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
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