Ever heard of the ‘morning pages’? It’s from Julia Cameron’s creative restoration programme, The Artist’s Way. And it’s a practice I’ve been practicing for the last couple of years. Here’s the deal … - You write three pages, longhand, first thing every morning - You don’t read them back, you don’t…

Citizen Kane is often cited as the greatest film of all time. What most people don’t know is that before he co-wrote, directed, produced and starred in it, Orson Welles had never set foot in a studio. As he explains in this clip, it was only because of his naivety…

For the last five years I’ve been a creative coach. I’ve listened to the deepest, darkest fears of countless creative professionals — from Executive Creative Directors who feel that they aren’t really very creative, through to junior designers who are convinced they’ve been given their job by mistake. Over hundreds…

Ten years ago I climbed a hill behind our house, out of earshot of anyone but a few sheep, and I wept. Things were about as tough as they’d ever been for me as an adult. I’d tried unsuccessfully to leave the agency I’d founded, now the agency was about…

It’s almost impossible to be creative when you’re anxious. Yet a recent study at Cornell University found that 85% of the things we worry about never happen. The study followed subjects over an extended period, asked them about the things they feared and then observed which imagined misfortune actually came…

Although I never intended it to happen, I have become someone who makes a living from public speaking: over the past twenty years I’ve given a lot of talks. Sometimes it’s a masterclass with twenty or so people, other times it’s a keynote delivered to hundreds of anonymous faces from…

During the mid-twentieth century, when New York was the centre of the art world and all eyes were on the work of the abstract expressionists, a young British woman called Bridget Riley began to create a cultural shockwave of her own. Her paintings were both striking and original. To stand…

Every now and then I come across something in my research so wonderful I can’t believe I’ve not heard of it before. In 2006 a bunch of school kids and their teacher wrote to Kurt Vonnegut asking for advice. This is his response. For more inspiration and insights into the…

I spend a good deal of time, perhaps more than I should, delving into the experiences and observations of writers, musicians, artists and creators of all kinds, as I attempt to understand more about this mysterious thing we call ‘the creative process’. Inevitably I gravitate towards those whose work I…