Hugh MacLeod’s “Ignore Everybody: and 39 Other Keys to Creativity” is one of the quickest, smartest, most inspirational books I’ve read.
It will make your creative work better and help you do more of it.
“Asking for money is weird. But you’ll get over it.”
“Attention has flipped. It’s no longer optimal for brands to just demand it. Attention now must also be earned. It’s about relationships over reach.”
“Tech executives began to both realize that they can’t just ignore regulatory and political issues and that not all politicians and regulators are inherently stupid, lazy, and corrupt.”
“If the lesson is more valuable than the pride and shame of making the mistake itself, then it wasn’t truly a mistake at all.”
“‘People would be pissed if someone else leaked something,’ explained one former employee. ‘You don’t betray the family.’”
“There’s a big difference between skills and experience. A 25-year-old who has been reading, learning, and implementing new information for five years will have more skills than an “experienced” 35-year-old who spent 10 years coasting.”
“Why did the CIA support [modern artists]? Because in the propaganda war with the Soviet Union, this new artistic movement could be held up as proof of the creativity, the intellectual freedom, and the cultural power of the US.”
“The most important thing you need for early retirement is an ability to break out of conventional societal programming — the persistent notion that a person has to work for four or five decades and retire at 65 or later to live a productive, fulfilling, “normal” life.”
“The decline of thoughtful media has been discussed for a century. This is not new. What is new: A fundamental shift not just in the profit-seeking gatekeepers, but in the culture as a whole.”