Eleven things I couldn’t have written my book without..

The shoffice – note heating, and flask of Hot Lava Java

One of the things I learned the hard way while writing Creative Disruption was that writing a business book is more of of a physical and organisational process than a purely intellectual and creative one.

You need to capture an enormous amount of information (but not too much) and you need to knit it all together into (in my case) a single 70,000 word document. To do this – you need tools, and they have to work.

If you have the luxury of just sitting down at the same desk on the same machine to write everyday, things can be relatively simple. But, I had to do all of this while on the move – working on a number of different laptops and desktops, Mac and PCs. So, I needed tools that would work across different platforms, and offline (I spend a lot of time on trains).
Above all, for someone like myself who has an infinite ability for displacement activity, I needed things that just worked, and that I couldn’t spend hours ‘optimising’.

To call this ‘a system’ would imply far too much organisation; and I have no proof that the result of all of this is a decent book – but this is what I relied on to get the manuscript finished – and that was enough of a milestone for me.

1. Evernote

I needed somewhere – or something – to put all my research into, and after dabbling with a host of different Mac apps, such as DevonThink but that offered too much functionality, and too little portability. Why did Evernote work so well for me?

- Online and offline access
- Invisible syncing
- Tagging – allowed for instant organisation rather than constantly having to set up ‘folders’
- Brilliant web capture (capturing source URL at the same time, which is vital)

2. Dropbox

Perhaps the single greatest productivity tool I have ever had. Effortlessly (and I mean that) syncs folders between different machines – as well as offering web based storage. This was brilliant for writing, because it meant it could crank up any machine and have access to whatever I was working on. It also stopped me having to worry about back-ups, and losing USB sticks (although I did use and lose a few along the way).

In their way, I think that Evernote and Dropbox are the future of software: a seamless mix of online and offline, and accessible from any platform. Free at first, but with payment once you reach a certain level of usage (I have subscribed to both, happily).

3. MS Word

Boring, I know. But when it comes to writing a great big doc, and having to hop between Macs and PCs there’s really no option. In the early phases, when I was just on a Mac I tried using Scrivener, but it was just a bit too clever for me – and frankly I could have spent all year just tinkering with it. Google Docs proved handy for the odd scrap, but isn’t really up to the job, and OpenOffice is just way too clunky. In the end I used about five different versions of Word across Mac and PC, but wrote most on 2007 on the PC. I spent some time with the 2010 beta on the PC, it looks great. I have to admit this made me re-think some of my earlier ‘MS Office is going to be completely replaced by Google Apps thoughts’ (we can go into that another time).

4. HP Compaq 2510p

A standard slab of HP grey notebook, but it’s very light, and has a built in SIM, allowing me to get online anywhere (vital for syncing with Evernote and Dropbox on the move). I love my Macs, but this was more portable and connected, so it won out. And, for the day to day grunt of cranking out text, this did the job perfectly well. I wrote most of the book on this, either on the move, or sitting in my shed with it connected to an external monitor and keyboard.

The growth of cloud-based solutions has made using a PC much more tolerable; but I have to admit that by the end, I was switching back to my Mac when on the move as the twin PC curses of Blue screens of death and sloooooow boot-up times started to cripple productivity.

5. Wikipedia

Boring I know, but perhaps the single biggest change since I last did any significant professional writing (a decade ago) has been the arrival of Wikipedia.

Ironically, one of the case histories in my book is Britannica – and how they have managed to turn the business around (you’ll have to read it!). I have a huge amount of resepect for what they achieved in the face of massive structural change. But, Wikipedia has taken research into a whole new dimension: particularly when you’re looking at the relatively recent history of technology businesses. You want a list of all of IBM or Cisco’s acquisitions? You got it.

I don’t trust it as a single source, rather as an aggregator of sources and a ‘nudger in the right direction’ – and as such, it is peerless.

6. Google desktop

The other tool that has made PC’s more tolerable, by introducing ‘Spotlight’-like search across your hard drive. Despite backing up with Dropbox, at one point I thought I had lost 3,000 words that had taken ages to write (I think I’d accidentally overwritten it). Google Desktop found a cached version somewhere in the depths of my PC – and for that I will be eternally grateful.

7. Business Week/ HBR/ WSJ/ FT

The value of professional content. I happily subscribed to the HBR and WSJ and found them invaluable. Business Week’s archive – especially its reporting on Kodak, was a fantastic resource; and the FT (owned by Pearson – who are publishing my book) was also pivotal. At a later date, I’ll put a bibliography up on here. I suspect it will feature 20 pieces from one of these titles for every blog post I refer to.

8. Powerpoint – for outlining

I don’t like writing outlines in Word, it’s just too, too ugly. So I spent a long time looking for something like OmniOutliner for the PC, or a web based system. Then I had a sudden ‘Doh!’ moment, and just started to use Powerpoint with the pages set to portrait; and using a different page for each section. Worked a treat.

9. Delonghi Gas Heater

I spent much of the Christmas break and many evenings sitting in our shed (see the pic above for my ‘sh-office’). It was freezing. Salvation came in the form of a good old fashioned DeLonghi Gas heater from Argos. Being able to type without gloves and a coat on was a major breakthrough. However, the day when I accidentally set fire to my coat on the gas heater wasn’t so great.

10 Taylor’s Hot Lava Java

Forget braintraining, you need good coffee to get the synapses working first thing in the morning, and to keep you going through those afternoon lulls and late nights. The clever people at Taylors decided to do the caffeine equivalent of turning the volume up to 11, by grading their coffee strength ’6′ one more than the standard maximum level of 5. Did the job for me.

11. Loudon Wainwright

I tried writing in silence but my mind wandered. And I tried writing to classical music, but kept thinking: ‘Oh, get over yourself with your piano sonatas’. I tried going back to Brian Eno’s Neroli- but I’m so over ambient. Then one day, I went on to Spotify and dug up a load of Loudon Wainwright albums I hadn’t listened to in years: History, Album III and Unrequiuted; and they were on repeat whenver I sat down to write. Great apart from one thing: I couldn’t get the lyrics to B-side out of my mind: ‘I work with flowers, that is my work/ From this there is no way that I can shirk /No-no-no there is no complex philosophy/ it’s just because, I’m a bee’.

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