Where do you work?
I have the corner of an office which has very kindly been donated to me as I build my business. It is great to have a place that I can go to and get my head down and work. However, it doesn’t always suit me. See, there is another business in the room, their phones ring, they have conversations that I’m not part of related to their work, and my intuitive nature finds it hard to block it all out. That’s not their fault in anyway. I find this environment completely ok when I am doing admin, responding to emails etc etc. However, I can’t work effectively in it when I need to do the more creative parts of my job.
What do I need to be creative?
Noise. But a certain type of noise. This type of noise is the noise that is produced by a coffee shop. You know the noise I mean, you could describe it as ‘hubub’. People talking, coffee being made, background music that you hear but can ignore. I don’t know what it is about that environment, but it allows me to do my best creative work.
I’m currently reading the excellent ‘Decoded‘, by Phil Barden. It is a book about the science of marketing and why people buy. There’s a line from it I really like: