Jared Dees's Blog: The Latest from Jared Dees, page 36

A Vision is Discovered Over Time

“In my experience, creative people discover and realize their visions over time and through dedicated, protracted struggle.”

Ed Catmull, Creativity, Inc. 

Leaders may feel like they have to have it all figured out. Speakers and authors tend to write about vision as if it is something that comes through some sort of Divine revelation that is then passed down to others to convince them to follow you.

I can see how a lot of potential leaders and creative people might get frustrated by this advic...

Why Pixar Is So Successful

In Creativity, Inc., Ed Catmull explains why Pixar has been able to produce such massively successful animated films over the years. As an author, I wanted to see what I could learn from their success in my attempts to write better books.

Here are the three main ideas I found useful from Catmull’s book:

The movies always start out bad.

Catmull provides example after example of successful movie that started out with a lot of bad ideas. Some of them were so bad that the movie eventually became...

February 2018 Project Report

Welcome to my February 2018 Project Report. My goal with these monthly reports is to help other authors, entrepreneurs, leaders, or anyone else who wants to make an impact through their work. Each month I will share how I spent my time as an author and creative entrepreneur and the successes, failures, and lessons I learned along the way.

How I Spent My Time in February 2018

I track every minute of time I spend working on projects using an app called Toggl (here is why). Here is a list of the...

4 Little Speaking Tips with a Big Impact

I’m giving three presentations/panels this week at the Los Angeles Religious Education Congress. It made me think of the little tweaks to my approach that I’ve made over the years and the people that I’ve learned them from.

1. Don’t wear your name tag.

People know who you are. Your name is in their program book. They signed up to hear you talk. You don’t need to wear those large, obnoxious lanyards with your name on it.

via Pat Flynn

2. Write a customized introduction.

When people introduce y...

The Protesters at the Los Angeles Religious Education Congress

As the more than 12,000 youth and 18,000 adults walk into the Anaheim Convention Center for the Los Angeles Religious Education Congress each year, they must pass a man shouting in protest of the Catholic Church. He scolds those who pass by with insults so shocking that I often ask myself how it is even legal for him to be there.

A colleague pointed out on the way in that it was probably a good thing for the many teens to hear him. It encourages them to come up a good defense for their belief...

There is Always a Faster Way

Struggle.

Struggle.

Struggle.

Ready to give up.

Then . . . discover a faster way.

Accomplish the task with much less effort.

I was in a hurry yesterday.

I needed to get to Chicago to catch a flight to Los Angeles. I wanted to replace the car seat in our van with a bigger seat for my daughter while I was away. I checked traffic and there were multiple slow downs along the way.

“I can do this quickly,” I thought.

But the old seat was stuck. I pulled as hard as I could and it didn’t nudge. I yel...

The “Link Roundup” Email Newsletter

There is a lot of pressure for authors to be prolific creators for the purpose of marketing. They feel the need to blog all the time or churn out new content in order to earn attention.

A much more efficient approach, however, is to be a content curator and not just a creator.

This way you can spend your creative energy on long-term projects like books.

Being a curator saves time, keeps you connected with other creators, and provides a welcomed service to your audience.

Thursday and Friday, f...

Compartmentalize the Creative Process

I seem to fall into a trap as a writer again and again.

I sit down and try to cram multiple modes of creativity into one sitting. I sit and stare at a blank page trying to come up with ideas for what to write. Then, I jot down a quick outline or skip that step completely and start writing aimlessly.

Yet, I know that the most effective way to be prolific is to do each of these tasks separately.

Here is what I have learned about the creative process from successfully writing books and hundreds...

After Nine Years of Blogging, Here is the One Thing That Works Best

Today is my ninth blogging anniversary. On March 12, 2009 I published my first blog post using Blogger.com. You can find an archive of that post here.

In it I listed a collection of topics I planned to “blog” about. I threw out almost all of those ideas once I found out what really worked.

Like a lot of bloggers back then I just started writing things I thought were interesting and publishing them to the blog. I didn’t think much about who was reading and why they would read and share what I...

How C. S. Lewis Got the Idea for The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe

The Lion all began with a picture of a Faun carrying an umbrella and parcels in a snowy wood. This picture had been in my mind since I was about sixteen. Then one day, when I was about forty, I said to myself: ‘Let’s try to make a story about it.’

C. S. Lewis, “It All Began with a Picture” (Source: Wikipedia)

So, the story had its beginning in 1905, when Lewis was sixteen.

Later in 1939 a group of children came to stay in his home in the countryside near Oxford where he was a professor. It wa...