Oct 6, 2026 · 30 min · 9 segments
What do you do when you're up against a wall and you have to be creative? Phil Cooke https://philcooke.com offers 10 tips to help you stay creative when the pressure's on…
We just have to take a responsibility and understand how important deadlines can be, and make a commitment to stick to them.
The fact is, when you can't make deadlines, you've lost the respect of your boss, you've let down your coworkers, you've let down the client.
Um, you're not gonna get a lot of respect from a client who sees you as someone who can't deliver when he or she needs it the most.
So start by just making a decision in your own professional life that deadlines matter, I'm going to do it, and I'm going to keep them.
It says enormous amount about your professionalism if you become known as a person who can always bring the project in on time and on budget.
Now, you know, I could do a whole episode on this, but the truth is, many creative people, and some of you, m- you know, listening to me right now, have desks that look like a nightmare.
And, and a lot of you will defend it by saying, "You know what? This, I'm just creative.
This is the way I, I'm organized." But the fact is, over and over, I see creative people struggle to find that newspaper clipping they need, struggle to find that note they wrote a couple weeks ago, struggle to find that book they w- need to reference, because they're just so incredibly unorganized.
So s- one of the best things you could do is start developing a system for capturing ideas, processing them, putting them down in such a way that you have access to them when you need them the most.
He can go back and find an idea or a thought he had 10, 15 or more years ago that he needs to put into a new book, and it's just incredibly organized.
The, the way I write ideas down, the way I put them into my, my phone, into my computer, catalog them, organize them, at least I make an effort.
Uh, and, and the truth is, if you haven't discovered it yet, you'll find out that creative ideas are the most fragile things in the world.
If you don't write them down, if you can't capture them in some capacity, you will fail.
We just have to take a responsibility and understand how important deadlines can be, and make a commitment to stick to them.
The fact is, when you can't make deadlines, you've lost the respect of your boss, you've let down your coworkers, you've let down the client.
Um, you're not gonna get a lot of respect from a client who sees you as someone who can't deliver when he or she needs it the most.
So start by just making a decision in your own professional life that deadlines matter, I'm going to do it, and I'm going to keep them.
It says enormous amount about your professionalism if you become known as a person who can always bring the project in on time and on budget.
Now, you know, I could do a whole episode on this, but the truth is, many creative people, and some of you, m- you know, listening to me right now, have desks that look like a nightmare.
And, and a lot of you will defend it by saying, "You know what? This, I'm just creative.
This is the way I, I'm organized." But the fact is, over and over, I see creative people struggle to find that newspaper clipping they need, struggle to find that note they wrote a couple weeks ago, struggle to find that book they w- need to reference, because they're just so incredibly unorganized.
So s- one of the best things you could do is start developing a system for capturing ideas, processing them, putting them down in such a way that you have access to them when you need them the most.
He can go back and find an idea or a thought he had 10, 15 or more years ago that he needs to put into a new book, and it's just incredibly organized.
The, the way I write ideas down, the way I put them into my, my phone, into my computer, catalog them, organize them, at least I make an effort.
Uh, and, and the truth is, if you haven't discovered it yet, you'll find out that creative ideas are the most fragile things in the world.
If you don't write them down, if you can't capture them in some capacity, you will fail.
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