Make brilliant work : lesson on creativity, innovation, and success / Rod Judkins

Includes acknowledgements and bibliographical references.

Introduction -- Adopt a gladiator mindset -- Think like a guerrilla - lessons in counterinsurgency -- Enjoy the lows as much as the highs -- Transform ordinary into extraordinary -- Become an addict -- Turn insults into result -- Acting 'as if' -- 'You have to be odd to be number one' -- The power of outsider thinking -- Look closer. See deeper. Achieve more -- Like something everyone else hates -- Be the first to the future -- Hyperfocus in a world of interreption -- Ha + ha = aha -- Generate opportuniities -- Throw away the map. Follow a compass -- Be a creativity magnet -- Don't master your craft, be an apprentice forever -- Do the wrong thing in the right place -- Three ways you'll benefit from transparency -- Be an expert, not a restrictor -- Overcome resistance -- Set your sights too high -- Create friction -- Think outwards, not inwards -- Be exceptionally average -- Grow your strength from your weakness -- Follow Picasso's advice on how to build a creative career -- Transform a scar into gold -- Be a design hacker -- Make the future now -- It's not what you look at - it's what you see -- Give your work personality - your personality -- What you hate helps you understand what you love -- Slash at your work - before someone else does -- Make the impossible possible -- Expand your role -- How to make decisions more decisively -- Discover what makes you flow -- Help people to help you -- How to work faster and smarter - stretch yourself -- Are you crazy enough? -- Build your wings as you fall -- When your projects is finished, your work begins -- Action leads to enthusiasm, and then inspiration -- Become a fixer -- Which class of person are you? -- Construct>deconstruct>reconstruct -- A brilliant process creates brilliant work -- Find the strongest moves -- Be a big-picture thinker and a details thinker -- Negative experience=positive result -- An idea is an engine -- Four ways to overcome creative block -- Disrupt or be disrupted -- Being the best you -- Boost your creative confidence -- Escape the mediocrity trap -- Control your ego, or it'll control you -- Design your life -- Turn a 'no' into a 'yes' -- Sell yourself without selling out -- Put what is in your mind into the world -- Four ways to create 'stickiness' -- Don't join the navy, be a pirate -- Transform the insignificance into the significant -- 'The most personal is the most creative' -- Don't be controlled by others -- If you don't know what to do, use the six W's -- Think strategically, act tactically -- To be understood, speak directly -- How to be more productive -- Break free from yourself -- Use your strengths -- Become a fire starter -- Overcome fear of failure -- Explore broadly -- Adopt a new perspective -- Make a breakthrough -- Do the thing you ought not to do -- Acknowledgements -- Bibliography and references

Make Brilliant Work is an inspiring guide to unlocking your creative potential, showing you the methods and techniques that will transform your efforts and help you achieve your best ever work.

You don’t have to be brilliant to produce brilliant work. Many of the characters you will meet in this book failed at school, lacked natural talent, were not especially gifted or were repeatedly sacked. But their methods produced brilliant work – and they will work for you, too. Make Brilliant Work is the essential book from Rod Judkins, author of the international bestseller The Art of Creative Thinking.

Whatever your creative endeavour, you might find it hard to produce something significant and important. The real-life heroes in this book will show you how to make the transformation from ordinary to extraordinary. From Frida Kahlo to Steve Jobs, and star architect Zaha Hadid: the figures in Make Brilliant Work will show you how to think for yourself, take risks and persevere to create brilliant work.