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As creative, curious, imaginative people, let's all seek the greatest value of our actions ... 

Stephen Hawking recently gave an interview in which he said that "There is no heaven or afterlife ... that is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark." He was then asked, in the absence of heaven, how people could best spend their lives. His answer was simple: "We should seek the greatest value of our action".

In one phrase, Hawking overcomes not just centuries of superstition, but centuries of social expectation, convention and prejudice. He tells us to care less about what others think, and more about what we can achieve. And he tells us to focus on the long-term: not the greatest fame or greatest fashion but the greatest value for our lives. 

But if his mantra is simple, it's also challenging. How are we to judge value? How long term should we be thinking? And who are we hoping to benefit?

These are difficult questions. But they're the right ones: they're the questions that every project — every person — should be asking, and they are, perhaps, a key to a more fulfilling life. We make a thousand conscious or unconscious judgements every day: how much will this cost? How much can I charge? How fun will this be? And for whom? Hawking's philosophy cuts through this: how can I create the greatest value from the actions that I take?

It's an acknowledgement, too, of the journey: we are always seeking, never there. I will never write the perfect movie. You may never run the perfect business, or invent the perfect green device. There's a generosity of spirit, an implicit acknowledgement that we all — often usefully — screw up. But as creative, curious, imaginative people, let's all seek the greatest value of our actions. And then we'll have no cause to fear the dark.

Jonathan Wakeham is a London based screenwriter. He is a co-founder of the British Independent Film Awards and the London Comedy Film Festival. You can find him on Twitter @jonathanwak

CCC11 is proud to bring you an exclusive guest blog from award-winning reality TV star teacher, author & speaker Phil Beadle whose forthcoming book Dancing About Architecture - A little Book of Creativity is making waves on twitter as we speak and will be reviewed by our moderator Kwela Hermanns 

In the countdown to CCC11 on June 7 we will publish daily blogs with speakers' news and guest writers on creative business topics

Follow us for updates:  @CCC11_   @PhilBeadle  @KwelaHermanns

If Money Were No Object ... When Leonard Cohen was asked what he would give Bob Dylan for his 60^th birthday if money were no object, he replied, “A full ball of string and the whole nine yards.” I was disappointed with his response, but intrigued all the same. What did he mean by this? (Bob Dylan, in case you have not heard of him, is a folk singer who written the odd passable lyric. Cohen is no slouch in a similar field).

Cohen’s phrase has hung around in the air for me in the decade since he offered it up as a present. My reading of it is that we - all of us, the creatives, those of us who are, and who create, the memes that alter the canon of culture – are desperate in our lifelong search to create, and then to reorganize, chaos; to make pretty and ugly new patterns, to change the cultural wallpaper - but that we have to work within unpleasant timeframes. Cohen wanted to give Dylan the thing that the creative most craves: time.

Sadly, for most of us time is an enemy: there’s always washing to be done. And so we work within its constraints, all the while cursing its many tyrannies, unaware that it is actually those very constraints themselves that lead us, kicking and against our will, to being at our most creative.

The poet, Simon Armitage, sets himself tasks he can’t possibly do; paints himself into boxes and sets himself the task of writing his way out. A poem about Batman and Robin? Examining angsty, teenage, self-righteousness? Ten syllables per line? Twenty-four lines? Each line ending in a half rhyme of the word: “order”? Yeh. Let’s go. Deliberately placing himself within constricting handcuffs and then seeing if he could get out alive, clutching meaning, is one of the reasons that he has become the key modern technician of his centuries old form, and leads one to wonder if ‘artist as escapologist’ is a reasonable summation of what creative people do.

There is much that can be learned from a similar approach to the problems we are asked to solve, and many ways of applying them. My book Dancing About Architecture, which is an examination of how to employ creativity within education came from just such a process. A book of less than twenty thousand words? Applying the tenets of surrealism to education? Featuring comic sketches about Bryan Ferry’s dancing, and extracts from the Book of Revelation? It can’t be done. Let’s do it.

So, next time you are spitting at time, forget about the possibility of ever having the biggest blank piece of paper you’ll ever have and a full set of felt pens of every conceivable colour. Limit yourself to just two thirds of the ball of string and only twelve millimeters. Your work will be all the better for it.

Phil Beadle is an international speaker, Guardian Columnist and author of the book Dancing About Architecture: A Little Book of Creativity

http://www.philbeadle.com

A new blog calls for celebration. At Creative Company Conference we adore Creativity in all its colours and demonstrate clearly how companies can achieve more through organising creativity efficiently. We warmly invite you to meet us on June 7 for the 2011 edition of our annual CCC conference. Close to about 50 innovation experts,  professional trainers and international speakers from three continents will mingle with up to 300 + delegates to draw the new landscape of Creative Value Networks and Creative Entrepreneurship.

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