My name is Zac and I try to live a creative life...

Not just creative in a singular sense like writing a story or painting a picture, but striving to be creative across all aspect of my life.

I want my life to revolve around creativity, whether that be creating beautiful art, documenting creative ideas to encourage societal improvement, or stimulating new ideas for myself and others to grow personally.

That's what this site exists. It is my muse, my scratch pad of creativity, my repository of ideas. It is where I publish my thoughts for others to interact with. It is not done with sales or revenue in mind. It is done merely to serve my creative purpose.

Work

I have spent a large part of my career building and then scaling up high-performing software engineering teams. I help bring creativity and fun as a culture to teams, empowering them to succeed at work but also ensuring they enjoy themselves along the way. I believe in not taking ourselves, or our work, too seriously and I have had a lot of success building teams with this mindset. I am currently working as a Group Engineering Leader at Canva.

Before that I have had a bunch of different jobs in various industries, including a few years running my own startup building mobile apps and games in the early iOS days.

Creative Writing

I’m also a writer and I love telling stories. In 2021, I set a goal to do creative writing for 30 minutes on at least 200 days. I finished with 279 days, producing over 300k words across six different stories. This is just the beginning if my writing career. I am currently looking for publishers and/or editors to discuss the next stages of my writing projects with.

Blogs/Other writing

I have also written 100s of blogs about a variety of topics: building high performing teams, interview tips, dream careers, goal setting, habits, and general personal development. Some of my top performing articles are:

YouTube

I have a YouTube channel with 50+ videos and over 70k views. Some of my popular videos are:

Click here to subscribe to my channel

Digital Art

I also enjoy photography and creating digital art in various forms (paintings, drawings etc). I have no formal training in any of these, and nothing is produced for professional consumption. It is the creative process that I enjoy most and what I endeavour to share.

You can view some of my art here.

Coaching

As a 15 year old I got my first ever job as a cricket coach and despite moving very far away from that in my career in tech, it has always been one of my favourite jobs. Now, nearly 20 years later I am back in the sports coaching space, volunteering to coach kids sporting teams in soccer, cricket, swimming, and netball.

I see coaching as an opportunity for me to contribute to my community and be able to have an impact on the lives of young kids, teaching them valuable physical skills as well as important mental frameworks for success and resilience.

Family

Finally, saving the most important for last, I am a big family man. My wife and kids mean the world to me. Husband and father are the two toughest roles I've ever had in my life but also the most rewarding. I especially love encouraging my kids to nurture their creativity, develop their own ideas, and to be open to attempting to solve problems from multiple angles.

Why sign up to my newsletter or follow me on socials?

Everyone is different. Some like the content I produce on building teams, others enjoyed the videos I made on giving up alcohol, and others like my creative stories and art.

The one thing I can tell you is not to sign up with a specific narrow expectation in mind. I produce the content that excites and motivates me the most. I don’t do what an algorithm tells me to do, nor do I plan on narrowing my focus into just one niche. I am broad, I switch topics, and focus on whatever pleases me most. If that sounds like a fun journey you’d like to join me on then feel free to sign up below.

I also have twitter @zac_sky but am currently taking a break from it but you never know what the future holds and I may end up back there.