THE SECRETS TO SUCCESS

 Well, I guessed that might capture your attention. The trouble is success is relative. Would you rather be Jacob Rees-Mogg – rich, with a beautiful house and Rolls Royce or a League Two footballer for Exeter City (9th in the table) and dreaming of promotion. I know which I’d prefer.

But success can’t have ever come in such abundance as it has for Richard Osman the gameshow host, TV producer and writer.

As a writer he’s breaking all publishing records. So far “The Thursday Murder Club” is only the 2nd work of fiction this century to sell over a million copies. His second book “The Man who Died Twice” sold 114,202 in the first week, one of the fastest opening-week sales of a book ever. The film rights for the first book have been secured by Stephen Spielberg. Richard is the Lionel Messi, or the Beatles, of fiction. If he wrote a book called “The Ditchling Sieved Lettuce Incident” it would sell another million.

Why? 

That’s the question the late Richard Rowe who was Head of A&R (Singles) at Decca Records from the 1950s to the 1970s and who rejected the Beatles would be still asking if he were still alive. 

Because the point is this - as Ann Treneman witheringly wrote in the Times last week -  “The Thursday Murder Club” is not a very easy or rewarding read. Not so says great novelist Ian Rankin it’s 'so smart and funny. Deplorably good’. Kate Atkinson is equally vociferous in her praise. But the point is I agree with Ann Treneman. I’ve read the book and found it rather weak and lacking in focus, and characterisation. My 98-year-old mother-in-law, still a keen reader of writers like Sarah Dunant, was more damning – “disappointing” she sniffed.

So why?

Three things:

1. Brilliant marketing

2. Richard is a carefully created modest and clever TV star we all know and love. He’s a good guy. An intellectual George Clooney.

3. He has settled into, and now owns a piece of unoccupied territory in literature. Old people as heroes. Forget that “love island” Sally Rooney and others compete in writing about. The 3 million over-60s are not so much an island as a continent with more millions of children, grandchildren and great grandchildren who love them. How many Grandparents will get several copies of both books this Christmas? 

So well done Richard Osman. Several million pounds richer says you are right and that I am wrong in finding your first book a bit Enid Blytonish - “The Retirement Home Of Adventure.” It hasn’t certainly been a “pointless exercise”.

But how I want to write the Texas Chainsaw Massacre version of his books with mad Sister Martha, a series of gruesome murderers, poisoned food and the uncovering of a drug smuggling operation…” that may explain the huge number of visitors in fast cars” mused Inspector Dim. “We’re dealing with Geriatric Lines – it’s worse than County Lines.” 

Richard Osman has done for the world of literature what Richard Curtis has done with Love Actually and what films like Marigold Hotel and then, Mama Mia did for extrovert audiences. I may not like Richard’s books, but I love the effect they’re having. Whatever else they are nice books which seek to spread joy (and yes Enid Blyton in her day did just that too.)

Richard has sneaked into the role of National Treasure alongside Jamie Oliver, Stephen Fry, Judie Dench, Adele and others. It was about time we had someone like him spreading good.

I’m just so sorry I didn’t enjoy that first book more. 

DEJECTION, HOPE, TENTERHOOKS, DISBELIEF, ELATION

So we won a cricket match we’d seemed to be doomed to lose.

What on earth’s going on?  The recent Test Match was transformed from abject to spectacular and I can’t take such nail-biting drama.

Incidentally the real hero is the last man, the redoubtable Jack Leach whose 1 not out was the bravest feat of survival ever.

Me? I’m off to bed. Exhausted.

Do you think Brexit will be like this with the EU caving in and agreeing on no back-stop, no leaving fee and giving us a free trade deal and saying sorry for being so mean? It wouldn’t be more surprising than what happened in Yorkshire on Sunday.

CREATIVITY GETS VERY EASILY BLOCKED. BEWARE!

When it comes to creative thinking most of us get blocked by inner voices asking “what if?” or posing the question “just suppose x happens...” The fear of rejection looms larger than the anticipation of success and so long as it does we are driving our creativity with the handbrake on.

And here’s the hardest question of all that I once saw – “if whatever you decide to do next could not fail what would that be?”  The terrifying thing is you have things like “create world peace” and “end of all disease” to beat and then you wonder whether either of those might have an explosive impact on  population growth so terrible that the expression “be careful what you wish for” would come home to roost rather smugly. Creativity needs a bit of grit in the oyster to achieve really great results. Human beings handle perfection uneasily.

In fact most people are lacking in confidence when it comes to creative thinking. They think they are reasonably intelligent but weak at creativity. In self-assessment tests respondents scored themselves at 7/10 for intelligence but only at 4.5/10 for creativity. In removing the most obvious blocks we have to realise that our brain has a habit of lying to us. Yes inside our heads is a congenital fibber.

In research tests where people are asked to solve a problem involving moving a weight from position A to position B and the answer is to swing the weight on a rope pendulum (an obvious solution once seen) they will deny having had any help to get there despite the questioner brushing the rope and giving strong hints.

Yes, I’m sorry to say the creative muscle in our head tells great whoppers. It’s also a brilliant film editor cutting and editing our memory so our “honest” recollection of history is (how shall I put it?) especially favourable to us. We are heroes in our own memories. We are tolerant, kind and liberal. By the way if you want to find out what you really are deep down try the “Implicit Association Test” (implicit.harvard.edu/‎). You may be a little surprised.

Creativity is massively impeded if we meet a cynic. There are a variety of terrible expressions cynics have mastered which act like a right hook on our ability to think lucidly, imaginatively and come up with ideas:

 “Well, anyway…”, “in the meantime…”, “mind you…”, “let me think about it”… (that means “no” in plain English), “suppose for the sake of argument…”, “with the greatest respect”…, “that’s all very well but…”

Assumptions stifle creativity; assumptions that our ideas won’t meet approval, that the audience won’t laugh or assumptions that the worst will happen.  This also happens in institutionalised bureaucracies where the assumption exists that creativity is a bit flippant and “not for us.”

How to solve problems and make brilliant decisions. (Business Thinking Skills that really work) published by Pearson

THE MYSTERY OF WORK

Years ago I was walking through London and as I stared up at a skyscraper my companion asked “do you sometimes wonder what they all do in there all day?”

I ask the same question as I go through an airport early in the morning, removing my shoes and belt as I queue for security and seeing all these businesspeople rushing off to Euro-meetings.
Fast Company on Friday had a piece entitled “Why productive people have empty schedules” mostly dealing with Warren Buffett’s diary and his ability to keep it free and provide himself with time to think.

The article went on to explain that if we’re going to do the work that we want to do, we need to own our time because it’s limited:

• Time is highly limited: As humans, we're immature in our first decades, and declining in health in our last. 
• Time is uniquely limited: You can't bank, transfer, or recover time, unlike money. 
• Time is equitably limited: we can, on average, expect to live about 77 years. That expectation isn't equal with resources like money. 

So if you are creative and that’s where your greatest earning capacity and, more importantly, where your greatest contribution lies, spend your time feeding that urge and honing that skill.

Most of us are trying to redefine what work is – I, for instance, haven’t worked as such for years. I spend my time doing stuff I enjoy. But what I do not especially enjoy are old fashioned skyscraper offices.

I’m puzzled by the need to have such offices with partner desks, carpets and filing cabinets. Places of Victorian labour. Yet when I speculate about creative spaces and working from home, my godchildren, nearly all of them major successes and working 60 hour weeks, look at me as though I’m mad. The truth is they seem to like being punished by the tyranny of work and having a grey office in which to lament the amount they have to do.

We are obsessed by work and by jobs. We seem to believe the Chinese or Indians or Americans or Germans work harder than us. They don’t. And the jobs most of them are doing are old fashioned.

We are spending too little time thinking about that and the fact that around 2/3 of today’s schoolchildren will end up doing jobs that haven’t been invented yet.

So just ask yourself the question “what do I really do all day?” and “why?”

www.colourfulthinkers.com

SPORT DOESN'T

Too rich, too greedy and mostly not good enough. Especially football – this is the scene of the next credit crunch disaster. Watch a spectacular salary slide there.

And what a terrible year in prospect for sponsorship. But support your local side and avoid the feet-of-capitalist-clay Premier Division giants. Example in Germany is village side league leaders Hoffenheim.

Time to learn that money alone doesn’t make winners.

Tomorrow - 'The Age Sandwich'

http://www.richardhall.biz/