Look around. Mediocrity isn’t just rewarded, it’s
demanded.
Our society worships incompleteness, celebrates stupidity, encourages
negativity and retweets cynicism. Marginally talented people get fame they don’t
deserve, land gigs they don’t earn, make money they don’t work for and achieve
success they don’t sweat for.
Why?
Because mediocrity is safe and relatable.
And that’s the very problem. We’ve been
conditioned to blend in and bow to the common will, to march in lockstep with
our culture and to live within the lines drawn by others. And unless we crawl
out of our comfy boxes and put down the security blanket of conformity, we’ll
never find out who we really are. We’ll never find a home for all of our talents.
I was fortunate enough to grow up in an entrepreneurial family, which helped
inspire the confidence that I could survive outside the corporate womb. And so,
I barreled toward an unconventional career path with complete single
mindedness. I spun my work out of myself, discovered its own laws and trained
myself to act without feeling dependent on circumstances, without having to
wait for events to align in my favor.
And what I learned in the process is,
there is no prize for the one who leaves his canvas clean. There is no reward
for the man who outsources his conscience. Hire yourself and see what happens.
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Don’t Have Time For 10,000 Hours? Try 100 Units First
Ericsson’s famous study explained that greatness was a function of time. That ten thousand hours was the key to success in any field, whether you were learning an instrument, writing code or mastering chess.
The only problem is, that takes about ten years. And not to diminish the importance of delayed gratification and hard work and focus, because everybody should put in their ten thousand hours, but most people don’t possess the patience to wait an entire decade to gain traction on their work. Patience is at odds with passion. They need early victories to build their confidence, grow their momentum and find their voice. Otherwise they might not stay in the game long enough.
And so, I’d like to propose a more approachable milestone for the early stages of any endeavor:
The first one hundred units.
Roosevelt comes to mind. After he was inducted into office, his radio address outlined his strategy for putting an end to the depression during the first one hundred days of his administration. Since that moment, the first one hundred days has become a critical number for measuring the successes and accomplishments of a president during the time that their power and influence is at its greatest.
Of course, politics is only the beginning. This metric has also been adopted by the public, the media and scholars as a gauge of success for a variety of disciplines. Think about it.
Your first one hundred days in a new job. Your first one hundred customers. Your first one hundred hours of code. Your first one hundred subscribers. Your first one hundred blog posts. Your first one hundred pages. Your first one hundred dollars.
The list goes on. Everyone has their own version of it. What matters is that we’re aware of our number. That we stay in the game long enough to hit our first hundred units. Because once we pass that milestone, good things start to happen for our work.
We flush all of the cover songs out of our system and start to compete in clear air. We look back at the ground taken and think to ourselves, aha, so that’s what I’m doing, so that’s where this thing is going.
As my mentor used to remind me, you haven’t written enough to know what kind of writer you are.
The point is, ten thousand hours is a long way away. And we’ll get there eventually. For now, focus on the smaller number. Because we have to do a hundred of anything before we can even judge ourselves.
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Moments of Conception 162 — The Miles Finch Scene from Elf
All creativity begins with the moment of conception.
That little piece of kindling that gets the fire going. That initial source of inspiration that takes on a life of its own. That single note from which the entire symphony grows. That single spark of life that signals an idea’s movement value, almost screaming to us, something wants to be built here.
And so, in this blog series, I’m going to be deconstructing my favorite moments of conception from popular movies. Each post will contain a video clip from a different film, along with a series of lessons we can learn from the characters.
Today’s clip comes from the Miles Finch scene in Elf:
Established parcels of structured curiosity. Clancy famously said that if we don’t write
it down, it never happened. That mantra has governed my creative work for more
than a decade. Thanks to his warning, everything I know is written down
somewhere. Of course, that’s only half the work. Because if you don’t organize what you write down, it never
happened either. That’s why I’m ruthless when it comes to my content management
system. I treat my notes and files and ideas as a literal inventory. The
lifeblood of my production facility. The chief asset of my creative factory.
And as such, that inventory requires dedicated, daily management. One of the
practices I’ve found to be most useful is called walking the factory floor. It’s
a casual and thoughtful perusing of every idea I’ve recently accumulated. An
established parcel of structured curiosity. A ritual keeps me in tune and in
touch with all of the raw materials coming into my production process. Because
frankly, I take so many goddamn notes on a weekly basis, there’s no way my
brain could cope with that much inventory on its own. That’s why I created a
system for extending the mind. A trusted process that does the heavy lifting
for me. One that allows me to inspect my ideas alphabetically, chronologically
and thematically. And a result, I gain an objective view of what my mind really
wants to produce. Are you the foreman of
your idea factory?
No tomatoes,
too vulnerable. Finch has written more classic children’s book than any
other author. He may be four feet tall, but in the children’s literature
business, he is a monster. And so, for the right price, he’s willing facilitate
a five hour brainstorming session with the editorial team to help them concept
their next bestseller. The only problem is, he’s temperamental. He demands
first class treatment. And when he doesn’t get it, he storms out of the
meeting, telling the team to kiss his vertically challenged ass,
unintentionally leaving behind his notebook of genius ideas. Bad move, angry elf. That’s your
creative inventory. Your incubator of brilliant book ideas waiting to mature.
And because you couldn’t manage your emotions, you made you intellectual
property as vulnerable as a tomato. That can be a scary thing for a creator,
not having access to your own ideas. That’s why I back up my inventory on the
cloud, on my website and on an external hard drive. It’s too important. I’ve
worked too hard organizing my thoughts to make them vulnerable to loss, theft, damage or mysterious disappearances. And so, this
scene is a reminder to all creative professionals. Be vigilant about your
intellectual property. Because when you make a living by your wits, you have to
guard your mind like the asset it is.How could you turn your intellectual capital
into a software program or web app?
Piracy is a gift. When someone plagiarizes us, we shouldn’t send a
subpoena, we should send a fruit
basket.Piracy is a compliment. It’s a reminder that what we’ve
done is worth copying. And it’s validation that we’re good enough to be a
target. Because nobody steals crappy art. Statistically, work that is
successful will always have a higher piracy rate. Not a bad goal to shoot
for. Besides, being stolen from is inevitable. Piracy is just one of the many
punches you have to learn to roll with. It’s part of the job description. Hendrix
even said that he’d been imitated so well that he heard people copy his
mistakes. How cool is that? Green Day made music history by becoming the first
band to sell blank albums. Since millions of their fans were illegally
downloading their music anyway, the band released a five pack of blank compact discs
with original album cover art printed on the top and sides of the box. And on
the side of the case, they reminded their fans, burn responsibly. Armstrong just figured, hey, kids are going to
copy, burn, download and rip our music anyway, may as well make the records
look cool and make some money in the process. Years later, their band was voted
as one of the top one hundred greatest bands of all time, and will soon be
inducted into the rock and roll hall of fame. I’d say piracy was the best thing
that ever happened to their art. Would you rather have a piracy problem or
an obscurity problem?
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What did you learn from this movie clip?
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We have to be ready for the money that is waiting for us
Being religious about how you make your money is the quickest way to go out of business. Entrepreneurs need to give their little economic engine every possible advantage in the current postmodern landscape.
A useful practice for doing so is conducting an ongoing product and portfolio analysis. Getting in the habit of constantly evaluating your personal buying continuum, always looking for new ways to create value for people. Because your customers will tell you how to sell to them. They will help you provide your craft with different avenues at different stages of your creative life. You just have to listen and let them lay track down in front of your train.
Simply ask yourself, what are you not currently charging for, that people are telling you that they would pay money for? That’s a smart place to start. After all, if someone wants to give you money for something, why wouldn’t you give it to them? If they’re willing to pay for it, my god, let them have it. Say yes.
If there’s a new offering you’re thinking about adding to your professional repertoire, put a price on it, put it out into the world, and if customers say yes too quickly, you didn’t ask for enough.
Look, you’ll never know until you try. Take the risk. You’re only as a good as you dare to be bad.
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Stay aware of the entire horizon
I have a songwriter friend who once complained, I’m loving the music,
but the music isn’t loving me back. I’m speaking to the universe, but the
universe doesn’t giving a damn. What the
hell?
It’s a struggle we can all relate to. The frustration of doing the
work, but having nothing to show for it. When it feels like days, weeks and
sometimes months are passing with nothing happening other than our own
continuing efforts. Ugh.
But we must remember, the winds of business change
quickly. One day we’re sweating a dangerously low bank balance, the next day
we’re booking business faster than we can deliver it. One day we don’t feel
special enough to tell our story, the next day we’re so busy creating that we
forget to eat lunch.
The key is not to panic. Doing so only creates an
undercurrent of anxiety that undermines whatever work we do in the meantime.
Instead, we learn how to function at a comfortable equilibrium. We learn how to
build emotional stability in any situation. And we learn how to weather
droughts through the many seasons of life. Those emotional muscles take years
to build, but when you finally realize thatdisappointments
that used to send you into an emotional tailspin now feel like minor
inconveniences, you know you’ve passed a milestone.
The point is, true artists are buoyant enough to bounce back. They trust themselves, trust the process and
trust the marketplace. They take things seriously, but not personally. And they
remember that they’re pawns in the universe’s cosmic game of chess, and the
sooner they learn to appreciate every move, good or bad, the more enjoyable the
game will be.
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What life could you create so balance would be a given?
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Letting your talent flourish fully
I have a friend who jokes that I should travel around with him as his official stenographer.
Apparently I possess the superpower of being a gifted note taker.
Which is amusing to me, since I never viewed taking notes as a useful skill. It’s just something I love to do. Not just because I’m a writer and sentences are my currency, but because mirroring people’s thoughts back to them, giving them a front row seat to their own brilliance, that’s one of the ways I create value for others.
The problem is, my notes have a tendency to overwhelm people. Despite my generous intentions, not everybody can process volume the way I can.
And so, I started wondering. What if there was a bespoke template I could create to help compartmentalize my notes for easier digestion? What if there was a way I could translate my unique way of thinking onto the screen? After all, none of the current note taking paper or software or systems work the way I need them to. May as well create whatever you feel like you’re missing in the world, right?
Introducing my new software application.
Notes Junkie is a web application that makes taking notes more approachable. The template includes several fields in which to compartmentalize key points from a conversation or meeting. And when you’re finished with the conversation, the software converts your notes into a printable document.
There are mirrors, which reflect people’s realities back to them. There is applause, which lays a foundation of affirmation. There are questions, which challenges people to engage in possibility. There are ideas, which plant seeds of innovation. There are resources, which point to further opportunities for learning and connection. And there is a summary, which leaves people with a sense of optimism and momentum.
That’s how I listen to people. That’s the way my brain works. Whether a client is renting my brain one on one, or a friend is seeking advisory for a career move, I now have a way to both process and deliver my thoughts in a way that’s approachable, actionable and memorable.
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How are you branding your listening ability?
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Your quest for a life of your own
We all have those moments when we see through the matrix. When we realize, wow, if I don’t create my own structure, I’ll have to deal with somebody else’s. If I’m not clear about what I want, life will just happen to me.
I’ll never forget attending the job fair during my senior year of college. With a stack of resumes in my hand, I headed toward the auditorium. And as I walked across the threshold, amidst a sea of stale, corporate exhibits, piles of free notepads and hundreds of fellow students hopping from booth to booth trying to prove themselves to people they didn’t even like, one question entered my mind.
What the hell am I doing here?
After two uncomfortable minutes, I turned around, threw my resumes in the garbage, walked home and finished my first book. And when I graduated, I hired myself and got to work. Because I knew that the job fair was just another occupational fairy tale, and I wasn’t interested in buying into that story.
And so, instead of cowering in slavish bondage to circumstance, allowing others to determine my priorities, I focused on injecting more control over my career. I committed to executing projects that had the ability to set me free. And I worked on finding new ways to own my world. All part of the quest for a life of my own.
The point is, we’re all wandering through this world, looking for an anchor to hold us, searching for the thread that might make us free. And so, the only relevant question is whether or not we will let it be possible for us.
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Moments of Conception 161 — The Opening Scene from Mr. Saturday Night
All creativity begins with the moment of conception.
That little piece of kindling that gets the fire going. That initial source of inspiration that takes on a life of its own. That single note from which the entire symphony grows. That single spark of life that signals an idea’s movement value, almost screaming to us, something wants to be built here.
And so, in this blog series, I’m going to be deconstructing my favorite moments of conception from popular movies. Each post will contain a video clip from a different film, along with a series of lessons we can learn from the characters.
Today’s clip comes from the opening scene in Mr. Saturday Night:
Identity is a
chicken egg conundrum. Carlin used to say you can’t do comedy without an audience,
and that if comedians don’t get up in front of people every day of their lives,
they’ll never learn who they are. They’ll never uncover their comic identity.
The irony is, artists assumethe reason
they can’t get started is because they don’t know who they are. But that’s
putting the cart before the horse. Truth is, the reason they don’t know who
they are is because they haven’t gotten started. They haven’t created enough to
know what kind of creator they are. Buddy inherited his sense of humor from his
father, which he absorbed sitting around the dinner table as young boy. And so,
the venue where he first cut his teeth as a comic was after dinner, performing
for relatives in the living room. That’s why he became such a success. By the
time he was a teenager, he was ready to perform in public. Those hard core
formative years fostered his dream and laid groundwork for the years to follow.
And so, that same principal applies to anyone with a creative voice. Whether
you’re performing on stage, presenting to a group or pitching to a client,
identity is byproduct of volume. Only through consistent execution do you gain
an understanding of whom what, why and how you are. So you have to get started.
Any way you can. Because if you don’t start somewhere, you ain’t gonna get
nowhere. What is your legacy of taking
action?
Do things just
to do things. Billy spent sixteen months working on this film. And during
the production, he did everything. He wrote, directed and starred in the film,
and says he had the greatest time of his life making it. Meanwhile, the movie
was considered a box office failure, when compared to his past successes. And according
to his autobiography, that negative reception made him feel
sad, angry, scared and, worst of all, second guess his creative decisions. Billy
even said he developed a severe bout of pneumonia as soon as they wrapped the
shoot. In retrospect, though, he also said this movie was one of the most
cherished projects of his career. That the film was a love letter to the old
school comics that influenced him as a young man. And nobody can take that away
from him. Nobody. That’s the ideal place to be as an artist. Doing things
because you’d be doing them with or without success. Hanging your sense of accomplishment,
the fullness of your heart, and the stability of your soul on an internal sense
of validation. Pressfield calls this territorial
activity, in which the sustenance comes from the act itself, not from the
impression it makes on others. Are you
still digging for treasure, or have you realized that digging is the treasure?
All revolutions begin
with language. Language is the only leverage for changing the context of the world
around us. Once our language changes, our outlook, behaviors and priorities
will follow. That’s the magic of words and manifestos and crystalline expressions
of human thought. They illuminate what’s possible. They inspire us to expand to
our full capacity. And the encouraging part is, revolution doesn’t always have
to come in the form of political upheaval, cultural rebellion or economic
shift. Sometimes it’s a simple change in the way we talk about ourselves. When
I started writing my first movie, I was afraid to call myself a filmmaker. It
felt pretentious and dishonest. But then my mentor convinced me to act as if. To
make sure that every thought I had, I thought it as a filmmaker. Even though I
hadn’t finished the film yet. And so, I started believing that I was what I
said I was. I allowed the constellation of my identity as a writer to expand.
And every time I told someone that I was a filmmaker, I loved the way it made
me feel. Artistic. Creative. Ambition.
Which makes sense, considering the word derives from the root revolvere, which means to roll back.
Maybe that’s all a revolution is. The rolling back of old skin. The shedding of
an outdated way of speaking about ourselves. Using new language to describe who
and how and what we are. Are you focusing
your attention on the way you’d like to see yourself?
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The dollars will follow
The big question is, do you have to make money before you can consider it a business? Does money have to go next to you when you act the way you act?
Not necessarily. At least, not in the early stages. Because in the beginning of the entrepreneurial journey, creating art is rarely economically rewarding in the way you want it to be. And that’s okay.
I remember when I first started my publishing company, my mentor gave me a few memorable warnings. He said don’t expect to write books for money, write books to stake your claim on whatever ground you want to own. He said impact and legacy leads to money, not the other way around. And that money isn’t the target, money is the reward for hitting the target.
Thanks to his advice, instead of putting my trust in money, I put my money in trust. I kept my night job as a valet parker to lower my need for money, that way I could raise my ability to do art. And it was the smartest decision I ever made.
Turns out, when you do what you love and what you’re good at, you’ll figure out how to make money doing it. When you focus on creating things that solve real problems for people, you’ll make those people happy, and that happiness will be translated into money.
Because if your work has real substance, ultimately the dollars will follow. Money will flow as a regular consequence of the success of your ideas.
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There is no close second to financial compensation
Truly creative people tend not to
be motivated by money.
In fact, most artists struggle to even assign monetary
value to their intellectual property, much less ask for the sale. It’s just how
we’re wired. Being heard is job number one.
And yet, despite our most
idealistic tendencies, our most benevolent nature and our most romantic
notions, nothing beats getting paid. There is no close second to financial
compensation.
Besides, deep down, we know we don’t do it for the money, we do
it for what the money stands for. That
we’re worth it.
The secret, then, is making sure we don’t reach a point
where every decision feels like it needs to be legitimized by its ability to
make money. Because once we lock into that mindset, all the whimsy washes away.
All the soul squeezes out of the work.
Buckminster made a poignant observation back in the seventies,
in which he suggested doing away with the erroneous notion that everybody has
to earn a living. He said that although a hundred years ago, almost nobody on
the planet had a job, our society started inventing jobs because of this false
idea that everybody has to be employed at some kind of drudgery to justify
their right to exist. We had inspectors of inspectors and people making
instruments for inspectors to inspect inspectors, he said, but the true business of
people was to think about whatever it was they were thinking
about before somebody came along and told them they had to earn a living.
And
so, perhaps there’s a middle ground. A dual citizenship of being heard and
being paid, whereby artists are still earning money from their work, but not
treating money as the sole arbiter of their creative future.
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