love/

Photo by piccadillywilson What was the best gig you ever went to? Stop for a moment and replay the experience in your mind… How old were you? Where was the gig? Who did you go with? What...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/creative-rock-stars-astound-their-audience/

Photo by Lenny Montana Eccentrics. Misfits. Outsiders. Starving artists and tortured geniuses. Once upon a time, to be a creative person was to feel marginalised, banished to the garrets and s...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/rock-stars/

We all want to do remarkable things, and lead remarkable lives. No one wants to spend the day engaged in mundane productivity in pursuit of a meaningless consumer existence. Certainly not you, ...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/tyler-durden-innovation/

In my last article I looked at the problem of Foolish Productivity or Personal Taylorism, in which you become pseudo-efficient at the expense of your creative spark and your competitive edge. Bu...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/beyond-getting-things-done/

You’re an expert at getting things done. Your inbox is empty, your desk is clear. You turn around incoming demands promptly. Your projects are marching steadily towards completion. Your file...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/foolish-productivity/

Photo by timsnell There's a saying that we all have a book inside us. It’s a lie. Just ask any X-ray technician. Now, if that saying has motivated you to actually sit down and start writ...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/creative-thinking/

In the last article we saw that the creative economy opens up a brave new world of opportunity - but a world that is also full of uncertainty and risk. So how come Marla ’s having such a ba...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/creative-entrepreneur/

In the last post we looked at the converging economic forces that make creativity a hot property in the 21st century. Mature economies such as the US, Europe, and Japan, which previously shifted...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/creative-economy/

So you’ve met Lou, Jack and Marla, and you can see they’ve experienced a relative change of fortunes in recent years. Once upon a time Lou, with his MBA and finely-tuned productivity system, ...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/innovate-or-die-why-creativity-is-economic-priority-number-one/

Marla is a creative Diva. She has so many great ideas, she routinely gives most of them away. But Marla uses her best ideas to make lots of money. Marla hasn't had a job in 7 years. S...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/everybody-loves-marla/

Jack's inbox is a mess, and so is his desk. Jack's action items are in disarray. Jack has no five-year vision. And yet... Jack just got promoted. But will he bother to keep the corpor...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/jacks-smirking-revenge/

Lou has an MBA, and Lou gets things done. But Lou's five-year vision is not going to work out like he thinks. In fact, the only thing that's truly done may be his career. Why? Check o...

https://lateralaction.com/articles/lou-needs-a-clue/