Book Extract: My heroes were on the walls

Nov 10, 2021 | ,

This is the second in a series of extracts from my book Listen To Your Footsteps, a collection of reflections and essays on fatherhood, identity, loss, creativity, etc WATCHING A documentary about Muhammad Ali, I was struck by how big an impact he had on me when I was a child. I was eight years old when he lost to Larry Holmes, and I have memories of watching the fight with my father. I has heartbroken because, even at that young age, I could see that Ali was at the end of his career. I read a copy of an early biography of his as a young teenager and, by then, had watched a lot of his...

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Finding your daily ritual in work + life

Jun 17, 2020 | ,

Mason Currey's book Daily Rituals: How Artists Work gives great insight into the routines of a range of artists, writers, musicians, etc. In the introduction, Currey recounts how he came to putting this book together - while working on deadline for an article for an architecture magazine that he worked for. "...I started searching the Internet for information about other writers’ working schedules. These were easy to find, and highly entertaining. It occurred to me that someone should collect these anecdotes in one place—hence the Daily Routines blog I launched that very afternoon...Mason...

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Do you read books promiscuously?

Jun 9, 2020 |

Austin Kleon’s blog is a go-to space for me. And not just for substance and creativity of his blog posts but how he creates and curates the blog itself. I must admit I have borrowed from how he runs both his blog and his newsletter in what I am doing with mine. He did write the book Steal Like An Artist so I don’t feel guilty about it. I tend to read his posts because of his email newsletter which comes out every Friday. I grew up a bit of a bookworm, reading regularly in between all the things that children do, including right through my teens. In my thirties, I realised that I didn’t read...

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In Range, David Epstein makes a case for generalists

Apr 28, 2020 | ,

Malcolm Gladwell's '10,000 hour rule' as detailed in his 2008 book Outliers was, when it came out, a concept that many grasped onto in making sense of work and the world. The idea that putting in 10,000 hours brings us to mastery in our chosen field is nice, tidy and easy to buy into. In 2009, he was on Reddit answering questions and wrote: There is a lot of confusion about the 10,000 rule that I talk about in Outliers. It doesn't apply to sports. And practice isn't a SUFFICIENT condition for success. I could play chess for 100 years and I'll never be a grandmaster. The point is simply that...

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Creative Quest, Questlove’s Book On Creativity

Apr 3, 2019 | ,

Ahmir ‘Questlove’ Thompson of the hip hop band The Roots epitomises the exploration of creativity in all facets of one’s life. While his creative expression has been rooted primarily in music as a deejay, drummer and founder of The Roots, he continuously explores the edges of creativity. In his book, Creative Quest - which followed Mo’ Meta Blues: The World According To Questlove, his memoir of sorts, and Something To Food About: Exploring Creativity with Innovative Chefs -he unpacks not only his thoughts on creativity but also shares tools that he has learned over the years. At the same...

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