Become a World Expert

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by Brian Clegg

One of the best pieces of advice you can give anyone who wants to be more creative is ‘Do something completely different. Then come back to your problem refreshed.’

It’s easy advice, isn’t it? But for many of us, coming up with something completely different can be quite frustrating. Here’s one way to go about it – set yourself the challenge of becoming the world’s leading expert in something that’s nothing to do with your work. You have to achieve this in 2004.

Impossible? No, surprisingly easy – and it can be very entertaining and rewarding as well as providing creative stimulation.

Take my own example. My usual ‘do something different’ is to write popular science books, but I also run a choir and recently came across a piece of music by an obscure (and frankly not very good) Victorian composer called Caleb Simper. What intrigued me was that the publisher’s blurb on the back of the copy informed me that Simper’s music had sold over 5 million copies. That’s a lot in modern CD terms – in c1920 sheet music publishing it’s absolutely phenomenal. Yet here was a composer that none of my musical acquaintances had even heard of.

I checked the standard musical references – pretty well nothing. On the web, the main feature on Simper was an article effectively saying ‘who is this Simper guy?’ Although it’s not the sort of music I particularly like, it was enough to set me off on the trail of Simper. Having tracked down the only known copy of a biography of the man, I am well on the way to being the world expert on Caleb Simper (his biographer is sadly now dead). My own website entry on him - Who Is Caleb Simper - rapidly became the top Google entry on the subject.

This has all happened in a few weeks, and has taken up no more than about half a day of my time in total – but it has been fascinating for me, provides a regular five minutes of ‘do something completely different’ and really does leave a glow of pride at the thought of rapidly becoming the world’s Simper expert.

If I can do it, so can you. Find a nice, obscure little topic and have fun. It’s all in a good cause – your creativity.

Brian is a director of Creativity Unleashed Limited and author of a wide range of books from the creativity guide Creativity and Innovation for Managers to his latest bestselling popular science book, THE GOD EFFECT. This article first appeared in the Creativity Unleashed monthly update.