Once we realize that we are not separate from nature, that it’s engaged in an ongoing process of creation, and that we’re part of it and not its lord, we can connect to the endless creative potential of the natural world. It’s simply a matter of designing systems and structures that invite nature as our collaborator.
One natural force we can become highly attuned to is the power of timing. Seasons. Phases. Periods of our life in which certain themes and patterns and inclinations play out. Once we learn to recognize, appreciate and take advantage of those seasons, allowing their forces to become part of the way we automatically operate, we can create a more visceral and deliberate connection to our work.
When I go on family vacations, for example, I rarely write as much as I normally do. But I accept that. Because that’s the season. And so, instead of fighting that current, instead of raging against the unjust fate of real life, I trust that season to give me a healthy sense of distance from my work. And I use the season as a golden opportunity to inhale. To enjoy being a person in the world. To allow the lungs of inspiration to color my perspective and inform my ideas.
That way, there will be creative explosion waiting for me when I return to my routine.
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Bravely venture into the dark forest of the unknown
I have a friend who’s trapped in the wrong pond.
She can make sales in her sleep, but only because she continues to accept unattractive clients who pay below her fee level and lead to unproductive, low potential business.
And I understand her dilemma. It’s hard to turn down business when you’re hungry. Everyone fights the battle between obligation and longing.
But at some point, entrepreneurs must be willing to give up wasting their passion on people who don’t appreciate or deserve it. Otherwise they end up battling the point of diminishing returns.
I’m reminded of a question my mentor once posed.
At what point are you working on making a living, versus working on building your company?
That was a crucial turning point for me. Choosing equity over earnings. Choosing to do work that would grow the brand, not just put money in the bank. Because as painful and uncertain as that transition was, I knew that I had to end something to get to the next level. I knew I had to let go of was working today to make room for what needed to happen tomorrow.
Even if that meant pricing myself out of low hanging fruit opportunities. Even if that meant abandoning a market that I was in love with. Even if that meant outgrowing clients that took a chance on me in the beginning. I was willing to give all that up for what awaited on the other side.
And it was worth it.
Turns out, there was a whole new level of market that was more upscale than the one I was currently reaching, and that piece of the pie was clearly waiting for me to eat it. So I started catering to it, doing work that was more leverageable, with clients that were more enjoyable, growing my business in a way that was more equitable. And I never looked back.
I liken the process to a pilot getting close to the sound barrier. That moment when everything starts to rattle and shake and seem impossible. But once the pilot breaks through, once he realizes how smooth it feels on the other side, he looks back and wonders what all the disturbance was.
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Too many programs running in the background
We need algorithms for running our lives. Operating systems for reducing the burden of thought. Processes for extricating our brains and delegating simple tasks to ritual and routine.
Because once we reduce our total number of daily decisions, once we relieve our mind of the necessity of remembering, our creativity has the room to run free.
That’s why I eat the same breakfast and wear the same clothes and practice the same rituals every morning. Because when I get out of the shower, I don’t want to have to make any decisions. Choices are not my friend. Especially first thing in the morning.
And so, instead of wasting precious mental energy on trivialities, I just execute my algorithm. That way, I can muster every last available neuron for my writing, and nothing else.
Think of it like bandwidth. When a computer has too many programs running in the background, it taxes the system memory, which makes the computer run more slowly, right?
Our creative brain works the same way. If it’s too occupied with trivial functions and chickenshit decisions that could easily be reduced to effortless routine, it will never produce the quality of output that it’s capable of.
That’s why so many people fail to reach their creative potential. Not not because they’re untalented, but because they have too many programs running in the background.
Perhaps they would benefit from a simple disk cleanup.
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Err on the side of optimism
I was reading a fascinating book on commitment, which found that in order to sustain commitment, successful people focus on and emphasize the positive aspects, while downplaying or ignoring negative ones.
To keep a commitment strong, the research proved, it was vital to keep the negative aspects relatively deconstructed, that is, to regard them as isolated exceptions or temporary problems that were relatively unimportant in comparison with the broad pattern of positive benefits.
When I read that, I felt a puff of hope. Because it reminded me that just because I had a disappointing day, doesn’t mean the world is out to get me. Isolated discontent may be part of the process, but it’s not part of some broad negative life pattern. It’s not the warning shot for an impending wave of catastrophic life events.
This negative event is merely a temporary glitch. An isolated incident on my path to inevitable progress. It’s not personal, it’s not permanent and it’s not pervasive. Moving on.
Call it optimism, call it delusion, call it selective memory, call it blowing second hand smoke up your own ass, but if you don’t expect success and consider happiness to be your normal state, every minor setback will wipe you out of the game. That’s the kind of emotional courage true commitment requires.
It doesn’t guarantee success, but does broaden your field of vision, which allows you to better notice solutions that lead to success.
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A window into my encoding process
Information in isolation isn’t particularly useful.
It’s how we encode the information we learn that influences our ability to be creative with that knowledge later.
Here’s a window into my process.
Everyday, I’m constantly scouring and learning and reading and inhaling and annotating from an infinite number of newspapers, blogs, publications, books, articles, songs, art pieces, podcasts, eavesdroppings, conversations, street art, advertisements, pieces of trash and other sources of inspiration. And the secret is, I take notes. Lots of notes. If it’s interesting, it’s documented. But that’s only the first step in my encoding process.
Everyday, I then transcribe all of my notes into my content management system. Each new idea becomes its own document, saved with a specific filename that’s searchable and sortable.
Everyday, I also walk the factory floor. This is an established parcel of structured curiosity, whereby I casually and thoughtfully peruse every idea I’ve recently accumulated. Because I can’t leverage what I forgot I that had.
Everyday, I take those initial pieces of information and fully fleshing them out. Spawning as many creative offspring as possible. Starting on my small conceptual approximations and traveling the wider vistas they open for us. It’s more of an ongoing process, as opposed to a everyday task.
Ultimately, it’s the combination of each of these encoding phases that enables me to be creative with my information in the future.
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Refill the meaning reservoir
Baumeister writes that suffering is often linked to a meaning vacuum. He also says that people add meaning to their lives by deepening relationships, commitments and obligations.
And so, the antidote to our suffering is to compensate. To reengage with the rapture of new meaning.
For example, when I’m feeling sad and uninspired, I prefer to take long walks and make phone calls to friends and colleagues. The combination of the physical movement plus the social context overwhelms my suffering with feelings of connection, cocreation and contribution, and helps me escape my meaning vacuum.
Other times, when I’m feeling disconnected or lonely, I prefer to volunteer within my community. The combination of the social obligation, the physical labor and time commitment refills my meaning reservoir and erases whatever suffering previously existed.
And so, the goal is know yourself so well, that the moment you catch a whiff of meaninglessness, you know exactly how to compensate for the vacuum.
Think of it as an early warning system, a personal seismograph that helps you take preemptive action against impending inner turmoil and anxiety.
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Moments of Conception 171: The Guitar Duel Scene in Crossroads
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 guitar duel scene in Crossroads:
Playing a game to wait out the world. I’ve never been a competitive person. It’s simply not in my
blood. I don’t play to win, I play to keep the game going. And yet, I believe
competition is human and healthy and necessary for the advancement of our
society. Hell, without competition, we’d still be using car phones. In fact,
when it comes to the world of business, it’s economically healthy to assume
that every brand has competition. Even if
it’s theoretical. Because despite the originality of any given product, and
despite its creator’s myopic quest to become a category of one, there’s still
the topography in which that business
operates. The economy and the culture and the marketplace and the industry
surrounding the product. That’s a form of competition too. Because each of
those factors affect a brand’s ability to win new business. The frustrating
part is, it’s mostly a matter of timing. It’s what the market will bear. A
company might have the most interesting and memorable and valuable product in
the world, but if that world isn’t ready for it, they’re toast. Amazon has been
around for twenty years, but didn’t turn a profit for the first six. And only
recently have they truly hit a stride technologically. Because in the mid
nineties, the world wasn’t ready for them. Bezos, however, wasn’t in a rush. He
learned that the internet was growing at two thousand percent a year, and
decided to be the one to make a fortune from that phenomenon. And all he had to
do was stick it out. Will you still be
around when the world is finally ready for you?
They never aim
some creativity at understanding yourself. Eugene has one chance to show up
at the concert and win the guitar duel. If he achieves victory against the
ringer, then his mentor gets his soul back. But if he loses, both he and his
friend forfeit their souls to the devil. Well
then. That’s one way to motivate yourself. And yet, it works. Eugene wins
the battle by falling back on his classical training, performance a style that
his rockstar opponent can’t match. And that’s the key. He returns to his roots.
He identifies what’s already true for him, which makes it easy to tap into his
native endowments of creativity, motivation and inspiration. And he blows the
crowd away. Totally underrated strategy. One that many artists overlook.
Because we forget to reserve a portion of our creativity to understand our own
process. We forget that our identity is a real project with real needs.And as a result, the more mysterious our creative process becomes for us,
the greater our fear is that the well will to run dry. It’s like sexual
impotence. The more pressure we put on ourselves around the anxiety to perform,
the less likely we are to score. But the reality is, it’s not as mysterious as
make it out to be. Despite our most romantic proclamations, the creative process
is more mechanical than it is magical. It’s more clerical than it is cosmic.
Which isn’t to say higher forces can’t come to our aid. They can and they will.
But they’re notoriously unreliable. And if we have any intention of becoming
prolific in our art, we have to confront the realities of our creative
inclinations and work from there. What would it take for you to move from being in a struggle to being easy
and natural?
Soul
is more important than talent. Taylor
wrote a fascinating article about the future of music. How the value of an album
is, and will continue to be, based on the amount of soul an artist has bled
into a body of work. And how people are only buying the albums that hit them
like an arrow through the heart. Couldn’t
agree more. That’s why I believe soul is more important than
talent. Julliard is a fine institution, but the only art lesson worth taking is
learning how to hang your balls out there. That’s why the audience shows up. That’s
why people pay the price of admission. To get their faces melted off. To watch
someone walk on stage and eat the scenery alive. Nothing against taking
lessons, but why waste time on precision and ability and accuracy when we could
deliver honesty and soulfulness and grit? People forgive a few off key notes if
they see your heart in your mouth. Henry Rollins proudly admits he has no
talent whatsoever, but he does have
enthusiasm, tenacity, desperation and a real desire to not let people down. And
that guy has millions of dollars, millions of fans and one hell of an
interesting life. Perhaps instead of learning scales and mastering strokes, art
students should learn how get up in front of people and crack themselves open. Are you creating from the soul, or from what
the marketplace wants?
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Cultivate an optical margin of illusion
Baumeisters’s groundbreaking research on the meanings of life found that happiness often requires illusions. That the happiest people systematically distort and exaggerate in their own minds the frequency of their successes, the perception of their identities and the quality of their circumstances.
Which makes sense, considering that nobody gets exactly what they want. Everybody experience shortfalls in their expectations. And few people achieve every goal, every time.
Our illusions may be a defensive, distorted response, but then again, we all have to be a little deluded to stay motivated, happy and fulfilled. We all have to rationalize and reconcile and reframe experiences to make them acceptable in our own eyes.
Especially when it comes to our careers. Because if we can’t delude ourselves into thinking that our work is significant, we may never make it out alive.
And so, there’s no shame in finding safe harbor in our comfortable and useful illusions. We all see what we can afford to see. We all remember the past the way we need to. And often times, it’s the best way to help solve the problem of receding standards.
As long as we recognize our illusions for what they are, we have a real chance of a creating a meaningful life.
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Leave yourself a rough edge
Colbert’s writing staff works through the night.
His team
scours the mainstream media landscape over the course of the evening, always
looking at what shadow those stories are casting, so he can then distort the
news in his own unique comedic way. That way, every morning when he commutes to
the office, he has a digest of the most important information he needs to know
to do his job effectively.
Colbert explained that this ritual allows his
workday to be preambled, so to speak,
so he can hit the ground running when he walks in the door. It’s a brilliant way to
build momentum in the early part of your workday. In fact, writers have been
using this technique for years.
Hemingway famously stopped his day’s writing
mid sentence. By letting his last thought sit incomplete until the next writing
session, he found, it was easier to regain momentum a day later. Stop when
you’re going good, he said, and you’ll never be stuck again.
I often preamble
my day by transcribing book notes. Before going to bed, for example, I’ll
gather all the ideas I wrote down that day and dump them into my idea
inventory. That way, when I sit down to write the next morning, inspiration
will be waiting for me.
Whatever it takes to leave yourself a rough edge.
It’s
like the knitter who leaves a hint of yarn sticking out of her unfinished
sweater so she knows where to pick it up the next day.
Give yourself something
to jump into immediately. Leave a little bit of the work ordained, so that you
afford yourself a little push before beginning your work.
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It’s not the meaning of life, it’s life’s many meanings
Baumeister’s fascinating research explores the four fundamental human needs for meaning, including purpose, value, efficacy and worth.
We need to see our activities as oriented toward a purpose. We need to feel that our actions are right and good and justifiable. We need to experience the efficacy that we’re making a difference. And we need to feel worthy of respect from ourselves and others.
His research found that people are more secure if their lives furnish multiple ways of satisfying their various meaning needs. That those who draw their worth from several sources are able to handle failures and setbacks better, whereas those who rely on a single source of meaning are more vulnerable to threats and losses.
Proving, that it’s not the meaning of life, it’s life’s many meanings.
And so, we all have a responsibility to build a unique, diversified portfolio of meaning. A robust repertoire of activities and interests and practices that are guaranteed to provide them with the experiences of fulfillment, satisfaction and happiness.
I remember when I initially created my own living document. My personal constitution of meaning. It completely transformed the way I responded to my emotional low point.
With this document, which I call my meaning making mission, instead of dwelling on my sadness or depression or boredom or creative impotence, I could just pick something off the list and get to work. I could make meaning instead of monitoring moods. I could feed my emotions into the meaning algorithm that ran my model of the universe.
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