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Two years ago this month, Brian Clark, Tony D. Clark and I were putting the finishing touches on the videos and articles we had prepared for the launch of a new website, Lateral Action. We wanted to create a different kind of site to help people realise their creative and business ambitions.

At that stage, we knew we wanted to start with a blog and later on produce a major e-learning programme. Beyond that, we were pretty confident we’d work out what to do based on the response of our audience.

Fast forward to today, and we’re thrilled that what we’ve achieved with the site. It’s been quite a ride and we’ve made plenty of new friends along the way. We also welcomed Sonia Simone to the team earlier this year. We’re really proud of the blog and The Lateral Action Entrepreneur Roadmap – and especially of the response from our readers and members.

Having reached the initial goals we set ourselves, we’ve been taking stock on what to do next – and the upshot is that going forward, Brian, Tony and Sonia will be focusing on their other projects, and I’ll be taking over Lateral Action and running it as a one-man operation.

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This post is part of the Break Through Your Creative Blocks series.

I’ve been meaning to write about procrastination for ages, but I never quite got round to it.

This is one of the most frustrating and puzzling obstacles we encounter whenever we set out to create something remarkable. After all, creative people love creating things. Writers love to write, painters love to paint, musicians love to play. So why do we spend so long avoiding and putting off doing the thing we love?

I’ll offer my own explanation shortly, but I’d like to start by pointing out that procrastination is virtually epidemic among high-level creators. I used to think I was the only one who did it, and beat myself up over it. But having spent 14 years coaching creative pros of all descriptions, and heard a virtually identical story from hundreds of them, I’m convinced it’s just an occupational hazard. Procrastination is normal behaviour for creatives. So it was no surprise that it reared its ugly head when I invited you to tell us about your creative blocks:

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Earlier this week I recorded a podcast with fellow creative coach Cynthia Morris, about what it takes to become a Linchpin, riffing on the ideas in Seth Godin’s latest book.

We’ve done our best to draw out the practical implications of the book, both in the call and in a Worksheet full of questions to help you reflect and take action towards becoming a Linchpin in your own sphere of work.

Thank you to everyone who sent us questions about the issues raised in the book. We did our best to cover as many of these as possible in the call (and there are some e-mails on the way to those of you whose questions we couldn’t fit in).

Here are some of the topics we addressed during the call (which ran to 48 minutes):

• Can anyone be an artist (not just the guys with paintbrushes)?
• Are any of us truly indispensable?
• Is it easier to be a Linchpin as an employee or entrepreneur?
• How can you tell what your gift is?
• What can you do when the gift you give through your work is rejected?
• What are the rewards of doing emotional labor?

The audio file and worksheet are both released under a Creative Commons licence – which basically means you’re free to download and share them, with no opt-in required, as long as you credit us as the authors and don’t use them commercially. So do pass them on to anyone who you think would find them helpful.

Special thanks to Cynthia for suggesting we do this, it was fun and I hope the materials will be useful.

Enjoy!

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Download the mp3 here.

Download the Worksheet here

As soon as I came across Michael Bungay Stanier’s work, I knew I wanted to feature him on Lateral Action. The subtitle of his book Do More Great Work is a perfect fit with our approach to work:

Stop the busywork and start the work that matters.

Michael is the founder and Principal of Box of Crayons, a company that works with organizations and teams around the world to help them do less Good Work and more Great Work.

Michael’s latest book Do More Great Work was an Amazon.com best-seller. It’s written to support and enable managers and leaders to do more Great Work. It has 15 practical exercises in it, as well as original contributions from people like Seth Godin, Leo Babauta, Chris Guillebeau, Michael Port and Dave Ulrich.

As a coach myself, I appreciate the way Michael has written the book – he doesn’t just describe Great Work or give you an instruction manual. Instead he uses challenging questions, activities and visual ‘maps’ to take you through a process of reflection, decision making and action.

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Seth Godin’s Linchpin is one of the two books I recommend most often to clients in search of career advice (the other one is Ignore Everybody by Hugh MacLeod). So I thought it was a great idea when fellow creative coach Cynthia Morris suggested we do a free podcast about Linchpin and its implications for people pursuing a creative career.

Next week Cynthia and I are going to record the call, probably about 45 minutes long, and make it available for free download here and over at Cynthia’s Original Impulse blog. We’re also preparing a worksheet full of coaching questions to help you take action on the challenges Seth describes in the book – again, this will be a free download.

Edit: the podcast and worksheet are now available for download: Becoming a Linchpin.

We want to make the call and worksheet as useful as possible for you, so if you have any questions about the book or the challenges of pursuing a creative career path, please leave a comment below or zip me an e-mail and we’ll do our best to offer some useful suggestions – and questions.

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