3 Things I’ve Learned Today #2 (Perfectionism, Getting out of a Creative Rut, Mastery)
Writing this series has helped me actively search for new, practical and interesting ideas to learn, internalize and share. While I’d like to bring value to the people who read this list, it simply doesn’t matter if no one likes it.
At the end of the day, it will only help me grow and encourage me to explore new avenues and thoughts that I would never have known had I stayed comfortable with what I knew then.
Writing this series has also helped me read more, which is something I have been neglecting as of late. Reading has become therapeutic for me and I’ve noticed that I’m more engaged and interactive with the book ever since I decided to learn and document new things everyday.
I try to take in ideas more slowly, and jot down notes or mark down pages that I want to revisit or find interesting. This is helpful because I usually end up forgetting most of what I read an hour after I put the book down.
I talked about the importance of reading in my first article of the series, if you’d like to take a peek.
Enough housekeeping — let’s get started.
The Perfect is the Enemy of the Good
I think perfectionism is a form of fear and insecurity. You place unrealistic goals or expectations for yourself and dig a hole for yourself before you can even get started. You believe your idea, writing or artwork has to be an amazing, flawless and captivating from the get-go.
You believe if you’re just patient and wait around until inspiration hits, you will be able to show the world your perfect creation. You refuse to get started until that moment, and when 20 years pass you by, you’ll regret not taking the first step and not being brave enough to confront your fears and insecurities.
“If you think good work is somehow synonymous with perfect work, you are headed for big trouble. Art is human; error is human; ergo, art is error. Inevitably, your work (like, uh, the preceding syllogism…) will be flawed. Why? Because you’re a human being, and only human beings, warts and all, make art. Without warts it is not clear what you would be, but clearly you wouldn’t be one of us.
Nothing we create is perfect. Everything we call masterpieces and works of brilliance is still flawed. Name a perfect painting or a book. Why is it perfect? How could you call it perfect? An inherently flawed human cannot make a perfect work.
Don’t expect such grandiosity, because you are only doing yourself a disservice by discouraging yourself from ever starting. The only thing you can do is do what you’re best at — creating flawed work tirelessly as a flawed human being to the best of your ability with the tools you have present.
Nonetheless, the belief persists among some artists (and lots of ex-artists) that doing art means doing things flawlessly — ignoring the fact that this prerequisite would disqualify most existing works of art. Indeed, it seems vastly more plausible to advance the counter-principle, namely that imperfection is not only a common ingredient in art, but very likely an essential ingredient.
Ansel Adams, never one to mistake precision for perfection, often recalled the old adage that “the perfect is the enemy of the good”, his point being that if he waited for everything in the scene to be exactly right, he’d probably never make a photograph. Adams was right: to require perfection is to invite paralysis.
Try to see the flaws and imperfections as signs. The art you create is a reflection of your skill set at the present moment. If it’s not good enough, it will show you in all its ugly glory. You will always know what you can improve on, if you’re being honest.
For you, the seed of your next art work lies embedded in the imperfections of your current piece. Such imperfections (or mistakes, if you’re feeling particularly depressed about them today) are your guides — valuable, reliable, objective, non-judgmental guides — to matters you need to reconsider or develop further. It is precisely this interaction between the ideal and the real that locks your art into the real world, and gives meaning to both.
Quotes used from Art & Fear — Observations On The Perils (and Rewards) Of Artmaking by David Bayles & Ted Orland
Getting Out Of A Creative Rut
There are some days where ideas will refuse to come to me. Maybe it’s a lack of sleep, maybe I haven’t had my coffee, maybe I haven’t eaten lunch yet. There are plenty of reasons you can come up with to analyze your creative rut, and different people will tell you different solutions.
Some people will tell you to walk outside for an hour. Some people will tell you to go do something fun and get yourself pumped. Some people will tell you to read a book, watch TV or take a nap.
I guess these strategies work sometimes, but I’ve realized that these are not sustainable enough to help me produce creative ideas constantly. Why? They’re not my own routines and habits. Sure, they might be able to help me break out of my routine once in a while and help me experience new perspectives and ideas, but I think sticking to what worked best for you is key to consistently produce great ideas and great art.
And when you watch your work unfold day by day, piece by piece, there’s no escaping cause and effect. Simply put, what you did got you here, and if you apply the same methods again you will likely get the same result again. This is true not just for being stuck, but for all other artistic states as well — including highly productive states. As a practical matter, ideas and methods that work usually continue to work.
My best performing articles were all written in the same place, around the same time, in the same week. It seems coincidental, but I do think having a consistent routine helped me.
I started my day by meditating for 10 minutes as soon as I woke up. I jumped straight into the shower and stretched for 5 minutes. I got dressed, got my laptop and a book, went out to a cafe close to my home and ordered a large vanilla iced coffee. I sat in the same seat and read for an hour or two. Finally, I’d open the laptop and force myself to write for two hours. After two hours, I would close the laptop, come home and work out for an hour. Only then would I give myself free time to enjoy online content or social media.
Having this routine made me extremely productive and I was always able to conceive of a topic that I was excited to write about. It helped me feel like I had a mission for the day, and it organized my thoughts so that I could communicate my ideas more clearly and creatively.
“If you were working smoothly and now you are stuck, chances are you unnecessarily altered some approach that was already working perfectly well. When things go haywire, your best opening strategy might be to return — very carefully and consciously — to the habits and practices in play the last time you felt good about the work. Return to the space you drifted away from and (sometimes at least) the work will return as well.
While I can’t maintain that schedule anymore due to my day job, I was able to create a new routine that still works fairly well. I tweaked my routine instead of giving it up, and it has allowed me to continuously produce valuable content everyday.
If you’re stuck and in a creative rut, go back to your roots. Do something that you used to do that brought you joy. Find what made you love the craft in the first place, and incorporate it into a routine or habit that will help you break out of the block.
Quotes used from Art & Fear — Observations On The Perils (and Rewards) Of Artmaking by David Bayles & Ted Orland
The Road To Mastery Is Lifelong
The word mastery makes me think that there will come a day where I understand everything about the specific skill I’ve worked on improving my entire life.
It makes me think there really is the peak of the mountain that I am climbing, and once I get there I can finally stop climbing and declare my greatness. I’ve reached the end of the road, where no man has gone, and there is nowhere left to go.
At least, that’s how I viewed mastery at first. In my impatience and naivety as a novice starting off, I immediately sought the destination, the end goal, the prize at the end of the race. It seems that my priorities are still skewed, and I am actually desiring what I believe comes from mastery — prestige, honor, fame, money, influence. All that good stuff.
Robert Greene sees it in a different light in his book Mastery. He believes our entire lives should be lived as apprentices who continuously seek to improve and learn. He doesn’t believe that Mastery is a linear path, and tells us to pay attention to everything that happens to us, since we have a lot to learn from the world and from others.
Finally, you must not see this process of moving through levels of intelligence as merely linear, heading toward some kind of ultimate destination known as mastery. Your whole life is a kind of apprenticeship to which you apply your learning skills. Everything that happens to you is a form of instruction if you pay attention. The creativity that you gain in learning a skill so deeply must be constantly refreshed, as you keep forcing your mind back to a state of openness. Even knowledge of your vocation must be revisited throughout the course of your life as changes in circumstance force you to adapt its direction.
In moving toward mastery, you are bringing your mind closer to reality and to life itself. Anything that is alive is in a continual state of change and movement. The moment you rest, thinking that you have attained the level you desire, a part of your mind enters a phase of decay. You lose your hard-earned creativity and others begin to sense it. This is a power an intelligence that must be continually renewed or it will die.
Mastery is a life long task and there is no time to waste. Every moment that you do not actively try to choose and improve on what you want to spend the rest of your life doing, you are heading slowly toward death and decay. Dramatic? Nope. Exaggerated? I don’t think so.
This is probably the most important thing in your life. Everything else will fade away, and the only thing that makes life worth living is to find something meaningful to pursue in your life. The pursuit of material goods and pleasure will only make you suffer even more than you are right now. Strive to become the best at what you love, and you may just find out the meaning of life.
Do not talk about giftedness, inborn talents! One can name great men of all kinds who were very little gifted. They acquired greatness, became “geniuses” (as we put it), through qualities the lack of which no one who knew what they were would boast of: they all possessed that seriousness of the efficient workman which first learns to construct the parts properly before it ventures to fashion a great whole; they allowed themselves time for it, because they took more pleasure in making the little, secondary things well than in the effect of a dazzling whole.
— Friedrich Nietzsche
