Dear All

I have taken the time during this festive period to re-read 2 very good books for the purpose of this post so that I can share some of the most thought provoking passages which I hope you will find as inciteful as I have to help make your 2017 as creative and as productive as possible.

The Millionaire Real Estate Agent by Gary Keller with Dave Jenks and Jay Papasan

“If I have seen farther than others, it is because I was standing on the shoulders of giants” Isaac Newton

“This book is about aiming high.  It’s not about the money.  It’s really about the fact that most great achievements in life are the result of thinking big and aiming high.  The word millionaire is just a placeholder for that idea.”

“Jazz legend Charles Mingus once said, “Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, that’s creativity.” I agree.  Life and business are complex, but the road to success in life and in business is paved with simplicity.  The truth is that all plans must be reduced to simplicity in order for us to be able to implement them.  No one can live or operate in complexity for very long – lasting success always lies in our ability to reduce things to their simplest level.”

“Some men see things as they are and say ‘Why?’ I dream things that never were and say, ‘Why not?’” George Bernard Shaw

“The Nine Ways the Millionaire Real Estate Agent Thinks”

1. Think Powered by a Big Why – this brings big focus and big energy
2. Think Big Goals and Big Models
3. Think Possibilities
4. Think Action
5. Think Without Fear
6. Think Progress
7. Think Competitively and Strategically
8. Think Standards
9. Think Service

“Richard Koch in his ground breaking book The 80/20 Principle, describes this rule as “the principle of greatest outcome for time and effort expended.”  Most people believe that time and effort alone deliver results, and, while this may be true, 80:20 Rule teaches us that time and effort on the 20 percent that really matters will deliver 80 percent of the results we seek”

Think Like An Artist …and Lead a More Creative, Productive Life by Will Gompertz

“This book is my attempt to answer those questions informed by observations made while inhabiting a world of writers, musicians, directors and actors.  The aim is to shed a little light on how the creative elites fires its imagination and uses it as a productive tool.

There is much to learn from them all, but perhaps it is fine artists – by which I mean painters and sculptors, video-makers and performance practitioners – who can teach us most about the creative process.  There is a singularity to the way they work that makes it easier to pin down how a creative mind thinks when operating at maximum capacity.”

“Artists don’t seek permission to paint or write or act or sing; they just do it.  What tends to set them apart, and gives them the power and purpose, is not their creativity per se – we all have that.  Rather, it’s the fact that they have found a focus for it, an area of interest that has fired their imagination and provided a vehicle for their talents.”

“When bankers dine together they discuss art, when artists dine together they discuss money” Oscar Wilde

“Artists are entrepreneurs.  They are willing to stake everything for the chance to go it alone to make the work they feel compelled to create.”

“The artist businessman is not an oxymoron.  An enterprising outlook is essential for creative success.  As Leonardo da Vinci once observed, “It has long since come to my attention that people of accomplishment rarely sat back and let things happen to them.  They went out and happened to things.”  That is the artist’s way.  To happen to things.  To turn nothings into somethings.”

“Theaster Gates has become a cultural entrepreneur: an artist who is using his position to improve his neighbourhood.  He is the closest thing the art world has to a Robin Hood figure”.

“If you look at the career of any brilliantly innovative individual – entrepreneur, scientist or artist – you are likely to find a surprising common trait.  Their success is very often down to a Plan B.  That is, the thing they originally set out to do has morphed along the way into something different.  Shakespeare was an actor who became a playwright.  The Rolling Stones were an R&B cover band until Mick Jagger and Keith Richards started writing their own songs.  Leonardo da Vinci marketed himself as an armaments designer, and so on.  The list of Plan Bs is long and illustrious.  And instructive.”

“Curiosity is the tool that shapes the work of all artists, just as much as any brush or chisel”

“As human beings we are all born with not only the wherewithal to be creative, but also the need.  We must express ourselves.  The only decisions to make are what it is we want to say and through which medium we want to say it.  Will it be by building a company, inventing a product, designing a website, developing a vaccine or painting a picture.”

“Big ideas come from the unconscious.  But your unconscious has to be well informed, or your idea will be irrelevant.” David Ogilvy

“A far more important lesson to learn from artists is not that they fail, but that they prevail.  Artists Make. Artists Do.”

“We’re talking about a very specific mindset that is crucial when it comes to the act of creating.  It is an attitude that can be encapsulated in a simple but demanding rule: always think both big picture and fine detail.”

“You can’t wait for inspiration, you have to go after it with a club.” Jack London

Wishing you all a creative and productive 2017!

All the best

 

SS