Jonathan Malm | Inspiration to infuse creativity into your daily life.

Down Days

·May 24, 2013 ·Creative Drano

We all have down days. This was one of them. I didn’t get much sleep last night. Got a fairly discouraging call first thing in the morning. Didn’t have time to eat a proper breakfast. And the affects of caffeine have suddenly disappeared off the face of the earth.

I don’t know about you…but I feel completely demotivated and uninspired when I have a day like this. And that doesn’t bode well for a productive or effective day. My job requires I’m living on cloud nine and churning out amazing ideas. But today is a down day.

I’m not going to give you the instant fix. There’s no website, song, or product that can snap you back into inspiration and motivation. But there is one thing that’s been – slowly – lifting me up. I’m gradually emerging from the fog of discouragement and I’m finally seeing good ideas flow. Read more…

Overcoming Writer’s Block

·May 22, 2013 ·Creative Drano

The other day one of my Sunday| Mag writers approached me with a problem. He had writer’s block. I’d assigned an article to him earlier. He was eager to write. But he couldn’t get past that mental block. I love his humility in approaching me. That’s a hard task in itself.

And of course I was happy to oblige. I sat down to an email and brainstormed. I found myself writing about 300 words in about two minutes. And it was pretty good. I’m not going to lie. Read more…

Baking an Idea

·May 20, 2013 ·Creativity Tips

You’re making chocolate chip cookies. You have your ingredients. Time to put them all in a bowl. But it isn’t quite so simple.

A great baker knows you don’t just drop the ingredients in a bowl and (voila) cookie batter is ready. But you also don’t throw it all in a blender until it combines into one solid mass. It’s smooth in some places. Chunky in others. It’s the way you separate and mix…your unique technique…that make the cookies great.

The Echo team’s been putting together the programming for the main sessions. We know we want a game. We want a “bit”. We want a “wow moment” and a sensitive moment. We want a ton of laughs. There are all these things we know we want. But listing them on a piece of paper doesn’t make for a great batch of chocolate chip cookies. Those are just the ingredients. Read more…

The Nerves of the Approach

·May 17, 2013 ·Inspiration Station

I have an idea. It’s an idea for Echo Conference 2014. I’m so nervous to present it to my bosses. I already presented it to one of my co-workers to help me refine the idea. “Is this even good? Will it work?”

What makes this even more nerve-wracking is that it’s an attempt to revive a failed idea. It was an idea I pitched a couple months ago that didn’t quite land. I’ve worked and re-worked it in my head. I’ve put pencil to paper. Ink to page. Finger to key. Even click to mouse.

Now I have this tender, fragile idea in my hands. If I present it wrong I risk killing it. If it doesn’t land like I think it will, it’ll die. My hard work will all be for nothing. Read more…

I’m Easily Excitable

·May 15, 2013 ·Blog

I’m the opposite of cool. Cool people aren’t supposed to get excited. And, I – I’m very easily excitable.

My wife laughs about it. Because she knows me so well, she knows how excited I get. And she’s quick to point it out. ”You think that guy’s cool, don’t you?” That’s what she asks me when she sees I have a new man crush.

Or the other day at Starbucks, I was frantically trying to point out a guy in line that lived in the same apartment complex as us. She thought I was pointing out a celebrity because of how excited I was. Nah, just a random dude I saw in the hallway a few times. You might call me a bounding puppy dog of excitement at times. That would be accurate. Read more…

Teams are the Best!

·May 13, 2013 ·Teamwork

I’ve developed a new mindset when working with a team. Whenever I have an idea, I’m completely convinced it’s right. (That’s not the new part.) The new part is that I’m completely convinced I could be wrong.

This is such a liberating thing. I can present the best case for my idea. I can give every angle and rhetoric. But I’m learning to let it go as quickly as I have it (which is very fast). My instincts are great. But there’s 100% chance I could be wrong with every new idea. Read more…

Identifying Value

·May 10, 2013 ·Creativity Tips

I made a new friend with a tragic story. Well, it wasn’t tragic until I came into the picture.

He’s a young guy who volunteers for his church. He does all the creative stuff at his church – for free. It’s a small congregation and they have very limited staff. So he pours his heart into the church and is waiting for them to bring him on the team. He does a bit of freelance on the side to pay the bills, but knows ministry is where his heart lies. The tragic part is, they’ll probably never hire him. And he has no idea… I’ve seen this before.

The church’s next hire will be a children’s pastor. Then a worship leader. Then a … on down the line. They’ll never think to start paying my new friend, because they aren’t hurting in that area. They already have a great creative ministry, because this guy’s doing the job for free. They don’t realize what they have. And the sad thing is, they probably won’t realize what they have until they lose him. When he has to get a full time job to support his new wife or child, they’ll realize they had a good thing for free. Read more…

My Injured Shoulder/Pride

·May 8, 2013 ·Blog

It was 3am. The pain in my left shoulder was finally reaching intolerable levels. I tapped on my wife’s shoulder, trying to gently pull her from sleep. “Help me.”

She tried massage. We tried Advil. We tried a sleeping pill. Finally we decided on the Emergency Room.

She drove me there. We signed in. We were seen immediately. I threw up three times – from pain – before the doctor arrived. We took X-rays, two EKGs, and some blood samples. It turns out I probably had a torn rotator cuff.

But the doctor came back after each test with concern in his face. Your EKG makes it look like you had a minor heart attack. The blood results came back negative on the heart attack, but those yielded their own concerns: diabetes, massive infection, a host of things. Read more…

Artists vs. Everyone Else

·May 6, 2013 ·Inspiration Station

If you’ve been an artist for any amount of time you’ve probably heard this phrase: “I don’t necessarily know what direction we should go with, but I’ll know it when I see it. I can always tell if something looks good.” And they say it with such a smug expression as if their skill of identifying good things were a special talent – unique to them.

But that isn’t a special skill. Everyone knows what’s good when they see it. Everyone knows what they like. That’s no special thing.

But so very few people realize why they like something or why they don’t like something. That’s what can be so frustrating for artists. You’ll hear things like: “We need to do this over. I don’t know what’s wrong with it I just don’t like it.” So frustrating, right? Read more…

Why I Love My Boss

·May 3, 2013 ·Teamwork

No, this is not a plea for a raise. No, my job isn’t in jeopardy and I’m not buttering him up. I really love my boss, Rob Thomas (neither the Matchbox 20 frontman nor the creator of Veronica Mars). In fact, I hope he doesn’t read this.

The reason I love my boss is because I love working for him. To be honest, I’m not the easiest guy to manage. I act on my instincts 90% of the time, and that translates to obsessive and crazy swings of both ideas and moods. But he manages. We’ve already had a couple chats where he seeks to understand me and vice versa. Read more…

Page 1 of 52 1 2 3 4 5 6 … 52 Next »