The Secret to Creativity

Hey friends,

Last week I finished the book ‘Unreasonable Hospitality’ by Will Guidara. If you’re not familiar with him, Will Guidara is former owner of some of New York’s most expensive restaurants, including one which was recently named the best restaurant in the world.

The book’s packed full of interesting ideas, but his approach to creativity was something that particularly stood out to me.

Now, I’ve never really considered myself to be a creative person – I’ve got friends who can seemingly pull amazing ideas out of thin air, whereas I feel like I’ve got to rely heavily on external sources of inspiration. Like, when I sit down to come up with ideas for something I usually turn to things I’ve read, watched, or listened to so I can gradually piece things together and connect the dots in my own way.

Creativity just isn’t a spontaenous process for me, which is how I’ve always thought it should be.

But, in the book, Will talks about creativity as something that’s far more systematic than spontaneous. Basically, he says that the people we think are most creative are the ones that have a systematic process behind that creativity.

This was a very liberating idea because I’ve had this limiting belief for some time that ‘I’m not a very creative person’. But, if we think of creativity as being a systematic process, rather than a spontaneous process, then this isn’t true at all.

For example, I’ve got systematic processes for my creativity when it comes to making YouTube videos (which we teach our students in the Part-Time YouTuber Academy – enrolment closes on Friday 17 March btw 😉) and systematic processes for thinking of business ideas (which involves journalling and asking myself various questions).

And although these processes don’t look that creative, they’re responsible for the consistent creative output that has helped me to create hundreds of videos and grow a multi-million dollar business over the last few years.

So, the takeaway here is that creativity is an active process.

As William Faulkner once said, ‘I only write when inspiration strikes. Fortunately it strikes at nine every morning.’

The point is, the only way to be properly creative is to show up and put in the work.

So, if you’re ever held back by the limiting belief that ‘you’re not creative enough to do X’, realise that the way you become more creative is to stop waiting for inspiration to strike and start taking action.

Have a great week!

Ali xx

🖊️ The New Paperlike

If you own an iPad, I can’t recommend Paperlike screen protectors enough.

I have them on all my iPads, and they make the surface feel like paper when I use an Apple Pencil. The slight stroke resistance makes writing and drawing feel precise + tactile.

Paperlike’s “secret sauce” is a thin layer of nanodots on the surface. Those minimise glare, so you get a nice clear image. And with their new Paperlike 2.1 model, those nanodots are spread more evenly across the screen to improve visibility.

Getting a Paperlike screen protector might just make you use your Apple Pencil more. Check out the Paperlike 2.1 here.

Thanks to Paperlike for sponsoring this issue of Sunday Snippets 🙏

♥️ My Favourite Things

🎬 Video – ‘Revealing A YouTubers INSANE GROWTH Secrets’. This video is from our friend Ed, at Film Booth. I always enjoy the way he explains how different YouTubers have grown their channel, so this video about Joshua Mayo was no exception. I obviously spend a lot of time think about this stuff because it’s what we teach students in our Part-Time YouTuber Academy (which is open to enrolment until Friday 17 March).

🥷 Kickboxing – I’ve started taking kickboxing lessons. So far I’ve had two lessons, but the plan is to go to the gym 3x/week and kickbox 3x/week. The reasons I’ve decided to take up kickboxing are 1) lots of people I know said it’s fun, and 2) it seems to be a good balance of cardio / flexibility / mobility / self-defence. So I thought I’d give it a go and it’s been super fun so far.

📱 App – Gather. This is a virtual office space that the whole team has been using recently. We basically all have our own desks in the app and chat to people as if we were all in the same building. To begin with it felt a little gimmicky, but now it works nicely. I can just virtually run over to someone’s desk and start talking, instead of having to spend ages talking over Slack or setting up a Zoom meeting. It’s completely free to use up to 10 users, but if you decide to pay for more users I’ve got a cheeky affiliate link you can use: gather.town