Everyday Creative is a must read for anyone who has more to give at work yet struggles to liberate their creativity. Mykel Dixon truly cares about his readers, translating the energy and excitement he generates on stages the world over into an infectious and inspiring read.
Layne Beachley AO, 7-Time World Champion Surfer.
Modern Magician, enlightened speaker, solar human being, Mykel Dixon is translating his subtle and extraordinary work in this much needed recovery book. With a bit of fear and hopefully great excitement, dive into this guide to find again the amazing, creative, powerful human being in you. A must read for any leader in this time of deep change!
Eglantine Etiemble, Executive General
Manager Digital, DuluxGroup
Everyday Creative is brazenly heretical; a poetic affront to the business world — which is exactly what we need right now. Like a best-friend-in-a-book, you’ll (re)discover how to tap into the creativity and courage you’ve always had. Everyone needs this book — buy it for your bedside, bathroom and boardroom!
Dr Jason Fox, wizard and best-selling author of
How to Lead a Quest
Creativity is the defining currency of the 21st century. This book doesn’t just make a compelling case for embracing a more creative approach at work, it shows you how. An instant classic written by a guy who lives and breathes his message.
Jules Lund, founder, Tribe
Mykel has the unique ability to speak to both head and heart as he challenges us to bring our full creative potential to life. This book is a challenging, heart-warming, soul-searching read that help you excavate your unique flair and fulfil your creative destiny. Read if you dare!
Dean Summlar, Vice President Human
Resources - Pacific Zone, Schneider Electric
Everyday Creative should be mandatory reading for executives who want to not only stay ahead of the curve but help redefine what a curve is. A stirring read from an entrepreneur who has walked the walk, time and time again.
David Swan, Technology Editor, The Australian
First published in 2020 by John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd
42 McDougall St, Milton Qld 4064
Office also in Melbourne
© John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd 2020
The moral rights of the author have been asserted
ISBN: 978-0-730-38373-4
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the Australian Copyright Act 1968 (for example, a fair dealing for the purposes of study, research, criticism or review), no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, communicated or transmitted in any form or by any means without prior written permission. All inquiries should be made to the publisher at the address above.
Cover design and ‘Mykes’ images: © Oli Sansom
Internal images: © JungleOutThere/iStockphoto; © Ye Liew/Shutterstock; © 4x6/iStockphoto; © KeithBishop/Getty Images
Disclaimer
The material in this publication is of the nature of general comment only, and does not represent professional advice. It is not intended to provide specific guidance for particular circumstances and it should not be relied on as the basis for any decision to take action or not take action on any matter which it covers. Readers should obtain professional advice where appropriate, before making any such decision. To the maximum extent permitted by law, the author and publisher disclaim all responsibility and liability to any person, arising directly or indirectly from any person taking or not taking action based on the information in this publication.
Mykel Dixon is mad about shaking up the way we do business.
A musician by trade, gypsy by nature, fierce non-conformist and prolific anti-perfectionist, he leads a new wave of entrepreneurial savants showing forward-thinking companies how to stay relevant and radical in a 21st-Century Renaissance.
As an award-winning speaker, learning designer, event curator, musician and author, Mykel works with senior leaders and teams of Fortune 500 and ASX 200 companies to unlock breakthrough creativity. His clients include Google, YouTube, Janssen, Schneider Electric, Intuit, Bayer, IAG, CBA, Telstra, Origin, Lululemon, Laminex and Seek, amongst many others.
Mykel’s unconventional life (and career) experience, coupled with his daring vision for the future of work, make him the not-so-secret weapon for any company seeking an edge.
To find out more about Myke, enquire about speaking opportunities and follow his creative adventures online, head to www.mykeldixon.com
Given the state of world I questioned whether I should even write this book. Surely there are better ways for me to have a meaningful impact on the world? Maybe I’d do more for humanity by chaining myself to a tree, becoming a firefighter, or going into politics (yuk!). Surely the world doesn’t need another bloody book, least of all one by me.
But I couldn’t shake the idea. When I look at the world around us, and the challenges we now face as individuals and teams, as companies and nations — it seems like the only thing that will make a meaningful difference is our ability to think and act differently. To have the courage to think beyond what’s achievable, to dream beyond what’s reasonable, and build products, services and experiences that go beyond what is merely profitable.
In my current work as a keynote speaker, creative facilitator and experience designer, I am privileged to meet people from all walks of life. I get paid to engage in deep conversations about work, career and success. About the past, present and future. About money, meaning and magic. And what underpins it all is creativity.
Through all the wild activations and immersive experiences that I design and deliver, the answer to so many of the challenges that people speak about is the same. Creativity.
Time and time again I see the same thing: people who wholeheartedly believe they aren’t creative find a way back to their natural self-expression, then apply it in their work to cultivate staggering positive results.
I see people walk into the room tired, frustrated and complacent only to leave vibrant, energised and enthusiastic. People who have ‘seen it all before’ end up staying longer than they had planned. People who ‘don’t have much to say’ end up sharing more than they intended. People who are known for being serious end up laughing louder than they’ve laughed in months (sometimes years).
Creativity is the catalyst for professional success and personal fulfilment.
When I reflect on my own life, the one characteristic that has served me most, hands down, is creativity. It’s been the source of my security, satisfaction and sense of self. The essence of my competitive advantage and the instrument that led to any and all of my career success.
I began my career as a musician. From jazz to rock, covers to originals, empty hotel lobbies to main stages of music festivals — creativity was my currency. And yet beyond the obvious application of creativity in my songwriting or performances, it was in fact the key driver of every element of my business.
From sales and marketing to PR and event production. From conflict resolution to crisis management. It enabled me to think differently about every challenge or opportunity and respond in ways that were unique, distinct and original. It was, without a doubt, my secret weapon.
Like so many professional artists, at various points in my career I also flirted with casual jobs to supplement my income. I’ve been a nanny, a barista, a security guard, an industrial cleaner, a beach bar owner, a website builder, a copywriter, a call-centre operator and a community manager, to name a few.
And every slice of success or fulfilment that I experienced in each of those jobs was the direct result of creativity. Perhaps I had to be creative to get the position or to outperform my peers. To navigate the unknown or build meaningful (and profitable) relationships. To stand out or fit in. To lead the charge or toe the line.
Without creativity I’d be nothing, nowhere and no-one.
It’s through my own direct experience that I’ve come to believe creativity is the number one driver of personal fulfilment and professional success. And that its value in the emerging economic climate is accelerating every day.
Which is how we ended up here, having this conversation at this time. This book is my attempt to share what I’ve learned so that you might find a little of the same joy and opportunity that I have, while making the world a bit more magical and beautiful along the way.
Enjoy.
Over the last few years, I’ve asked hundreds of people to describe what comes to mind when they first hear the word ‘creativity’. The following are a small collection of real responses:
I then ask them to describe their relationship to creativity. Here are some of the responses:
And when I ask them to define their company’s relationship to creativity, I hear this:
So here we see the dysfunctional love triangle that exists between creativity, business and us.
We love it, we value it and we want more of it in our work and life. But we can’t seem to squeeze it into our overflowing task list. And despite our company calling for more innovative thinking, the systems and processes that hold the business together don’t seem to enable it.
This book sets out to solve this sticky situation. To give you simple tools to recover your innate creativity (if you feel you’ve lost it) or amplify it in your work and life (if it’s just a little blocked). To reaffirm for you that creativity is the foundation of finding and forming new value, which makes it the strongest driver of your competitive advantage and commercial success.
By the time we finish our conversation, it is my hope that you become more than just an Everyday Creative, but a loud, vocal advocate for its value in life and especially at work.
To try and define creativity is like trying to hold smoke. It’s as elusive as it is essential. As personal as it is universal. Which makes writing a book about it delightfully difficult.
The most widely accepted definition is that creativity is the process of combining two separate things to produce something original and useful. For the purpose of this book, let’s start there.
Our intention is to become masterful at remixing and repurposing the world around us into something useful, meaningful and beautiful.
And why ‘everyday’? As Annie Dillard famously said, ‘How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives’. It’s easy to get swept up in grandiose visions of big projects, global domination and org-wide transformation. But the biggest dreams and most beautiful working lives are built on the back of small, conscious and consistent actions.
But to be clear, we’re not necessarily talking about art here. We won’t be working on your watercolour technique or practising scales on the guitar (unless you choose to). Having said that, if during our discovery you decide that your future lies on Broadway, I’m all for it. But our focus is on developing a mindset that has:
The underlying essence of this book, however, is that you will come to define what creativity is for you. You’ll decide, through your own lived experience, what it is, why it matters and how best to use it.
By exploring the ideas and exercises presented in these pages, you’ll have the tools to rewrite your own relationship with creativity. You’ll start to redesign your life so that you can more easily access it. And begin to reimagine the infinite number of ways you can apply it in your work and career to tremendous effect.
Ready?
First, I want you to understand why this book is different, and why it’s dangerous …
Most books on creativity fail to demonstrate how fundamental it is for success and fulfilment in business and life. Nor do they express the urgency with which I believe all of us should be pursuing our own creative sensibilities.
They often leave readers with little more than a few tired platitudes, a bunch of boring anecdotes, and a handful of generic ‘brainstorming activities’ (that almost always involve coloured markers and post-it notes).
This book is different. It doesn’t attempt to reduce or generalise the creative process. Because creativity can’t be reduced to a generalised process. It’s subjective, idiosyncratic and infinite. And besides, despite my best efforts to help get you there …
finding your way back to your creativity is itself an act of creativity.
Your journey will be different from mine. Which makes it all the more meaningful. Therefore, it’s best to think about this book as a series of provocations, not prescriptions. There is no ‘one way’ to read it, and no ‘right outcome’ as a result of it. However you feel and whatever you create while reading, it’s entirely personal and reassuringly perfect.
Every exercise or example is taken from my own lived experience or the experiences of people I know and trust. People who found the courage to put a little more creativity into their life. A little more personality into their work. A little more humanity into their workplace.
You will have your own stories to tell. Your own roadblocks to overcome. Your own style of perceiving and processing the insights and inspiration you encounter. My recommendation is that you make the process of reading this book creative.
What does that mean?
It means scribble on the text, dog-ear the edges, tear out pages and make them into paper planes if you must. Get yourself a journal and rewrite passages you love in your own words. Draw pictures of the monsters that have been preventing you from creating. Write poems and songs and sonnets and short stories. Write business ideas, draw stage setups and design marketing plans as you go.
If you want this book to make a difference to you, you’ve got to make it work for you.
Just to reassure you, this book won’t tell you to quit your job. It doesn’t demand that you take up the violin or move to Berlin. But it will ask important things of you — things that might be uncomfortable to confront or inconvenient to apply. But that’s why you’re here, isn’t it? To step beyond the obvious and into the outrageous. To leave the confines of convention and fully embrace your rare, radical and resplendent self.1
So let’s get to the heart of it.
This book is a cold shower wake-up call for people who want a more meaningful experience at work.
It’s for the people who are tired of the uninspired, risk-averse, bureaucratic bullshit that is rife within most corporate workplaces. It’s for the courageous few who have a deep desire to put more play into their work, more joy into their job and more meaning into the relationships they share with their colleagues and clients.
This book can be the answer to the question we’ve all been asking about our work: ‘Is this it?’
When you commit to your creative recovery you become a powerful participant in a radical revolution. You’ll join a colourful cast of misfits and mavericks, rebels and renegades, outsiders and originals who are changing how and why we work.
Don’t for a second underestimate how important this is. We live in crazy times. The world is burning, the robots2 are coming and the challenges we face are too fast and fierce for us to follow the rules.
The world we live in used to value those who could ace the test. The ones who could memorise information, master instruction and make exact replicas of the original. Now we have machines for that. Machines that don’t need to be fed or need a break. Machines that don’t get upset or ask for time off. They just produce, consistently and efficiently.
What the world values now are those of us who can dream. Those who can reinterpret and reinvent the world in new and exciting ways. To survive and thrive in the emerging economic landscape you must:
There’s a reason why the tagline of this book is ‘a dangerous guide for making magic at work’.
Recovering your creativity is powerful. It changes you and the world around you. And change is unnerving. When I say ‘dangerous’ I mean it’s dangerous for anyone or anything that is too small for the person you will become.3
It’s dangerous for your boss (if you have one) because they will have to shift the way they see and value you. It’s dangerous for your colleagues (if you have them) because they will have to evolve themselves with you. It’s dangerous to your ego because you will have to think and act in ways that are outside what you know and have grown comfortable with.
But it’s worth it. You weren’t born to just tick boxes, await instruction or to simply follow the rules. None of us were. You were born to make things. To change things. To improve the world in all kinds of ways that only you can.
Now is the time. Now is your time: to remember, to realign with and to re-create who you are and how you’re going to bring more beauty, intimacy and humanity to the world around you.
The future of work will be written by those with the courage to think, feel, act and be more creative, every day.
And if you’re reading this, that means you.
Welcome to the ride of your life.
The irony of writing a book about liberating your creativity then giving you advice on how to read it is not lost on me. So please, read this in whatever way serves you. All in one sitting or one sentence a day. Begin at the end or flip to any random page and start there. If you’re ready to blaze away, by all means. Jump straight to Chapter 1 or anywhere you like.
Having said that, I have tried to write it in a linear way that builds on previous chapters. So reading from start to finish is preferable. And I really encourage you to do the exercises and activities as they’re designed — especially the ones that make you feel the most uncomfortable. The ones that take a lot of time. And the ones where the ROI is unclear to you.
Because that’s where the change is: in doing the things you wouldn’t normally do. Or the things you stopped doing long ago.
If something feels silly, pointless or insignificant, ask yourself: why? Try to decipher whether it’s something you can confidently step over, or whether it’s just another way for you to resist or avoid the very thing you came here for.
I want you to see this book as a sacred space of self-indulgence.
A lot of it you can do privately and quietly. No-one has to know. You won’t look foolish or be exposed. But there are plenty of activities that specifically ask you to learn out loud. To declare your aspirations before you have a plan for how to fulfil them. To raise your hand before you have a question. To take the lead even if (especially if) you have no idea where you’re leading us.
To get in the game.
Because that is where the magic happens. That is how you will speed up your creative recovery and begin to enjoy the limitless potential that comes from cultivating a creative life.
To make it easier, I’ve included ‘bonus points’ in every activity. This is how you can speed up your recovery. It might feel like a little too much to begin with. That’s fine. You can come back to it later, once you’ve got a bit more wind in your sails.
I’ve also built an online portal that is full of more info and inspo to assist in your transformation. There are videos and interviews, along with a collection of worksheets that expand on the ideas presented in here.
You can find that by heading to www.everydaycreatives.com and signing up to the VIP section by using the code IAMCREATIVE. You’ll gain lifetime access to all kinds of inspiring material.
And for the audiophiles, I’ve even created an audiobook that turns the format on its head. Being a musician by trade, I’ve called on a few of my friends, and together we’ve created an audiobook that feels more like an atmospheric 3D landscape, complete with soundtracks and effects, and real-life interviews with individuals featured in the book.
I want this book to leap up and out of these pages into your life. I want the ideas to become activated in your work and relationships. I want the potential of these paragraphs to be realised through you. I want you, like me, to become another instrument of change. Another vehicle for everyday creativity.
A smiling assassin finding magic in the mundane, putting extra into the ordinary, sautéing secrets into the special sauce.
Oooooh, I’m excited. Are you ready?
TIME TO PLAY
Cement Your intent
Alrighty then, let’s get right to it. Put all these glorious aspirations into action and cement your intent. In this game, integrity is everything. To make and sustain change, your word matters. I’m now going to ask you to commit to this process. To do all the exercises within as they’re designed and to hold yourself accountable for your own creative recovery.
It’s time to make and sign your Creative Contract.
You can write yours in this book (I’ve left you a few blank pages), or fill in the blanks and sign the contract I’ve outlined on the following page. Or better yet, you could find an old typewriter from a secondhand store, write up your own contract, in your own words, on a sheet of recycled paper, sign it, frame it and hang it above your desk.
You can do anything, as long as you do something. I’m inviting you to start on the good foot, set the tone for our time together and get creative in how you commit to your creativity.
Creative Contract
I, 
, am a natural born creative. There is no-one on the planet who has the expertise and experience that I have. I am a product of the infinite dance of choice and chance and it is my right and responsibility to bring all of my creative potential to my work, life and relationships.
I, 
, understand that I’ve been heavily influenced by a world that sought to make me into a 
. I understand that this process will kick my arse. It will demand that I confront long-held, limiting beliefs about who I am and what I’m capable of. I recognise that parts of my brain will 
much of this process. It will justify and rationalise not doing most of the exercises I am asked to complete.
But I commit to doing them anyway. All of them. Because I am 
.
I, 
, have also decided this program must be 
. If I’m going to finish it has to feel 
. So I also commit to celebrating by 
every time I complete a chapter, exercise or activity.
This is my time to shine, baby. Bring it on!
Signed 
Date 
BONUS POINTS
Done that? Excellent. Now I’m going to invite you to take this even further. To embody your intent by creating a threshold to cross.
Get some chalk and draw a line on the street outside your house. Or gather stones from the garden and arrange them in a line on your lawn. I’m asking you to create a ‘line in the sand’.
Once you’ve done that, stand in front of this line, take a few deep breaths and fully commit to this process. Then when you’re ready, step over that line and into the game we’re playing.
If you’re thinking, ‘Whatever, Myke. You lost me already’, might I remind you of the creative contract you just signed.1 In this game your word is everything. Integrity matters. And this is far from frivolous.
It’s an embodied expression of your intent. If you want to become an Everyday Creative you’ve got to move out of your head and into your hands and heart. You’ve got to bring your whole self to every opportunity. You’ve got to want to play.
This is a dance between you and your potential. If you can’t draw a chalk line on a road and step over it when no-one is watching, how on earth are you going to share that bold, brilliant idea when you find yourself in the lift with the boss?
Everything in this book is intentional. Every moment you have is an opportunity to flex your Everyday Creativity. To do things you wouldn’t normally do. Especially if they feel silly and inconsequential. It’s not your job to question or resist these activities (though you will). It’s your job to embrace and enjoy them. To make them your own. And for bonus points, to share them with others.
Still having trouble with the whole ‘line in the sand’ thing? Perhaps you’re on a plane or reading in a meeting room? Loving that perfectly legitimate excuse you’re hanging on to?
Here are your options:
