This was supposed to be my epic post. A crisp, wow description of my method that would make everything clear in retrospect and especially forward. Which is why I could not write it for two weeks now.

First I was sick. Then I had the dog over. And then I just couldn’t and gave way to a decluttering challenge. I went through drawers of kitchen gadgets, boxes of makeup and some of my closet.

At least I was practicing what I preach. I always say circulate the energy when stuck. And when all else fails, go for a nap. I did that, too. When I woke up, I decided that I was going to write anyway, epic or not. And just like that, I was unstuck. Epic enough.

It’s been like that, lately. Transition after transition. At times like these, I go for the comfort of routine. Wake up, do the morning pages, meditate, get on the mat at least for a bit, breakfast with youtube, then work.

It structures the day. I got that part right, at least. The rest is yet undecided and I may break for a Netflix quickie in the process, but for now, we’re on track. And I cling on to that like a mofo.

All that’s needed beyond that is some brilliant ideas and some jaw dropping craft. Oh, wait, all those are clear as day.

Where do you get your ideas? From your head, says Neil Gaiman.

How do you write the most (and best?) children (and that’s just an example) books in the world? You wake up, you sit down and write for four hours everyday. As did Roald Dahl.

How do you come up with a joke? You sit down at your desk, and stare at the wall with a yellow pad and a ballpoint pen in hand. Says Jerry Seinfeld.

If looks like sitting is the mother of all skills. So I sit, too, waiting for some magic. Do I have anything at all? Right now, it really feels like I have nothing. Will I ever? That’s unclear, as well.

All I feel is my back slouching against the couch, and my shoulders misaligned and waving for attention. So I straighten up and take one breath. Is this boredom? If it is, let me get interested in the silvery green of my potted aloe.

I have just planted a whole new generation of baby aloes and am giving them out. I’d give you one if we were neighbours. But I can name one after you if you want.

While we’re sitting here, I wanted to tell you how I got scammed online. It’s the most ridiculous thing. I saw this ad on Facebook for a Birkenstock summer sale.

Everything was 23 Euros, and I was like a kid at the lollypop stand. I must have licked those pictures for almost half an hour before I chose five models. I had that gut feeling as I put the card number in, but ignored it and went ahead.

Later that night, as I was tapping away the day, accepting myself greedy and all (no, I did not need five pairs of sandals, so why did I order them), the lightbulb when on in my head. And I knew. Called the bank, blocked the card, etc.

And that’s when all the cracks in the lollypop stand pulled into focus. For one, it said 24 hour cancellation was fine but there was no button or email address for it.

I’m not even upset. I might get the money back. I’m sure as hell there aren’t any Birkenstocks in the mail for me, all the way from Singapore. But what a dupe!

All this time, I had been singing Macarena in my mind.

No I wasn’t. I was sitting with you, getting unstuck. The epic post is ready when it’s ready. The getting there, now, that’s epic.

I’m probably going to spend some time on a biscuit website. I love it. And on this new Japanese cooking channel on Youtube. It simmers my ideas like nothing else. Other than sitting, of course.

You know, this has a name. I call it word doodling. Some great things may come off it at times.

That’s when I want to have my legal pad and ballpoint pen ready. Or a voice recorder. Or something that does both. Like this new app I found, who does just that. It transcribes all my voice doodles and then I pick and choose from there. That’s my method, by the way. We talk about your idea, and then I pick, choose, structure and flesh out. All with your words or from the unseen iceberg of your work.

I had 22 minutes of recordings with Vivienne Westwood to go through when I wrote about our brief encounter at the Financial Times Festival. It must have taken me an hour to transcribe and mine the ideas for my post. I wish I had descript.com then. Oh, well.

Name your best actor. What do you go for? King of the jungle Christian Bale types? Big bear action figures like Chris Hemsworth (think Thor)? Or comedian monkeys: the Seinfelds out there?

The division, by the way, is not mine. Lorne Michaels, the creator of Saturday Night Live, spelled it out in an episode of Comedians in cars getting coffee. (I love Jerry Seinfeld the thinker, but that you know by now.)

I have to say these days I’m adding one more to Lorne’s list. The creatives. Who would that be in the zoo? The dolphins, maybe?

In real life, that’s Ethan Hawke. Of whom I have always been, let’s say, a composed fan. I never went overboard with the Sunset trilogy and there’s only so much I can say about Great Expectations.

But I just spent one hour listening to him on a New York Times Facebook live and when did it all flow by? And why did it end?

The guy is a spilling slot machine of quotes, stories of how Laurence Olivier and Marlon Brando landed on greatness their so different ways (one learned lines and rehearsed the actions ad infinitum, the other was all about spontaneity) and how Macbeth and his wife were into this happy marriage. But guess what, she said “kill this guy, we’ll have it so much better” etc.

The man is positively flamboyant. And has three movies out this summer, of which I am promoting none, but will probably see all.

But here’s what I love about him beyond the spirit, and the culture, and the presence. It’s how he picks his work avenues and cultivates them with a designer mind.

Yes, he is an artist. And yes, he is an intellectual. And he is a creator. A writer, a director etc. But it all springs from his designer mind. Or so it looks from the output, at least. We never spoke. Yet.

How can you tell someone is a designer if they never make clothes or iPhones and cars? Well, you look for the principles of design at work.

What are the fundamentally important things?

Does the creator see things as systems? See them all come together?

Is the result both beautiful and simple?

Does it fulfil the purpose?

Everything gets stripped through these lenses. And it’s all done in a string of choices. Design is about making choices. What goes in matters. As does what doesn’t.

Any object you use is a work of design. You don’t really acknowledge it as such until execution goes beyond the mark of really good into exquisite, with a message printed on ribbon: “what the artist meant.”

So I think Ethan Hawke has the mind of a designer. He designs vehicles for whatever goes into his head to live into the world and run with the banner of his message.

One of his films this summer is a biopic. Some unknown yet great country singer-songwriter. Here’s a juicy bite of a designer mind at work.

“You know what biopics are like? You like Johnny Cash, right? Well, here’s a few of his main life moments edited to his main songs.”

(I am paraphrasing all over, but that’s the gist of it). “There’s a get-discovered scene, an ego-takes-over scene, a drugs-run-the-show-scene and an I-have-to-get-clean scene etc.” With one exception: Raging bull. That movie lives beyond the life of Jake LaMotta. Hawks says. And I agree.

And then Hawke went on and made a movie without any of those scenes in it. It went to Sundance.

Because a biopic should not be the story of the guy’s life. It should be a vehicle of the guy’s message, distilled from life facts. Whatever he was out there living, that calls to a distinct group of people called the audience.

Your copy should not be about your business. It should be about what it does for those you serve. Principles of design apply here too. Keep it to a minimum and keep the magic.

I heard one designer say it’s a fantastic journey to go there every time. Tell me about it.

I started this blankly staring into the computer screen, determined not to budge until something came out of it.

And frankly, when I started out on my own, four years ago, I had no idea where I was going. I’d love to make up a story about how I always knew I’d be a copywriter and strategist one day. Nope.

All I knew was that I was out of the corporate bubble and that I’d never work for a day in my life. I was going to do what I’d always postponed to do. The stuff you muse about on the midlife crisis wintery nights. I was hyped.

I also had money in my bank account for at least half a year of exploration and flight tickets lined up for a month of places I’d never been before, including my first surf spot ever.

And explore I did. I plunged into filming a documentary about my aikido buddies. That flexed my create-from-nothing-with-tools-you-never-used-before muscle. Also, the look-like-you-got-it-while-you-clearly-don’t. All in all, excellent practice.

As one of my favourite people to ever walk the earth said, “it was the brave thing to do. I was marching into the unknown armed with nothing.”

Then my first batch of would be clients emerged. Friends who needed websites or were launching products. And so the kitchen counter writing frenzy started.

It felt a bit off not to dress up in the morning and curse through traffic. I got used to it. (Now I have writing practice, meditation and yoga instead. Woo-hah!)

I was staying up tinkering home pages and making sense of their course materials. I’d been doing that in my corporate jobs for years, anyway. Now it was online.

So I got educated. I went to B-school, wrote with Laura Belgray, who also recommended Selena Soo, and charmed me into the Money Boot Camp (worth it). At her workshop I met my friend Monicka, who’s got this cool retreat for supergirls, and couldn’t shut up about the 90 Day Year.

I took the 90 Day Year, too. There’s life before and life after. But more on it some other time. I’ll just say all the odd bits and pieces of paper on my desk I used to make lists on are gone.

Then Amy Posner came along and opened the Copy Hackers era, where I actually learned the ropes. To the point where I can say in seconds if the messaging is off. Then where to look to fix it.

Looking back I remember the landmarks: first day out of the job. First client. First copywriting and strategy client. First course. First time I called myself a writer in public. In groups. To strangers and to people who knew me. First website. First serious breakdown. First client I never knew before.

And especially first time I called myself a positioning and messaging strategist for innovators and thought leaders.

This is not a your-heart-will-lead-you-home piece. Although it will. This is a jump-in piece.

If you’re struggling to voice out your choice from a sea of options out there, you have my utmost and complete compassion. I’ve had my guts massacred with the agony. (I had bills to pay so I kept going.)

But I know this: I can’t catch a wave from the shore.

So if your idea is not that clear yet and you only have half of an innovation or the embryo of a thought, get it in front of the people it’s for. It doesn’t have to be big. Work it. Test it. Get the right pair of eyes on it. I’ll reason with you for 20 minutes. It’s a start.

PS. The line in the title is from Bhagavad Gita. (I finally came down to reading it.) To me it’s a crisp way of saying you have a core. And you replicate it again and again, like a DNA. That’s your work. And while you’re alive, it never stops. Book.

Es Devlin doesn’t have clients. She only has collaborators. In fact, she banned the word from the room.

If you saw Abstract on Netflix, she’s episode #3. And if you haven’t, you’ve at least heard of or seen her work. She stages sets for U2, Adele, Beyonce and operas I will not pretend I know the names of (I have my Maria Callas on repeat moments as my neighbours will testify, but let’s not fake it here). She even did one for Miley Cyrus and set the art world into an eye-rolling contest.

Yes, I met her in London. Yes, it was the same Frieze Academy creative direction flavoured brain spa I wrote about here. And yes, I was having a blast. I even asked a question. Stay tuned till the end for my could-have-been moment of glory. It’s rich.

To take Es literally, when staging a show, “deliver on the anticipation and do not get in the way.” So let me not creatively dillute this, as she very specifically instructed not to.

She’s not for the “client” word, by the way, because it comes from the Latin for “to cling.” And who’s into clingy anyway? Not Es.

Here’s what she is into: analog. Very analog solutions. She’ll take a cube, fill it with actors and props and spin it on stage to see what happens. (A lot). She’ll take a huge cone and present it as THE set, have an opera singer deliver a whole aria in there, ear plugs on or else he’ll go deaf, sitting in a puddle of coke as cone is slippery and one must be protective of said singer. But the effect: pure joy. Worth the fights with the talent and the theatre management.

She’s not the first to say keep it simple, but she’s certainly produced the evidence: napkin sort of sketches for Adele’s show, and Miley’s, for that matter (a huge roll of tongue lined by clumsy strings of teeth). It’s train of thought for a story arc, looks crazy easy except it’s not. It’s all easy if you have the idea, and that, whoever’s done this will know, never is. (I am yet to meet a creator who doesn’t agonize over being dumped by whatever spirit whispers into their ear.)

What do you do to make it look so simple, though? For starters,

• develop ideas, come up with iterations in sequence, and when you think you’re there, have four more options. (Get dirty with collagey photoshops, you’ll get lucky.)
• have a bank of ideas, lying around in your lab, ready at a moment’s notice.
• learn from one medium and then jump with the loot into another.

And rely on words, on their etymology. Words, said Es quoting a poet friend I wish I knew the name of (Es, if you read this, would you drop a line, pretty please?) have a reliable muscularity. We lean on words and trust they will take our weight.

A nugget of wisdom for teams: stay true to oneself and to the collaboration. Ever noticed how everyone does the best job they can and it just chips away off your initial plan? Hold on tight to that consistency of idea.

When Es says it’s all immersion and story as we peek at her drawings for Beyonce, scattered lyrics on the page, it seems so obvious.

Execution is a whole different matter, I mumble to myself, thinking of my imaginary guittar solos with Whitesnake’s Sailing Ships on repeat, as I work some idea threads into taglines.

I gather my strength and ask about how we keep that instrument that does it all sharp, clean and in tune. (Because it is an instrument. To play the piano, the recipe says you need a piano, music sheets and a player. To come up with concepts, headlines, etc. what do you need? We’ll just leave it unnamed for now, the IT.)

What does Es Devlin do to stay sharp? I was so articulate in my head. I was Mulan leading troops into battle. Out loud I sounded like the village coward. Nevermind, after 15 seconds of deathly adrenaline, I sat down. Back into my comfortable anonymity, on my mind sofa, I casually nodded in agreement to Es’s generous reply: puke and do it anyway. Listen. Do not stop people from their ideas, if only not to bore yourself out of your mind.

That evening I went into a pub and had a beer on my own (personal record!) as I waited for my friend. Nobody came to talk to me, I must have looked intimidating. I guess when I shut up, Mulan takes over. It’s when I talk it gets problematic. Luckily, other than Es Devlin, very few people know it.