Tag: Creativity

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Reentry is Always Challenging

No matter how many times you go through it, how ready you think you are, how much slack you’re prepared to give yourself: reentry is always challenging.

Reentry is painful, rocky, heated. The symptoms might vary –

  • You just can’t get yourself to focus on the work like you used to
  • Your mind is pulled to other projects, games, fun times
  • You feel overwhelmed at being so far behind
  • You lash out at those around you due to the frustration

You can’t avoid it. At best, you can minimize the impact. But really, the goal is simply to bear it compassionately while you build up momentum as quickly as you can.

Once you’ve picked up the flow, you’ll be good to go.

References

  • Walker Percy’s Problems of Reentry by Austin Kleon

    Percy points out that “the most spectacular problems of reentry seem to be experienced by artists and writers.” Percy then lists a bunch of reentry options, such as anesthesia (drugs), travel, sex, suicide, etc.

    One of the reasons I’m such a huge fan of a daily routine and the Groundhog Day approach to working is that it attempts to minimize these exact problems of re-entry that Percy outlines. By scheduling little doses of daily transcendence in which you work on your art, you can pop in and out of your everyday life without becoming a horrible parent or drug addict or total maniac. (Many argue that that’s just the price of Great Art, but I’ve never never bought it.)

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Your Must Create Space for Your Brain to Generate Insights

Whether what you’re after is improving your effectiveness or improving your creativity, it is essential that you create space for your brain to generate new ideas and valuable insights.

In the modern world, this is difficult. Our phones are portals to an endless stream of news, social media feeds, notifications, text messages, emails, and more. We are connected to our coworkers 24/7 through chat-based messaging systems like Slack. Our calendars are over-booked, whether due to the demands of our job, working multiple jobs, or taking care of kids.

There is no more boredom – there is always something to do, or something to consume. The problem is, however, that we cannot be expected to come up with ideas if we are constantly filling our days with an endless, uninterrupted stream of tasks and consumption. You need room for ideas to actually percolate up into your consciousness. You need space to allow your brain to digest the information it’s received.

Stop consuming all the time. Allow yourself to be bored. Leave unfilled space in your day, however brief, to allow your brain to have ideas.

Your reaction might be, “but I don’t have time for that.” Either make time, or change the game you’re playing. You need space for creativity and insight to raise. There is no substitute.

  • Control your attention and information consumption
  • Schedule a regular “artist date” with yourself

References

  • The Art of Fermenting Great Ideas by Nat Eliason

    Our ideas appear primarily in one situation: when little else is occupying our thoughts. It’s as if it is a defense mechanism of our brain responding to the lack of stimulus. If you’re not engaged in hunting, gathering, building, mating, or socializing, then something must be wrong, and you need to fix it. So it starts shooting up ideas from the mailroom to get you back into one of those modes that will save you from dying alone with no progeny.

Good ideas require boredom. If you constantly ingest new information, the existing information can never be digested. It’s as if you’re looking at your fermenting jar on the counter every hour and wondering why nothing has happened, so you open it and stuff in another cucumber.

Think of your time as explicitly allocated to loading in information or towards seeing what your brain shoots out. Input time, output time. Input time is reading books, scrolling social media, watching the news, listening to podcasts, talking to friends and colleagues, or anything else that adds new stuff for your subconscious to process. Output time is creating the space and boredom for those inputs to ferment into something interesting. Staring at a blank page of your journal, opening a document to start writing, going for a (no headphones) walk with a notebook, working out without music, or sitting in the sauna. However you create bored, quiet space for your brain to finally get some processing room to spit ideas out; you must create that space if you want the ideas to form.

The ways we fail at this are obvious. We never give ourselves output time because we’re terrified of silence and boredom. We need a podcast while working out. We need music while working. We keep social media up in another tab. We have notifications on our phones. We let ourselves be interrupted.

So give the great ideas time to pop up. Even if you know you have weeks or months to figure something out, start priming your brain with those questions now so it has time to process them.

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Show Up Every Day

There is no replacement for showing up every day, putting your butt in the seat, and doing the work. Accomplishment takes discipline.

When you show up every single day, you don’t even have to make tremendous progress. Writing one page a day is still 365 pages a year – enough for a full book. Of course, we can usually get more output than that.

Showing up every day significantly the possibility that something meaningful will happen. We show the muse that we are dedicated, at Steven Pressfield says. And the muse rewards that with inspiration and insight. Our daily work, our continued presence, cultivates the field and enables ideas to flow. it takes time to get into that state, and frequent stops/starts only hinder it.

Showing up every day also enables your gains and your work to compound. Initial progress may feel slow, but over time your efforts compound and increasingly yield higher quality and outsized rewards.

Showing up every day keeps momentum going. Even when we finish a project, we can’t stop. After all, switching gears is most effective when we’re already in motion.

  • The way to complete a project is with continual progress every day, no matter how small
  • The power of compounding

References

  • Daily Rituals by Mason Currey

    He was dismissive of inspiration, saying that if he waited for the muse he would compose at most three songs a year. It was better to work every day. “Like the pugilist,” Gershwin said, “the songwriter must always keep in training.”

  • Are you doing what you said you wanted to do? by Seth Godin

    If you want to be a poet, write poetry. Every day. Show us your work.

  • Watercolor 365 by Leslie Redhead

    However, because painting is my livelihood and I’m not going to get any better by just thinking about painting, paint I must. So I show up in my studio every morning and paint until I feel like painting. I tell myself that I will spend one hour in the studio painting, and I will paint until I feel like painting. This usually works, and then I end up painting like mad!

  • The Practice by Seth Godin

    It’s hard to get blocked when you’re moving. Even if you’re not moving in the direction that you had in mind that morning.

    Isaac Asimov published more than four hundred books. How did he possibly pull that off? Asimov woke up every morning, sat in front of his manual typewriter, and he typed. That was his job, to type. The stories he created, the robots and the rest, were the bonus that came along for the ride. He typed when he wasn’t inspired. The typing turned into writing and he became inspired. We don’t write because we feel like it. We feel like it because we write.

  • Put Your Ass Where Your Heart Wants to Be by Steven Pressfield

    The Muse does not count hours. She counts commitment. It is possible to be one hundred percent committed ten percent of the time. The goddess understands.

  • Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott

    But while he helped the prisoners and me to discover that we had a lot of feelings and observations and memories and dreams and (God knows) opinions we wanted to share, we all ended up just the tiniest bit resentful when we found the one fly in the ointment: that at some point we had to actually sit down and write.

  • How many words did you write today? by Steven Pressfield

    When I sit down to write in the morning, I literally have no expectations for myself or for the day’s work. My only goal is to put in three or four hours with my fingers punching the keys. I don’t judge myself on quality. I don’t hold myself accountable for quantity. (At least not at this stage; later, I will.) The only questions I ask are, Did I show up? Did I try my best?

    In other words, my goal (even after more than forty years of doing this) is simply to park my butt in front of the keyboard and work as hard as I can. I know from doing this for all those years that the physical act of sitting down at my desk for the required hours will produce, without fail, a day’s work.

    And I know something more. If I can stack up enough days, enough weeks, enough months, in the end I’ll have a book. I’ll have a movie. I’ll have something.

  • 3-2-1 Productivity, success, and 3 simple questions to improve your day by James Clear

    Standup comedian Cameron Esposito on success:

    There is no formula for success—you just begin and then you continue. I’m often asked how to have a career in stand-up and the answer is confoundingly simple: Do the work. Over and over again, just do the work. After you build the courage to get onstage that first time, it’s all about repetition.

  • The War of Art by Steven Pressfield

    How many pages have I produced? I don’t care. Are they any good? I don’t even think about it. All that matters is I’ve put in my time and hit it with all I’ve got.

  • 30 Day Challenge by Austin Kleon

    Someone once asked me to distill all of my books into one piece of advice, and, off the top of my head, I said: “Try sitting down in the same place at the same time for the same amount of time every day and see what happens.”

    In Steal Like an Artist, I wrote about comedian Jerry Seinfeld’s calendar method of daily joke writing:

    You break your work into daily chunks. Each day, when you’re finished with your work, make a big fat X in the day’s box. Every day, instead of just getting work done, your goal is to just fill a box. “After a few days you’ll have a chain. Just keep at it and the chain will grow longer every day. You’ll like seeing that chain, especially when you get a few weeks under your belt. Your only job next is to not break the chain.”

    In Show Your Work! I suggested the day as the primary unit of time for the artist:

    Building a substantial body of work takes a long time—a lifetime, really—but thankfully, you don’t need that time all in one big chunk. So forget about decades, forget about years, and forget about months. Focus on days.

    The day is the only unit of time that I can really get my head around. Seasons change, weeks are completely human-made, but the day has a rhythm. The sun goes up; the sun goes down. I can handle that.

    And in Keep Going, I quoted the classic AA advice to “take one day at a time”:

    “Any man can fight the battles of just one day,” begins a passage collected in Richmond Walker’s book of meditations for recovering alcoholics, Twenty-Four Hours a Day. “It is only when you and I add the burden of those two awful eternities, yesterday and tomorrow, that we break down. It is not the experience of today that drives men mad. It is remorse or bitterness for something which happened yesterday or the dread of what tomorrow may bring. Let us therefore do our best to live but one day at a time.”

  • James Clear

    People who jump from project to project are always dividing their effort, and producing high quality work becomes difficult without intense effort.
    Meanwhile, your average work day can be leisurely, yet also productive, if you return to the same project each day.
    Do one thing well and watch it compound.

  • Alexander Cortes

    Imagine if for 10 years, you could not quit something
    Every day, you had to practice
    Every day, you had to find a way to train
    Every day, you had to improve
    Every day, you had to study
    Every day, you did one thing that moved you closer and contributed to your momentum
    How good do you think you would be? How successful? How “gifted” might you appear to people? How good would your “genetics” be?
    Hype motivation fast starts explosive growth excitement, they all lose to the Endurance of discipline
    Success comes down to those who did not quit.
    Most quit
    Don’t quit. Be consistent, keep going

  • 28 Lessons From Great Writers, Artists And Creators On Mastering Your Craft | Thought Catalog by Ryan Holiday

    The only way to learn to write is to force yourself to produce a certain number of words on a regular basis.

    —There Is No Secret to Writing Every Day, Three Essays on Freedom, John Dufresne

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Distill Your Work to Its Essence

Creative wisdom often advises us to boil down the work to its essence. You must keep the essence – the core theme – in mind when creating. Otherwise, how can you stay on track?

Different people have different techniques for this:

  • Steven Pressfield advises us to boil down an enterprise into a single page.
  • Austin Kleon chooses a “secret sentence” for each book he writes.
  • Francis Ford Coppola choses a single word for each film.
  • Quintus Curtius points out how Pliny advised speakers to distill matters to their essentials and hammer the points home over and over again – “focus on the main issue and never leave it”.
  • Gary Keller has his concepts of 4-1-1 planning (4 weeks, 1 month, 1 year) and the 1-3-5 planning (one goal, three strategies, five priorities for each strategy) – effectively boiling down your goals into actionable, one-page plans.

What, specifically, you choose to do does not matter much. But you do need to distill down to the essence. Do not stray. Stay to the path.

(This also works as a pre-writing exercise: ask yourself what the core concept is, and make sure it is clear to you.)

References

  • Nobody Wants to Read Your Sh\*t by Steven Pressfield

    The problem in fiction, from the thrashing writer’s point of view, is almost always, “What is this damn thing about?”

    In other words, what’s the theme? What’s the theme of our book, our play, our movie script? What’s the theme of our new restaurant, our start-up, our video game?

    When we don’t know the theme, we don’t know the Problem.

    When you as a writer carry over and apply this mode of thinking to other fields, say the writing of novels or movies or nonfiction, the first question you ask yourself at the start of any project is, “What’s the concept?”

  • Do the Work by Steven Pressfield

    Discipline yourself to boil down your story/new business/philanthropic enterprise to a single page.

  • See the Throat, and Latch on to It by Quintus Curtius

    By this he meant, of course, that the speaker must distill matters down to their essentials, and hammer home these points over and over. Since men’s powers of judgment vary widely, and their estimations are prone to gross distortion resulting from their backgrounds and experiences, the speaker must focus on the main issue and never leave it.

  • In One Word by Austin Kleon

    At the very end of this video (excerpted here), the director Francis Ford Coppola explains how he chooses a single word for each of films to keep him on track as he makes decision after decision:

    Learning from the great Elia Kazan, I always try to have a word that is the core of what the movie is really about.

    In one word.

    For Godfather, the key word is “succession.” That’s what the movie is about.

    Apocalypse Now: “morality.”

    The Conversation: “privacy.”

    Megalopolis. You know what it is? “Sincerity.” That’s the word I use when I say, “What should I do?”

    For each book I write, I choose a secret sentence.

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Creating and Editing Require Different Mindsets

When you’re working as a creative, whether that is as a programmer, a writer, or a musician, it is important for you to recognize that creating and editing are two different mindsets. You need to separate the two processes. If you don’t, you will block the creative process. You’ll be at risk of tuning into “K-FKD radio”. You’ll also be less effective, as you’re not aligning the work in front of you with the mode you’re in.

Application for General Creative Thought

Fundamentally, you want to create and edit at different times or on different days. One way to approach this physically is with Walt Disney’s three-stage creative process.

What we are really trying to separate is the generative flow and the critic. When ideas are coming, we want to receive all of them. Their quality is not important when the ideas are flowing, just capture them while they are coming.

The time to review ideas, to edit a work, or to scope the effort is separate – nothing stops the flow of ideas like those types of activities. And when you’re in that critic mode,

Application to Writing

Start with a brain dump – don’t organize or edit or filter, just let it flow. Then, later, reorganize into a coherent outline.

Write your first draft by vomiting on the page. Then, later, go through and edit it into something more succinct and effective.

Recognize what mode you’re in, and tune your tasks to that.

Application to Programming and Product Development

Writing new code, in the sense of exploring a problem space or taking a first pass implementation, is more creative/generative in nature. So is coming up with the design for a (sub)system, brainstorming product features, and figuring out what kinds of tests you might need at the factory.

Code reviews, design reviews, refactoring code, running static analysis tools: these are tasks for the critic mode.

A common problem in software development is that we don’t often enforce good separation of these modes, often mixing the work. We set out to write new code, but end up getting sucked into refactoring work along the way. It would be much better to refactor first, then write new code. Or solve the new problem first, and then refactor to a more elegant solution. Similarly, the time to clean up commits is at the end of a working session, not in the middle of it.

Mob programming is often held up as an alternative to code reviews. The problem is that writing the code and reviewing code mixes the two mindsets, and the same separation idea applies. Also, if you’re focused on solving a problem as a group, you’re going to approach the work differently than if you’re focused on looking at the code as a group with the editor mindset applied.

In fact, how powerful would it be to have mob code reviews? Look over the code as a group and identify all the ways you can make improvements. Why not schedule that as a regular weekly team activity? How much better could you make your code base?

References

  • A Guide to Code Inspections by Jack Ganssle

    The author is present to provide insight into his intentions when those are not clear (which is a sign there’s a problem with either the code or the documentation). If a people shortage means you’ve doubled up roles, the author may not also be the reader. In writing prose it has long been known that editing your own work is fraught with risk: you see what you thought you wrote, not what’s on the paper. The same is true for code.

  • Do the Work by Steven Pressfield

    Let’s talk about the actual process—the writing/composing/ idea generation process. It progresses in two stages: action and reflection. Act, reflect. Act, reflect. NEVER act and reflect at the same time.

    Unless you’re building a sailboat or the Taj Mahal, I give you a free pass to screw up as much as you like. The inner critic? His ass is not permitted in the building. Set forth without fear and without self-censorship. When you hear that voice in your head, blow it off. This draft is not being graded. There will be no pop quiz. Only one thing matters in this initial draft: get SOMETHING done, however flawed or imperfect. You are not allowed to judge yourself.

  • The Jerry Seinfeld Guide to Writing by David Perell

    Writing and editing should be separate activities.

    Seinfeld treats his writing self and editing self as two separate people. He treats his writing self like a baby. He nurtures it, loves it, and supports it. But once the editing phase begins, he changes his personality. He turns into a “harsh prick, a ball-busting son of a bitch” who says “that is just not good enough. That’s got to come out or it’s got to be redone or thrown away.”

  • Playing to Win: How Strategy Really Works by Lafley and Martin

    At this reverse-engineering stage, there is absolutely no interest in opinions as to whether the conditions pertaining to a given possibility are true. In fact, expressing such opinions is counterproductive. The only interest is in ferreting out what would have to be true for every member of the group to feel intellectually and emotionally committed to the possibility under consideration.

  • Quintus Curtius, on Twitter

    In my view, an author generally should not try to: translate his own work, narrate his own work on audio, or be the only person to edit his work. Reason? You need a fresh perspective. It’s too easy to slip into your own world, and overlook problems.

  • Clean Agile: Back to Basics by Robert Martin

    The idea here is that writing code that works and writing code that is clean are two separate dimensions of programming. Attempting to control both dimensions at the same time is difficult at best, so we separate the two dimensions into two different activities.

To say this differently, it is hard enough to get code working, let alone getting the code to be clean. So we first focus on getting the code working by whatever messy means occur to our meager minds. Then, once working, with tests passing, we clean up the mess we made.

This makes it clear that refactoring is a continuous process, and not one that is performed on a scheduled basis. We don’t make a huge mess for days and days, and then try to clean it up. Rather, we make a very small mess, over a period of a minute or two, and then we clean up that small mess.

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Walt Disney’s Three-Stage Creative Process

Creating and Editing require different mindsets, so you often don’t want to mix the two activities.

Walt Disney agreed with this idea. He would break up the process of thinking up and refining ideas into three distinct phases, focusing on only one stage at a time:

  1. Dreamer
    1. For fantasizing, creating raw ideas without any filter
    2. This stage is about “why not?”
  2. Realist
    1. Re-examine dreamer ideas and rework them into something more practical
    2. Not about the reasons it could not be achieved, only about what could be done
    3. This stage is about “how?”
  3. Spoiler/Critic
    1. Shoot holes in the refined ideas from the realist stage

Ideas that survive this three stage process are the ones you should work on. By compartmentalizing the stages, you gain distinct advantages:

  1. You can come up with ideas without letting reality or criticism get in the way
  2. You can refine ideas without the harsh filter of a critic
  3. You can criticize and examine a well-thought out idea, something with a bit more structure.

The problem is that most brainstorming meetings (or meetings in general) involve a group of people with mixed roles/focuses – a combination of dreamers, realists, and spoilers. In a mixed environment, dream ideas don’t stand a chance.

Physically Representing the Stages

This process is best implemented physically. You can do this in multiple ways.

The simplest approach is to work in the different stages at different times, whether that is times of day or days of the week. Alternatively, you can steal another lesson from Disney and compartmentalize the stages in different rooms in your office or house. For example:

  • Conference Room A in your office can ONLY be used for the dreaming stage. No filtering, realism, or spoiling is allowed in this room.
  • Conference Room B can only be used for the realist stage. The only activity allowed is finding ways to convert dreams to reality.
  • Conference Room C can only be used for the spoiler stage – being a critic and editing to find weak spots before an idea goes live.

Another way to physically embody this is to associate each of the roles with different pieces of clothing. You can take the “wearing different hats” metaphor literally, putting on a different hat (or no hat at all) depending on your target role. You could also use shoes, slippers, or other accessories as a trigger for the specific mindset.

By consistently following these rules, you will find it much easier to trigger the desired state of mind.

References

  • Disney Brainstorming Method: Dreamer, Realist, and Spoiler
  • The Practice by Seth Godin

    Ideas hate conference rooms, particularly conference rooms where there is a history of criticism, personal attacks, or boredom.

  • Building a Second Brain by Tiago Forte

    There’s a name for this phenomenon: the Cathedral Effect. Studies have shown that the environment we find ourselves in powerfully shapes our thinking. When we are in a space with high ceilings, for example—think of the lofty architecture of classic churches invoking the grandeur of heaven—we tend to think in more abstract ways. When we’re in a room with low ceilings, such as a small workshop, we’re more likely to think concretely.

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Revise, Revise, Revise

When I write, I typically write a first draft, edit it once, have Rozi review (if she’s able to), and then publish. This means I experience two drafts, or three at most.

This is not enough. I am stopping too soon. I can always let some time lapse, come back to the work, and find egregious errors or significant refactorings. This means that I need more drafts. After all, McPhee’s excellent book on writing is called Draft No. 4) for a good reason.

Another aspect of revision is treating each draft in a slightly different way. For example, John McPhee’s revision process involves using each draft for a distinct effort:

  1. Write the first draft
  2. Read the second draft aloud
  3. Go through the piece for the third time (removing the problems observed while reading), enclose words and phrases in pencilled boxes
  4. Search for replacements for the words in the boxes

Of course, four might not be enough – Steven Pressfield points out that he does between ten and fifteen drafts of every book he writes.

References

  • On the Move by Oliver Sacks

    It seems to me that I discover my thoughts through the act of writing, in the act of writing. Occasionally, a piece comes out perfectly, but more often my writings need extensive pruning and editing, because I may express the same thought in many different ways.

  • Essentialism by Greg McKeown

    An editor is ruthless in the pursuit of making every word count. Instead of saying it in two sentences, can you say it in one? Is it possible to use one word where two are currently being used?

  • Daily Creative by Todd Henry

    The way in which I conveyed the most resonant ideas in each of my books appeared through revision, not in the first draft.

  • Draft No. 4, by John McPhee

    After reading the second draft aloud, and going through the piece for the third time (removing the tin horns and radio static that I heard while reading), I enclose words and phrases in pencilled boxes for Draft No. 4. If I enjoy anything in this process it is Draft No. 4. I go searching for replacements for the words in the boxes. The final adjustments may be small-scale, but they are large to me, and I love addressing them. You could call this the copy-editing phase if real copy editors were not out there in the future prepared to examine the piece. The basic thing I do with college students is pretend that I’m their editor and their copy editor. In preparation for conferences with them, I draw boxes around words or phrases in the pieces they write. I suggest to them that they might do this for themselves.

  • Nobody Wants to Read Your Sh*t by Steven Pressfield

    I‘ll do between ten and fifteen drafts of every book I write. Most writers do.

  • 3-2-1: Handling Challenges, Living Authentically, and Giving Value by James Clear

    Revising a book before it is published is incredibly useful. The extra polish improves the first impression.

    Publishing a second edition a few years after publishing, even if it involves the same revisions, is less useful. The brand has already been established.

    Refine at the right time.

  • Writing Matters (pdf)
    • This is exactly why we edit – improve understandability, make it easier to find the key message, and make more concise. The exact same benefits apply to editing writing and source code.

      We estimate the effect of language editing on perceived writing quality and perceived academic paper quality by comparing the average judgement of original and edited papers. Our results show that writing matters. Writing experts judged the edited papers as 0.6 standard deviations (SD) better written overall (1.22 points on an 11–point scale). They further judged the language–edited papers as allowing the reader to find the key message more easily (0.58 SD), having fewer mistakes (0.67 SD), being easier to read (0.53 SD), and being more concise (0.50 SD). These large improvements in writing quality translated into still substantial effects on economists’ evaluations. Economists evaluated the edited versions as being 0.2 SD better overall (0.4 points on an 11–point scale). They were also 8.4 percentage points more likely to accept the paper for a conference, and were 4.1 percentage points more likely to believe that the paper would get published in a good economics journal. Our heterogeneity analysis shows that the effects of language editing on writing quality and perceived academic quality are particularly large if the original versions were poorly written.

  • The Jerry Seinfeld Guide to Writing by David Perell

    Clarity: Ultimately, I want to make my writing so clear that my reader forgets they’re reading. So in this stage, I remove anything that would cause friction for the reader. If an idea is confusing, I reorganize it. If a sentence is confusing, I rewrite it. And if a word is unnecessary, I remove it.

  • Earthquake in the Early Morning, by Mary Pope Osbourne

    Fun – that’s the magic word for me. Writing a story should always be fun. At the same time, it requires lots of work, such as rewriting and rewriting. I rewrite one Magic Tree House book many times, but I always try to have fun while I’m doing it.

  • Gary Provost wrote: “Baby puppies” is redundant. A “little midget” would be redundant, as would a “big giant,” a “long-necked giraffe,” or “six a.m. in the morning.” “Red in color” is redundant because a thing can’t be red in size, shape, or age.
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Allow Your Mental State to Drive Your Work

It is common practice to outline a schedule of work to do in advance. Whatever is next on the list is what you try to tackle, regardless of the mood or state of mind you are in. Some days, this works wonderfully, and you enter into a flow state. Other days, it feels like you are trying to lead a team of pack mules uphill through deep mud.

As a creative, it is a mistake to fight against your current mental state by trying to force particular work. Instead, adapt your work to fit your current state of mind.

Your mental state influences how much energy it takes you to finish a given piece of work. When you are in alignment with your current mood, tasks can feel effortless to complete. Misalignment can cause them to take longer, be more painful to execute, and result in a lower quality output.

Of course, you don’t have to rely purely on your mental state. You can also generate momentum intentionally, making it easier to enter into a flow state.

States of Mind

In his Just-in-Time Project Management series, Tiago Forte provides some examples of states of mind and work that benefits from it:

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Quote
Note that each of these states favors a certain kind of activity, which produces a unique kind of value:

  • Mischievous cleverness would be good for hacking a piece of software to do what you want
  • Geeking out is good for late night projects tinkering in the garage
  • Appalled incredulity can inspire wonderful reserves of anger and motivation toward a goal
  • Righteous indignation is very useful for writing passionate thought pieces arguing for a change you care about
  • Melancholy has long been used by artists to tap into deep reserves of creativity
  • Motivated curiosity is great for exploring a rabbit trail through Wikipedia to try and understand an idea

The problem is that creating these states of mind is often expensive and difficult. You might require long periods of waiting, investment in rituals, or working in a particular environment. They are also unpredictable, and can come and go at moment’s notice. Even worse, attempting to force a particular mental state often pushes you further and further away from it. Because we cannot produce states of mind at will, it is better to adapt your current work to your state of mind.

References

  • Extend Your Mind by Tiago Forte:

    Our moods are extrapolation engines, putting us in the appropriate state of mind to take advantage of fleeting opportunities, without having to wait for full information. You can think of a given state of mind as a temporary bias, increasing our sensitivity and responsiveness toward a certain kind of reward that seems to be in unexpected abundance.

  • Just-in-Time Project Management (Series) by Tiago Forte

    I believe that our states of mind have become our most important assets as knowledge workers. In an economy based on creativity, it is the state of mind that we enter through our creative process that is even more rare and valuable than any product or deliverable we produce while in it. Our ultimate competitive advantage is a way of thinking.

    Because of this, it is worth designing a way of working that puts us in certain states of mind as often and for as long as possible, and leverages what we produce during that time into tangible results.

    Let’s start with a definition for “state of mind.” A SOM is:

    • difficult or expensive to reproduce (in contrast to simple emotions)
    • illegible and more-than-the-sum-of-its-parts (in contrast to cause-and-effect habits)
    • primarily somatic and affective, not intellectual (in contrast to belief systems or worldviews)
    • temporary and ephemeral (in contrast to mindsets or attitudes)

    There are a few important things to understand about states of mind. They are:

    • Expensive
    • Unpredictable
    • Valuable
    • High leverage

    States of mind give us tremendous leverage, because they dramatically influence how much energy it takes to complete a given task. When you’re in Errand Mode, running an additional errand doesn’t take much extra energy. But if you’re in the middle of a deep focus session, even the simplest errand can feel like a harsh imposition.

    Motivation has a direction. Performing a task in line with your motivation is easy and satisfying (reading a book when I’m feeling quiet and introspective), whereas trying to go against my motivation is difficult and frustrating (reading a book when I’m feeling social or scatterbrained).

    In other words, moods drive us to act opportunistically – to do more of what’s already working. Our brain extrapolates that what has just happened will keep happening, forms expectations of the rewards it will encounter, generating anticipation, which is the key motivator of action.

    Instead of trying to force our state of mind to fit the task at hand, we can change the task at hand to fit our state of mind.

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Quotes for a Creative to Live By

Musashi’s Dokkōdō::

Resentment and complaint are appropriate neither for oneself nor others.

The War of Art by Steven Pressfield

The professional loves her work. She is invested in it wholeheartedly. But she does not forget that the work is not her. Her artistic self contains many works and many performances. Already the next is percolating inside her. The next will be better, and the one after that better still.

The Burnout Society:

Capitalism is not a political question, but a force of nature that must be tamed, so that we may all share in its fruits.

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The War of Art

Author: Steven Pressfield
Recommended for: Anyone working on a creative or entrepreneurial endeavor
Read: November 2014, October 2019

Quick Summary:

The War of Art is an essential book for anyone working on a creative or entrepreneurial endeavor. In The War of Art, Steven Pressfield identifies the force that opposes our creative efforts as Resistance. Pressfield points out the different forms that Resistance takes and methods that it uses to undermine us every step of the way. Pressfield also provides strategies for overcoming Resistance, primarily by focusing on mastering our craft and showing up every single day.

If you enjoyed The War of Art, you can follow the book with Do the Work, a short follow-up read that focuses on overcoming and defeating Resistance.

There’s a secret that real writers know that wannabe writers don’t, and the secret is this: It’s not the writing part that’s hard. What’s hard is sitting down to write. What keeps us from sitting down is Resistance. 

What does it tell us about the architecture of our psyches that, without our exerting effort or even thinking about it, some voice in our head pipes up to counsel us (and counsel us wisely) on how to do our work and live our lives? Whose voice is it? What software is grinding away, scanning gigabytes, while we, our mainstream selves, are otherwise occupied? 

Key Lessons:

  • That feeling that I feel inside – the one that attempts to block me at every turn – that is real, and not something I made up. All creative individuals must wrestle with it.
  • We can defeat Resistance by simply dedicating ourselves to our work at the same time every day. Treat your work professionally. Show up, no matter what.

My Highlights

Italicized sub-bullet comments are mine.

  • When inspiration touches talent, she gives birth to truth and beauty. 
  • How many pages have I produced? I don’t care. Are they any good? I don’t even think about it. All that matters is I’ve put in my time and hit it with all I’ve got. 
    • Eventually, once you’ve put in enough time, you’ll come up with something good!
  • There’s a secret that real writers know that wannabe writers don’t, and the secret is this: It’s not the writing part that’s hard. What’s hard is sitting down to write. What keeps us from sitting down is Resistance. 
  • Most of us have two lives. The life we live, and the unlived life within us. Between the two stands Resistance. 
  • One night I was layin’ down, I heard Papa talkin’ to Mama. I heard Papa say, to let that boy boogie-woogie. ‘Cause it’s in him and it’s got to come out. — John Lee Hooker, “Boogie Chillen”
  • How many of us have become drunks and drug addicts, developed tumors and neuroses, succumbed to painkillers, gossip, and compulsive cell-phone use, simply because we don’t do that thing that our hearts, our inner genius, is calling us to? Resistance defeats us. 
  • The enemy is a very good teacher. — the Dalai Lama 
  • Resistance is not a peripheral opponent. Resistance arises from within. It is self-generated and self-perpetuated. Resistance is the enemy within. 
  • Rule of thumb: The more important a call or action is to our soul’s evolution, the more Resistance we will feel toward pursuing it. 
  • We’re wrong if we think we’re the only ones struggling with Resistance. Everyone who has a body experiences Resistance. 
  • The warrior and the artist live by the same code of necessity, which dictates that the battle must be fought anew every day. 
  • Resistance has no strength of its own. Every ounce of juice it possesses comes from us. We feed it with power by our fear of it. Master that fear and we conquer Resistance. 
  • RESISTANCE IS MOST POWERFUL AT THE FINISH LINE 
  • Odysseus almost got home years before his actual homecoming. Ithaca was in sight, close enough that the sailors could see the smoke of their families’ fires on shore. Odysseus was so certain he was safe, he actually lay down for a snooze. It was then that his men, believing there was gold in an ox-hide sack among their commander’s possessions, snatched this prize and cut it open. The bag contained the adverse Winds, which King Aeolus had bottled up for Odysseus when the wanderer had touched earlier at his blessed isle. The winds burst forth now in one mad blow, driving Odysseus’ ships back across every league of ocean they had with such difficulty traversed, making him endure further trials and sufferings before, at last and alone, he reached home for good. 
  • The danger is greatest when the finish line is in sight. At this point, Resistance knows we’re about to beat it. It hits the panic button. It marshals one last assault and slams us with everything it’s got. 
  • The professional must be alert for this counterattack. Be wary at the end. Don’t open that bag of wind. 
  • The reason is that they are struggling, consciously or unconsciously, against their own Resistance. The awakening writer’s success becomes a reproach to them. If she can beat these demons, why can’t they? 
  • Often couples or close friends, even entire families, will enter into tacit compacts whereby each individual pledges (unconsciously) to remain mired in the same slough in which she and all her cronies have become so comfortable. 
  • The highest treason a crab can commit is to make a leap for the rim of the bucket. 
  • The awakening artist must be ruthless, not only with herself but with others. Once you make your break, you can’t turn around for your buddy who catches his trouser leg on the barbed wire. The best thing you can do for that friend (and he’d tell you this himself, if he really is your friend) is to get over the wall and keep motating. 
  • The best and only thing that one artist can do for another is to serve as an example and an inspiration. 
  • The most pernicious aspect of procrastination is that it can become a habit. We don’t just put off our lives today; we put them off till our deathbed. 
  • Never forget: This very moment, we can change our lives. There never was a moment, and never will be, when we are without the power to alter our destiny. This second, we can turn the tables on Resistance. 
  • We get ourselves in trouble because it’s a cheap way to get attention. Trouble is a faux form of fame. It’s easier to get busted in the bedroom with the faculty chairman’s wife than it is to finish that dissertation on the metaphysics of motley in the novellas of Joseph Conrad. 
  • Ill health is a form of trouble, as are alcoholism and drug addiction, proneness to accidents, all neurosis including compulsive screwing-up, and such seemingly benign foibles as jealousy, chronic lateness, and the blasting of rap music at 110 dB from your smoked-glass ’95 Supra. Anything that draws attention to ourselves through pain-free or artificial means is a manifestation of Resistance. 
    • I have certainly been guilty here. For years at a time.
  • The working artist will not tolerate trouble in her life because she knows trouble prevents her from doing her work. The working artist banishes from her world all sources of trouble. She harnesses the urge for trouble and transforms it in her work. 
    • And this is my cure
  • When we drug ourselves to blot out our soul’s call, we are being good Americans and exemplary consumers. We’re doing exactly what TV commercials and pop materialist culture have been brainwashing us to do from birth. Instead of applying self-knowledge, self-discipline, delayed gratification and hard work, we simply consume a product. 
  • What finally convinced me to go ahead was simply that I was so unhappy not going ahead. I was developing symptoms. As soon as I sat down and began, I was okay. 
  • John Lennon once wrote: Well, you think you’re so clever and classless and free / But you’re all fucking peasants / As far as I can see 
  • We unplug ourselves from the grid by recognizing that we will never cure our restlessness by contributing our disposable income to the bottom line of Bullshit, Inc., but only by doing our work. 
  • We’re wired tribally, to act as part of a group. Our psyches are programmed by millions of years of hunter-gatherer evolution. We know what the clan is; we know how to fit into the band and the tribe. What we don’t know is how to be alone. We don’t know how to be free individuals. 
  • The artist and the fundamentalist arise from societies at differing stages of development. The artist is the advanced model. His culture possesses affluence, stability, enough excess of resource to permit the luxury of self-examination. The artist is grounded in freedom. He is not afraid of it. He is lucky. He was born in the right place. He has a core of self- confidence, of hope for the future. He believes in progress and evolution. His faith is that humankind is advancing, however haltingly and imperfectly, toward a better world. 
  • Fundamentalism is the philosophy of the powerless, the conquered, the displaced and the dispossessed. Its spawning ground is the wreckage of political and military defeat, as Hebrew fundamentalism arose during the Babylonian captivity, as white Christian fundamentalism appeared in the American South during Reconstruction, as the notion of the Master Race evolved in Germany following World War I. In such desperate times, the vanquished race would perish without a doctrine that restored hope and pride. 
  • The humanist believes that humankind, as individuals, is called upon to co-create the world with God. This is why he values human life so highly. In his view, things do progress, life does evolve; each individual has value, at least potentially, in advancing this cause. 
  • The paradox seems to be, as Socrates demonstrated long ago, that the truly free individual is free only to the extent of his own self-mastery. While those who will not govern themselves are condemned to find masters to govern over them. 
  • If you find yourself criticizing other people, you’re probably doing it out of Resistance. When we see others beginning to live their authentic selves, it drives us crazy if we have not lived out our own. 
  • Individuals who are realized in their own lives almost never criticize others. If they speak at all, it is to offer encouragement. 
  • Remember our rule of thumb: The more scared we are of a work or calling, the more sure we can be that we have to do it. 
  • The professional tackles the project that will make him stretch. He takes on the assignment that will bear him into uncharted waters, compel him to explore unconscious parts of himself. 
  • (Conversely, the professional turns down roles that he’s done before. He’s not afraid of them anymore. Why waste his time?) 
  • If you didn’t love the project that is terrifying you, you wouldn’t feel anything. 
  • Grandiose fantasies are a symptom of Resistance. They’re the sign of an amateur. The professional has learned that success, like happiness, comes as a by-product of work. 
  • The professional concentrates on the work and allows rewards to come or not come, whatever they like. 
  • What are we trying to heal, anyway? The athlete knows the day will never come when he wakes up pain-free. He has to play hurt. 
  • Have you ever been to a workshop? These boondoggles are colleges of Resistance. They ought to give out Ph.D.’s in Resistance. What better way of avoiding work than going to a workshop? But what I hate even worse is the word support. 
    • Pressfield’s view certainly makes me feel less guilty about holding this view as well!
  • It is one thing to study war and another to live the warrior’s life. — Telamon of Arcadia, mercenary of the fifth century B.C. 
  • Someone once asked Somerset Maugham if he wrote on a schedule or only when struck by inspiration. “I write only when inspiration strikes,” he replied. “Fortunately it strikes every morning at nine o’clock sharp.” That’s a pro. 
  • I’m keenly aware of the Principle of Priority, which states (a) you must know the difference between what is urgent and what is important, and (b) you must do what’s important first. 
  • The artist committing himself to his calling has volunteered for hell, whether he knows it or not. He will be dining for the duration on a diet of isolation, rejection, self-doubt, despair, ridicule, contempt, and humiliation. 
  • Remember, the Muse favors working stiffs. She hates prima donnas. To the gods the supreme sin is not rape or murder, but pride. To think of yourself as a mercenary, a gun for hire, implants the proper humility. It purges pride and preciousness. 
  • Resistance loves pride and preciousness. Resistance says, “Show me a writer who’s too good to take Job X or Assignment Y and I’ll show you a guy I can crack like a walnut.”
  • The professional arms himself with patience, not only to give the stars time to align in his career, but to keep himself from flaming out in each individual work. He knows that any job, whether it’s a novel or a kitchen remodel, takes twice as long as he thinks and costs twice as much. He accepts that. He recognizes it as reality. 
  • A pro views her work as craft, not art. Not because she believes art is devoid of a mystical dimension. On the contrary. She understands that all creative endeavor is holy, but she doesn’t dwell on it. She knows if she thinks about that too much, it will paralyze her. So she concentrates on technique. The professional masters how, and leaves what and why to the gods. Like Somerset Maugham she doesn’t wait for inspiration, she acts in anticipation of its apparition. The professional is acutely aware of the intangibles that go into inspiration. Out of respect for them, she lets them work. She grants them their sphere while she concentrates on hers. 
  • The professional shuts up. She doesn’t talk about it. She does her work. 
  • The amateur believes he must first overcome his fear; then he can do his work. The professional knows that fear can never be overcome. He knows there is no such thing as a fearless warrior or a dread-free artist. 
  • The professional conducts his business in the real world. Adversity, injustice, bad hops and rotten calls, even good breaks and lucky bounces all comprise the ground over which the campaign must be waged. The field is level, the professional understands, only in heaven. 
  • A PROFESSIONAL DEDICATES HIMSELF TO MASTERING TECHNIQUE 
  • The professional respects his craft. He does not consider himself superior to it. He recognizes the contributions of those who have gone before him. He apprentices himself to them. 
  • The professional dedicates himself to mastering technique not because he believes technique is a substitute for inspiration but because he wants to be in possession of the full arsenal of skills when inspiration does come. The professional is sly. He knows that by toiling beside the front door of technique, he leaves room for genius to enter by the back. 
  • A PROFESSIONAL DOES NOT HESITATE TO ASK FOR HELP 
  • Tiger Woods is the consummate professional. It would never occur to him, as it would to an amateur, that he knows everything, or can figure everything out on his own. On the contrary, he seeks out the most knowledgeable teacher and listens with both ears. The student of the game knows that the levels of revelation that can unfold in golf, as in any art, are inexhaustible. 
  • The professional cannot take rejection personally because to do so reinforces Resistance. Editors are not the enemy; critics are not the enemy. Resistance is the enemy. The battle is inside our own heads. We cannot let external criticism, even if it’s true, fortify our internal foe. That foe is strong enough already. 
  • A professional schools herself to stand apart from her performance, even as she gives herself to it heart and soul. The Bhagavad-Gita tells us we have a right only to our labor, not to the fruits of our labor. All the warrior can give is his life; all the athlete can do is leave everything on the field. 
  • The professional loves her work. She is invested in it wholeheartedly. But she does not forget that the work is not her. Her artistic self contains many works and many performances. Already the next is percolating inside her. The next will be better, and the one after that better still. 
  • The professional cannot let himself take humiliation personally. Humiliation, like rejection and criticism, is the external reflection of internal Resistance. 
  • First, he didn’t react reflexively. He didn’t allow an act that by all rights should have provoked an automatic response of rage to actually produce that rage. He controlled his reaction. He governed his emotion. 
  • What he did do was maintain his sovereignty over the moment. He understood that, no matter what blow had befallen him from an outside agency, he himself still had his job to do, the shot he needed to hit right here, right now. And he knew that it remained within his power to produce that shot. Nothing stood in his way except whatever emotional upset he himself chose to hold on to. Tiger’s mother, Kultida, is a Buddhist. Perhaps from her he had learned compassion, to let go of fury at the heedlessness of an overzealous shutter- clicker. In any event Tiger Woods, the ultimate professional, vented his anger quickly with a look, then recomposed himself and returned to the task at hand. 
  • The professional cannot allow the actions of others to define his reality. 
  • Tomorrow morning the critic will be gone, but the writer will still be there facing the blank page. Nothing matters but that he keep working. 
  • Tomorrow morning the critic will be gone, but the writer will still be there facing the blank page. Nothing matters but that he keep working. Short of a family crisis or the outbreak of World War III, the professional shows up, ready to serve the gods. 
  • Remember, Resistance wants us to cede sovereignty to others. It wants us to stake our self-worth, our identity, our reason-for-being, on the response of others to our work. Resistance knows we can’t take this. No one can. 
  • The professional learns to recognize envy-driven criticism and to take it for what it is: the supreme compliment. The critic hates most that which he would have done himself if he had had the guts. 
  • A PROFESSIONAL RECOGNIZES HER LIMITATIONS She gets an agent, she gets a lawyer, she gets an accountant. She knows she can only be a professional at one thing. She brings in other pros and treats them with respect. 
  • A PROFESSIONAL REINVENTS HIMSELF 
  • The professional does not permit himself to become hidebound within one incarnation, however comfortable or successful. Like a transmigrating soul, he shucks his outworn body and dons a new one. He continues his journey. 
  • Making yourself a corporation (or just thinking of yourself in that way) reinforces the idea of professionalism because it separates the artist-doing-the-work from the will-and- consciousness-running-the-show. No matter how much abuse is heaped on the head of the former, the latter takes it in stride and keeps on trucking. Conversely with success: You-the-writer may get a swelled head, but you-the-boss remember how to take yourself down a peg. 
  • Have you ever worked in an office? Then you know about Monday morning status meetings. The group assembles in the conference room and the boss goes over what assignments each team member is responsible for in the coming week. When the meeting breaks up, an assistant prepares a work sheet and distributes it. When this hits your desk an hour later, you know exactly what you have to do that week. I have one of those meetings with myself every Monday. I sit down and go over my assignments. Then I type it up and distribute it to myself. I have corporate stationery and corporate business cards and a corporate checkbook. I write off corporate expenses and pay corporate taxes. I have different credit cards for myself and my corporation. 
  • If we think of ourselves as a corporation, it gives us a healthy distance on ourselves. We’re less subjective. We don’t take blows as personally. We’re more cold-blooded; we can price our wares more realistically. Sometimes, as Joe Blow himself, I’m too mild-mannered to go out and sell. But as Joe Blow, Inc., I can pimp the hell out of myself. I’m not me anymore. I’m Me, Inc. 
  • The first duty is to sacrifice to the gods and pray them to grant you the thoughts, words, and deeds likely to render your command most pleasing to the gods and to bring yourself, your friends, and your city the fullest measure of affection and glory and advantage. –Xenophon, The Cavalry Commander 
  • If it does, you have my permission to think of angels in the abstract. Consider these forces as being impersonal as gravity. Maybe they are. It’s not hard to believe, is it, that a force exists in every grain and seed to make it grow? Or that in every kitten or colt is an instinct that impels it to run and play and learn. 
  • Here’s Socrates, in Plato’s Phaedrus, on the “noble effect of heaven-sent madness”: The third type of possession and madness is possession by the Muses. When this seizes upon a gentle and virgin soul it rouses it to inspired expression in lyric and other sorts of poetry, and glorifies countless deeds of the heroes of old for the instruction of posterity. But if a man comes to the door of poetry untouched by the madness of the Muses, believing that technique alone will make him a good poet, he and his sane compositions never reach perfection, but are utterly eclipsed by the performances of the inspired madman. 
  • Our ancestors were keenly cognizant of forces and energies whose seat was not in this material sphere but in a loftier, more mysterious one. What did they believe about this higher reality? First, they believed that death did not exist there. The gods are immortal. The gods, though not unlike humans, are infinitely more powerful. To defy their will is futile. To act toward heaven with pride is to call down calamity. Time and space display an altered existence in this higher dimension. The gods travel “swift as thought.” They can tell the future, some of them, and though the playwright Agathon tells us, This alone is denied to God: the power to undo the past yet the immortals can play tricks with time, as we ourselves may sometimes, in dreams or visions. The universe, the Greeks believed, was not indifferent. The gods take an interest in human affairs, and intercede for good or ill in our designs. The contemporary view is that all this is charming but preposterous. Is it? Then answer this. Where did Hamlet come from? Where did the Parthenon come from? Where did Nude Descending a Staircase come from? 
  • I’ll take Xenophon at his word; before I sit down to work, I’ll take a minute and show respect to this unseen Power who can make or break me. 
  • Artists have invoked the Muse since time immemorial. There is great wisdom to this. There is magic to effacing our human arrogance and humbly entreating help from a source we cannot see, hear, touch, or smell. 
    • A good habit to build
  • Sustain for me. Homer doesn’t ask for brilliance or success. He just wants to keep this thing going. This song. That about covers it. From The Brothers Karamazov to your new venture in the plumbing-supply business. 
  • I admire particularly the warning against the second crime, to destroy for meat the oxen of the most exalted Sun. That’s the felony that calls down soul-destruction: the employment of the sacred for profane means. Prostitution. Selling out. 
  • Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation) there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would not otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favour all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance which no man would have dreamed would come his way. I have learned a deep respect for one of Goethe’s couplets: “Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, magic, and power in it. Begin it now.” — W. H. Murray, The Scottish Himalayan Expedition 
  • When I finish a day’s work, I head up into the hills for a hike. I take a pocket tape recorder because I know that as my surface mind empties with the walk, another part of me will chime in and start talking. 
  • What does it tell us about the architecture of our psyches that, without our exerting effort or even thinking about it, some voice in our head pipes up to counsel us (and counsel us wisely) on how to do our work and live our lives? Whose voice is it? What software is grinding away, scanning gigabytes, while we, our mainstream selves, are otherwise occupied? 
  • The principle of organization is built into nature. Chaos itself is self-organizing. Out of primordial disorder, stars find their orbits; rivers make their way to the sea. 
  • How do we experience this? By having ideas. Insights pop into our heads while we’re shaving or taking a shower or even, amazingly, while we’re actually working. The elves behind this are smart. If we forget something, they remind us. If we veer off-course, they trim the tabs and steer us back. 
  • What can we conclude from this? Clearly some intelligence is at work, independent of our conscious mind and yet in alliance with it, processing our material for us and alongside us. 
  • The power to take charge was in my hands; all I had to do was believe it. 
  • You’re supposed to learn that things that you think are nothing, as weightless as air, are actually powerful substantial forces, as real and as solid as earth. 
  • The moment a person learns he’s got terminal cancer, a profound shift takes place in his psyche. At one stroke in the doctor’s office he becomes aware of what really matters to him. Things that sixty seconds earlier had seemed all- important suddenly appear meaningless, while people and concerns that he had till then dismissed at once take on supreme importance. 
  • Other thoughts occur to the patient diagnosed as terminal. What about that gift he had for music? What became of the passion he once felt to work with the sick and the homeless? Why do these unlived lives return now with such power and poignancy? 
  • Faced with our imminent extinction, Tom Laughlin believes, all assumptions are called into question. What does our life mean? Have we lived it right? Are there vital acts we’ve left unperformed, crucial words unspoken? Is it too late? 
  • The Ego, Jung tells us, is that part of the psyche that we think of as “I.” Our conscious intelligence. Our everyday brain that thinks, plans and runs the show of our day-to-day life. The Self, as Jung defined it, is a greater entity, which includes the Ego but also incorporates the Personal and Collective Unconscious. Dreams and intuitions come from the Self. The archetypes of the unconscious dwell there. It is, Jung believed, the sphere of the soul. 
  • Have you ever wondered why the slang terms for intoxication are so demolition-oriented? Stoned, smashed, hammered. It’s because they’re talking about the Ego. It’s the Ego that gets blasted, waxed, plastered. We demolish the Ego to get to the Self. 
  • The instinct that pulls us toward art is the impulse to evolve, to learn, to heighten and elevate our consciousness. The Ego hates this. Because the more awake we become, the less we need the Ego. 
  • These are serious fears. But they’re not the real fear. Not the Master Fear, the Mother of all Fears that’s so close to us that even when we verbalize it we don’t believe it. Fear That We Will Succeed. 
  • We know that if we embrace our ideals, we must prove worthy of them. And that scares the hell out of us. What will become of us? We will lose our friends and family, who will no longer recognize us. We will wind up alone, in the cold void of starry space, with nothing and no one to hold on to. 
  • Personally I’m with Wordsworth: Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting: The soul that rises with us, our life’s star, Hath had elsewhere its setting, And cometh from afar: Not in entire forgetfulness, And not in utter nakedness, But trailing clouds of glory do we come, From God who is our home. 
  • Our job in this lifetime is not to shape ourselves into some ideal we imagine we ought to be, but to find out who we already are and become it. 
  • In the animal kingdom, individuals define themselves in one of two ways — by their rank within a hierarchy (a hen in a pecking order, a wolf in a pack) or by their connection to a territory (a home base, a hunting ground, a turf). 
  • We thrash around, flashing our badges of status (Hey, how do you like my Lincoln Navigator?) and wondering why nobody gives a shit. 
  • We have entered Mass Society. The hierarchy is too big. It doesn’t work anymore. 
  • But the artist cannot look to others to validate his efforts or his calling. If you don’t believe me, ask Van Gogh, who produced masterpiece after masterpiece and never found a buyer in his whole life. 
  • In other words, the hack writes hierarchically. He writes what he imagines will play well in the eyes of others. He does not ask himself, What do I myself want to write? What do I think is important? Instead he asks, What’s hot, what can I make a deal for? 
  • The artist and the mother are vehicles, not originators. They don’t create the new life, they only bear it. This is why birth is such a humbling experience. The new mom weeps in awe at the little miracle in her arms. She knows it came out of her but not from her, through her but not of her. 
  • Instead let’s ask ourselves like that new mother: What do I feel growing inside me? Let me bring that forth, if I can, for its own sake and not for what it can do for me or how it can advance my standing. 
  • Here’s another test. Of any activity you do, ask yourself: If I were the last person on earth, would I still do it? 
  • Someone once asked the Spartan king Leonidas to identify the supreme warrior virtue from which all others flowed. He replied: “Contempt for death.” For us as artists, read “failure.” Contempt for failure is our cardinal virtue. By confining our attention territorially to our own thoughts and actions — in other words, to the work and its demands — we cut the earth from beneath the blue-painted, shield-banging, spear-brandishing foe. 
  • When Krishna instructed Arjuna that we have a right to our labor but not to the fruits of our labor, he was counseling the warrior to act territorially, not hierarchically. We must do our work for its own sake, not for fortune or attention or applause. 
  • Then there’s the third way proffered by the Lord of Discipline, which is beyond both hierarchy and territory. That is to do the work and give it to Him. Do it as an offering to God. Give the act to me. Purged of hope and ego, Fix your attention on the soul. Act and do for me. The work comes from heaven anyway. Why not give it back? 
  • Creative work is not a selfish act or a bid for attention on the part of the actor. It’s a gift to the world and every being in it. Don’t cheat us of your contribution. Give us what you’ve got. 
    • Put this somewhere that you can see it.