LinkedIn is terrible for newsletters

30 Days of Creativity: a free guide to creative practice

At the start of 2022 I set myself a small creative constraint: publish one short idea about creativity, every day, for a month. I decided to do it as a pop-up newsletter on LinkedIn. This proved to be my first mistake.

It died on day six. The platform refused to post anymore. Drafts vanished into whatever LinkedIn does with drafts that it takes from you. Some subscribers found they couldn't turn the notifications off no matter what options they set. Some couldn't turn them on. Some couldn't even subscribe.

I had my doubts about LinkedIn as a platform for this project. I should have listened to my instinct. It was a technical disaster – and, with hindsight, an almost remarkably perfect demonstration of the thing the whole project was about: create, share, things go wrong, and then you get to pivot.

So the thirty days of creativity became an eBook and guide – a little over fourteen thousand words, which is not far off a small book, and rather more than LinkedIn was ever going to let me post.

The ideas themselves arrived on a train, scribbled into a battered Black n' Red notebook somewhere between Winchester and London. Thirty reflections on creativity as a lived, practised thing – at a desk, on foot, on paper, in videos, on audio, over years.

No hacks. No "unleash your inner genius." Just field notes from someone who's been making things for twenty years and still finds the process both difficult and amazingly rewarding.

So here are the thirty, in brief. The guide takes each one further and is available as a PDF download, or a readable guide on Fold - linked below.

Read them, keep the ones that seem to land for you, ignore the rest – that's the spirit of the whole thing.

1/ Movement creates thinking.

2/ The best ideas often arrive without a screen.

3/ Don't rush to turn a creative pursuit into a business, maybe the enthusiasm will leave..

4/ Creativity is learning.

5/ What you feed your brain often feeds your ideas.

6/ Noticing is a skill, not a gift.

7/ Creativity is always an act of expression. That's why it stings when people criticise it.

8/ An idea alone holds no real value.

9/ Don't let the potential of the idea stop you from realising it.

10/ Creating something can be a form of therapy.

11/ Tell your story.

12/ Analogue and digital both have a place.

13/ You often need less to get started than you think.

14/ Good ideas often come from mistakes.

15/ A small audience is still an audience. And do you even need one?

16/ Creativity absolutely belongs in the workplace.

17/ Care is the fuel for creativity.

18/ A creative pursuit, like photography, is a form of noticing.

19/ Other people's views often waver.

20/ Listening to others fuels ideas.

21/ Routines often help.

22/ Dedicating time and space can help.

23/ Build a body of work.

24/ Have a quiet word with yourself.

25/ It's much harder than it first appears.

26/ Good work often takes time.

27/ Creativity is an act of actually creating yourself.

28/ Creativity is the first act of innovation. Innovation then becomes the way things are done.

29/ Widening your awareness means you will be surprised less often.

30/ Are you creating stocks or flows?

Read the whole thing — free

The project is free and always will be. Two formats: