By the left, quick ... think.

I can't quite believe it's almost the end of the first quarter of 2012. I hope your year has gone well so far.

Mine hasn't started quite as I planned. A few days into January I had what is known in medical circles as "a wee scare".

I woke with strange pins and needles down the left side of my body, which qualified me for a visit from two very nice paramedics and a trip in an ambulance.

A few days in the stroke unit at Edinburgh Royal Infirmary, some investigation and tender loving care from a battalion of quite brilliant doctors and nurses, and now, a diet made up completely of food which is low in fat, low in salt, and very definitely low in flavour.

There was no advance warning, and in fact, no visual, long-term proof from the various tests I've undergone. But it seems I had some sort of stroke on the right side of my brain.

And my goodness, I've undergone some tests. MRI, Cat Scan, blood tests, urine checks, heart monitor, that one with the iodine to test for starch, a gentle popping noise to show the presence of hydrogen, and several flame tests to indicate positive metal ions.

Actually, I might have mixed some of those tests up with Alex and Ellen's Chemistry revision.

The upside (apart from surviving) was that I got to talk to a lot of doctors, including many who are specialists in the workings of the brain.

And guess what? It turns out that all that HeadSurfing stuff I've been banging on about - that actions you take with the left side of the body can help stimulate the right side of the brain - turns out to be right on the money.

One of the things that always intrigued me about the highly creative people I've been lucky enough to work with - the copywriters, art directors, graphic designers and stand-up comedians - was how many of them were left handed. In every agency I worked in, the proportion of lefties who worked in the creative department was always much higher than the general population, and the same was true of comics.

Following my "incident", the doctors and physios were keen for me to keep exercising the left side of my body, in order to rebuild and reconnect the nerve endings in the right side of my brain. And as the right side of the brain includes more of the centres which involve creativity, humour and ideas, it makes sense to me that stimulating those areas will help you come up with more ideas and more innovative solutions to your problems and challenges.

So if you'd like to develop your ability to think creatively, I'd urge you to take time to do things which engage more with the right side of your brain.

Yes, you could exercise the left side of your body - try writing or sketching with your left hand. But other activities could include listening to music, using colour rather than black and white, exercising rhythmically or watching or reading something that makes you laugh.

Me? I think it's important to develop the rational as well as the creative side of my brain, so I'm doing the John Travolta dance moves from Saturday Night Fever.

Budget cuts and how to survive them

It's been a week of conflict and argument, most of it about the economy.

The UK Government Spending Review was released, there are blockades and riots in France over changes to pensions, and the papers are full of (sometimes) well argued opinions about which sector of society will be most badly hit by the budget cuts.

But in the midst of debate, work still has to go on. Companies still have to deliver, organisations still have to perform. We still have problems to solve, and we still have opportunities to grasp.

Anyway, the teams, companies and organisations I've worked with over the last few years didn't seem to me to be drowning in floods of excess money. Maybe yours was, but I doubt it.

So how do we to survive the budget cuts? Reframe the lack of money as something to get creative about.

In any case, money doesn't solve problems. Ideas solve problems.

If the problem is important, it needs to be solved. If the idea is good enough, it has to be done. If the opportunity is great enough, the money isn't a cost - it's an investment.

When times are tough, and budgets are cut, try to look at the lack of money as just another problem to be solved by thinking creatively.

No money? Find someone who has money - or something else you can use to solve the problem. Who could we partner with? Who could sponsor this? Who else has this problem that might share the cost of solving it?

Think of new ways to fund things. New ways of paying the bill. New ways of doing business.

Let's get creative!