creativity : The Art of Non-Conformity

Work

Find Your Creative Calling: The Long-Awaited Book from Chase Jarvis

Link: The Long-Awaited Book from Chase Jarvis

Life isn’t about “finding” fulfillment and success—it’s about creating it. You don’t discover your life purpose without trying a lot of different things.

But how can you be more creative? How can you cultivate a daily practice of creativity?

The answers to these questions can be found in a new book, Creative Calling. It’s out now and available wherever books are sold, including Amazon of course, but also your local bookseller. (I love to support local stores.)

Life

“We Run Away from Desperation:” Thoughts on Pursuing a Creative Idea

I recently recorded a Side Hustle School episode about Michelle D’Avella, a designer who spent several years building a blog before turning it into a full-time income.

The first year she started her blog, she made $0. Last year, after experimenting with a series of virtual workshops and mentoring sessions, she made $50,000. The success isn’t just about making money, it’s also (maybe even more importantly) about finding work she believes in.

Her advice to others is to create from a place of joy.

"Don’t put so much pressure on figuring it all out, but make sure what you’re doing is something you can feel good about. When we create from joy, people feel it. When we create from lack, people feel it too. We run away from desperation."

Work

Catch Pokémon for Fun and Money: Lessons in Paying Attention

File under: entrepreneurship is everywhere.

And so are Pokémon hunters. No matter where you’re reading this, you’ve probably seen them—and maybe you are one of them, staring at your phone while walking through the streets in search of winged creatures.

Or maybe you think the Pokémon craze is silly. Personally, I think it’s interesting to see how quickly it caught on, with millions of players all over the world, as well as how it encourages people to get out and walk more, since Pokémon are clustered around parks and other walkable areas.

I enjoyed this article about how some enterprising players have set up digital shop in helping new players “level up” or catch rare Pokémon.

Work

The Craft of Editing a Very Short Story

Lydia Davis, an author of “very short stories” for more than 40 years, described her editing process in feature for The Atlantic. The image above contains the original handwritten text. She then made these edits: 1. The two dogs and two cats, as well as the mice, were part of my real situation, but I…

1,121 Comments

Work

Mistakes on the Road to Creative Freedom

I’ve been self-employed for more than fifteen years, but it hasn’t always been easy. I once had the bright idea of selling a golf membership service for $1. (It was actually a very bad idea—no one told me you can’t make money on $1 per customer.) Another time I tried to launch four projects on…

98 Comments

Life

What Is Freedom?

For me, everything began with the notion of freedom—the ability to determine the course of my daily schedule and overall life direction. I was very motivated by the opportunity to decide for myself. A normal job didn't fit into those parameters, so I did everything I could to create my own employment and well-being. But that was early on. Freedom is still extremely important to me. I'll walk away from any business deal or career option that restricts my choices or limits future decisions in a way that doesn't feel right ...

44 Comments

Work

The Six-Step Plan to Establish a New Income

Most people want at least one of these things:

a) more freedom

b) more money

Whether you want to quit your job as soon as possible or just establish an additional source of income to have more freedom, you have to take specific action. This post will show you how.

Work

It’s Not the Process, It’s Not the End Result, It’s the Act of Making Things

We all know there is a problem in focusing entirely on the end result. When you reach the end, what comes next? What if the end wasn't what you really wanted? That's why you have to love the milestones along the way, reminders that you appreciate what you're doing and that it's all for a good cause. But there's also a problem in focusing entirely on process. Working strictly on process takes you away from the big picture can lead you astray. Besides, it's OK to have goals, right?

40 Comments

Work

The Feeling of the Entire Day Unfolding Around You

In JFK I got on the 16-hour Cathay Pacific flight to Hong Kong. It was 3pm in the New York afternoon, and 3am in HKG—exactly halfway around the world. The Boeing 777 took off, I had lunch, and I took a short nap. I always set my watch to the destination time when boarding a flight, so it was now sunrise in Hong Kong ... with 13 hours to go. What's next?

53 Comments

Work

1,000 Days After Overnight Success

More than two years ago, I wrote a free manifesto on becoming a professional writer in less than a year. It was called 279 Days to Overnight Success, and the purpose was to outline the roadmap I had followed in crafting a new career after moving back to the U.S. from overseas and finishing grad school. Somewhere around 15% of the total AONC readership can be traced to the worldwide interest in this manifesto, so I thought I'd take a quick look back at the lessons from it.

Life

Life In the Tower, Somaliland Edition

Many thanks to everyone who has been reading or supporting the launch of The Tower, my new manifesto. If you missed it on Tuesday, you can pick up your free copy in a range of formats. I also want to thank my long-time friend and colleague Reese Spykerman, specialist in branding and magic, for her great work on the design. Reese truly raised her game on this one as we worked on telling a story through words and images.

Work

Paying the Bills: Your Responses

As expected, I received a flood of responses to Monday's question on paying the bills. In addition to hundreds of site comments (I posted at least half that came through, but it's tough to keep up from the road), we also had hundreds of additional suggestions come in through Facebook and Google+.

54 Comments

Work

Notes from a Cold Bathroom Floor in South Africa

Tomorrow I'll be headed to Madagascar, the final stop of my latest trip before I begin the long process of returning home. But at the moment, I've been spending the past three hours sitting on the floor of the bathroom during a brief stopover in Johannesburg. Why the bathroom? Because it's freezing here in Johannesburg—we're now in the middle of the southern hemisphere winter—and the only heater in my room is located by the sink.

71 Comments

Life

Rain Running

Every Sunday morning that I'm in town, I head out for a long run. Two weekends ago at the waterfront, the weather was glorious. The whole city of Portland took up jogging or cycling. Last weekend at the waterfront, the weather was more to our usual end-of-Spring form ... rainy and gloomy. The whole city of Portland stayed indoors. On the sunny day, joggers and cyclists smiled at each other with a mutual appreciation of our good fortune. The implied message was, “It's good to be alive!”

36 Comments

Work

Redefining Risk: On Disasters, Pre-Mortems, and Making Ideas Happen

I recently had the chance to participate in the 99% Conference, a gathering of creative professionals produced by Behance. The team put on a great show at the Times Center in New York, and my (small) part was to conduct a 90-minute “master class” on the topic of Redefining Risk: Increasing Confidence in Your Unconventional…

1 2 Next »