Agony Uncle: how do I face the blank page?

From the early days of the Tel Aviv internet scene to over 20 years of an international career split between strategy, digital, and brand building, Uri Baruchin has a wealth of experience. Having led cross-functional teams and frequently worked with blue-chip clients as well as boutique brands and start-ups, Uri’s expertise lies in creative strategy, creative process, and brand strategy development.

Bringing creative professional development courses to strategists, clients, and creatives has been a passion, quest, and obsession for him. Uri is now on the roster of D&AD Masterclass trainers, and hosts his very own strategic thinking workshop in London, Think, Plan, Act: How to be Strategic.

As part of the Agony Uncle series, Uri takes on questions from the community and gives advice on how to improve creative thinking, use creative problem-solving tactics, and strategic planning skills to tackle everyday problems.
 

Research. No! Wait! It works. You see, being creative is easy and fun, but creating is hard and scary. It’s the cause of much pain to creative people everywhere.

The problem is that work isn’t fun, and fear isn’t inspiring. So a blank page can feel as attractive as having to clean the toilet while being scrutinised by a reality TV judging panel.

What you need is to fool your brain into believing this isn’t work. Distract it from the fear. Any form of immersion or exploration is helpful because it’s going to engage you with the subject, raise your confidence, and ask for very little. It’s a step away from avoiding work, only instead of surfing Instagram you surf Google. It isn’t intimidating, because you’re not expected to create. You’re just collating, reading, exploring, pondering. Before you know it, you’ll start connecting thoughts, making notes, scribbling, having ideas. You’ll transition into creating without noticing.

If you get tired — intermittently switch between research and something fun, as long as the fun is also inspiring and time restricted. Then back to exploration. Before you know it, chaos and structure start mixing, and the magic happens. Because that’s how meaningful work is born.

Let’s start with the good news: careers don’t work that way anymore. You don’t choose a career like you were selecting a holiday from a stack of brochures.

First job disappointment is unavoidable. Competition is fierce, so you work long and hard only to end up in a low-paid role with no security, containing little of what made it attractive in the first place, in a system that most days feels like a pyramid scheme.

It’s a popular gripe that young people ‘nowadays’ are self-interested and fickle. However, they are simply adapting to the disappearing stability in the job market.

In this world, my advice is to think of shaping your career as a creative process. Your career will emerge from your work. The most strategic thing you can do when you don’t love your first job is to use it on your journey to a job you do love. Knowing what you don’t love about your first job is highly useful. You can strike that off the list. Now identify the experiences and skills you can take from it that would help you take another step towards something you believe you want. That too will change, and that’s okay.

If you want to learn new creative skills, simplify brand strategy, apply strategic thinking to creative briefs, design challenge, or business problem, join Uri’s one-day creative strategic thinking workshop, Think, Plan, Act: How to be Strategic.