Ignore Everybody, and 39 Other Keys to Creativity doesn’t fit the genre of books normally reviewed here at Richer by the Day.  Some would say that creativity and personal finance have little in common.  I disagree.  Finding creative solutions to life’s challenges, financial or otherwise, is a beneficial skill.  You may even find that your creativity generates alternative income streams or the idea that becomes your life’s work.  My goal is to help readers of Richer by the Day enrich their lives, and improving your creative skills is one way to do that.

The series of events that led to Ignore Everybody seem to begin with Hugh MacLeod’s unconventional medium for his art.  His doodles and cartoons, on the backs of business cards, ultimately led to the creation of his blog, gapingvoid.com.  A shining achievement of gapingvoid.com was the wildly successful post, How to Be Creative.  By expanding on those ideas and others explored on the blog, Ignore Everybody captures the evolving wisdom of Hugh MacLeod on the subject of creativity.

With few other books on creativity under my belt, it’s hard to say where Ignore Everybody ranks.  I won’t even bother to critique the art, which requires a skill I’m even less qualified in.  What I can tell you are my impressions of the book as a whole and a few of the things I learned along the way.

Despite the title, the author clarifies that the best ideas (at least during the early phases) may seem too strange for others to ‘get it’.  And so you’ll need to ignore criticism and doubts of others and nurture the idea by yourself.  As success and acceptance slowly grow, you’ll be more able to rely on the support of others.

I completely agree with the analogy that being good at anything is a lot like figure skating.  The whole point is to make it look easy, even though it takes immense skill.  The same could be said about sailing.  From afar, it seems like a boat gliding effortlessly across the water.  As anyone who has ever sailed can tell you, the reality on deck is certainly more chaotic.

I disagree with the notion that everyone is looking for a “big idea”. I can sit down for 10 minutes and come up with 3 winning business ideas, but it’s committing the time to make those ideas successful that is often lacking.  That’s why little ideas, cultivated to grow with the little time available to foster their growth, are so often at the core of successful businesses.

Reading Ignore Everybody, I was reminded of the scary moments I myself have experienced right before some of my most successful endeavors.  I’ve learned that fear can be a wonderful indicator of good ideas.  Poor ideas are dismissed quickly, but good ideas are allowed to remain long enough for us to consider their implementation, and thus worry about the consequences of potential failure.

Creativity has taken a hit as companies pared back to their essential functions in the worsening economy.  MacLeod expects creativity to become important again.  A main catalyst, he argues, is the abundance of team players in the workplace today.  When everyone relies on everyone else, nothing gets done.  By adding a creative person to a group of team players, success becomes a renewed possibility.

Though the book used an art example when describing the inverse relationship to talent and props, it can easily be applied to our investing lives as well.  The idea is that improved skills lead to the use of fewer tools.  How many of us have invested using a variety of exotic tools (options, forex, futures, etc) before we found the right method for personal investment success.  Focusing on that method allows skills to be honed and talent to rise precipitously.

MacLeod’s passion for cartoons on business cards was initially persued while he remained employed and under the assumption that the effort would not be rewarded.  That recipe can keep you motived even if financial rewards never come.  The irony is that such non-monetary pursuits often turn out to be the most profitable.

Books that rise from blogs have one practical advantage for potential readers.  By visiting the blog, and scouring the archives (or a most popular posts section, if available) you can usually get a great sense of the writer’s style and form enough of an initial impression of their work that you can predict whether or not you’d like the book.  That would certainly be my suggestion in this case.  Take a look at gapingvoid.com and if you like what you see, give the book a read as well.  It’s an easy read, which I polished off in less than two hours.  For such a small investment in time, it may be worth reading even if you only take a few bits of wisdom from its pages.  Those who regularly deal with creative pursuits: artists, writers, and yes even bloggers, may stand to take away significantly more.

Ignore Everybody is availble for pre-order on Amazon and will be published by Portfolio on June 11, 2009.