Author: Hugh Macleod
Synopsis |
Ignore Everybody (2009) by Hugh Macleod is a book in which he has collected a lifetime of experiences, advice, and learnings from his incredibly successful career. This short book is packed full of wisdom about life and the creativity used to inspire and create. Macleod’s creativity and mission are to help people unleash their artistic dreams and motivate us towards success by reminding us that anything can happen at any time, but we should try to ignore the criticism from everybody at that time. |
Detailed Summary of Ignore Everybody
Many of us dream about being creative, but most of us either don’t put it into practice or follow a path blazed by others. Creativity is a force of nature. It just is. There’s nothing you can do to make it happen, no button you can press that will cause it to strike, no ritual or a pre-dawn wake-up call that will coax it out of hiding. Creativity isn’t something you can force, trick, or cajole.
This book is about creativity as a journey. It’s about the creative process. The book doesn’t have a list of tips you can use to be more creative. Instead, Hugh gives you 39 keys (similar to tips) that can change your thoughts about creativity and help improve your ideas.
Each key is based on one or more decades of research in psychology and creativity. The keys are themed around three areas of your personal life: your professional, personal, and inner life.
For example, one of the keys is ‘Put Something Down on Paper.’ In other words, write stuff down. Our parents, teachers, and professors tell us that writing stuff down is a good idea. But what does writing stuff down really do for you? Why does it matter?
Hugh explains why writing stuff down is an important creative habit to develop, why examples are important, and how writing helps us push past our thoughts’ inherent resistance.
Ignore Everybody Summary Key Points
One key feature to success in life is getting out of the box. How? Simply reject conventional thinking, the fear of failure, and other’s opinion.
The author emphasizes that a creative mindset can turn dreams into reality. The following key points will help you overcome all the obstacles and hurdles that come along with creative success.
You might also like to read The Little Book of Talent Summary.
Ignore everybody If you are Making an Art
This isn’t an artistic failure; it’s the definition of creation. If people can give you extensive and helpful feedback on your art, you’ve failed to create true art. What allows you to give good feedback? Understanding the situation well. The more you do, the better your feedback is.
Of course, this is only the case if you’re creating true art. If you’re creating something that looks like art but isn’t, it might be easier to get useful feedback. You can probably get enough of it that it seems like you’re creating art. But the better your feedback, the more likely it is that your art isn’t true art.
Your friends’ feedback will do you worse than doing no good. It’s going to get in the way of actually making your masterpiece. That’s because the cost of asking for feedback is that you will be completely vulnerable with your audience, which means that the feedback they can give you will be on everything except the actual core of your work.
They’ll let you know what they like, what they don’t like, what they think could be added, subtracted, improved, etc. But they will do so in a vacuum.
You’re not going to get feedback that is useful because there are no stakes. If your piece is raw and open enough to take criticism, it will take honest feedback that can help you improve your art. On the other hand, if you have a bunch of people weighing in on a piece of art that isn’t yet ready for them to weigh in, then you run into problems.
Possibly even more problematic is that if feedback is coming from people who aren’t yet as skilled or experienced as you are at creating the work, then their feedback may be too sensitive to what they think they see or may not recognize what they see as a problem because it doesn’t yet make sense to them.
Don’t do your Art just to Pay your Bills
If you are doing your part because you need to pay the bills, that’s fine, but it may not be enough to keep you going. The only thing that will keep you going is the excitement that comes from being an artist – the only motivation to create art needs to come from enjoyment.
Otherwise, it’ll become work, and you won’t enjoy it as much anymore. I’ve seen it happen before; never do this to yourself if money is not your primary concern.
The worst thing for a creative person is to be put into a position where they have to take things seriously – too much seriousness is toxic, and it drains the joy out of something that should be fun. If you are primarily concerned with making money, you won’t have fun – and if your art isn’t fun anymore, you should stop doing it. It’s not worth the sacrifice.
The best art can’t be created when it feels like work. And attempting to conjure creativity while also trying to figure out all the logistics of how you’re going to pay your bills is a huge burden. I’ve been there, and it sucks. So don’t do that if you can help it.
Instead, focus on making your art as good as it possibly can be. Then find a way to share it in the most effective way possible. Then work on the logistics of getting paid for it without taking away from the original creation of it.
Start discovering yourself online
Create unique content and start sharing it online; people will find you.
Although, sometimes you feel like you’re posting your best content to no one. You may keep updating your social media for weeks or even months, and nothing happens, completely unaware of the fact that you have a follower count that continues to increase by the day.
With so many options available, it is easy to get confused about where you should spend your time and energy. If you’re feeling stuck and wondering where you start promoting yourself, stop waiting to be discovered. Discover yourself online instead.
Look at it this way. A while back, the only way you communicated with others was through letters unless you went over and visited that special someone. Nowadays, with phone lines and video calls, we have access to more ways of communication than ever before. All our conversations can be held online with social media and the internet.
Now we can reach out to anyone or anything; anyone can reach us online, so why not take advantage of this opportunity? Why not start promoting yourself online? Stop waiting to be discovered and start discovering yourself online instead. Start promoting yourself online today and see results in less than a month.
Ignore Everybody Summary Quotes
“Nobody can tell you if what you’re doing is good, meaningful, or worthwhile. The more compelling the path, the more lonely it is. ” Hugh MacLeod
“Art suffers the moment other people start paying for it.” Hugh MacLeod
Ignore Everybody Summary Review
If you are a sucker for wisdom, this book is for you. This book is easy to consume. You must read this book If you are an artist or love art. In today’s world, Knowing the difference between real and fake art is important. This is all the book is about.
To whom would I recommend Ignore Everybody Summary?
- Anyone who takes others’ advice but doesn’t listen to his heart.
- Any freelancer, writer, or blogger.
- Anyone doesn’t create art just because of what will others think.
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