Daily Creative

Wouldn’t it be great if you didn’t have to do anything at all, yet all your work showed up completed each day, in a neat, organized pile, ready for your manager or client to review?

Actually, no. That would be terrible. It seems like it would be wonderful, but the reality is that you need to experience struggle and tension to feel alive. There is no growth without tension. There is no gratification without challenge.

Optimism is a belief in a better possible future, knowing that it might require some work to achieve. Wishful thinking is lazy optimism that wants everything to just happen. Optimism is willing to put in the work, while wishful thinking wants to live with the delusion that things will just work out.

We need optimism to do creative work. Without it, we cannot take intuitive leaps. But we are still responsible for the work necessary to bring our vision into being.

Believe in a better possible future, then develop a plan to bring it about.

Optimism is creative fuel. Wishful thinking is lazy optimism.

QUESTION

Are you falling into the trap of wishful thinking? Where do you need a plan vs. a dream?

Imagine you’re walking across a rope bridge that you’ve walked across a hundred times. Suddenly, the planks shift and fall. What you do next is incredibly important: Will you panic and fall? Will you freeze and perish? Or can you find a path forward?

How do you get moving again? You have to tell yourself a story about all the times you’ve successfully crossed the bridge

If you work long-arc projects, you probably know the frustration and pain of having a project fail to live up to expectations. After expend- ing so much time, energy, and focus on something you care about, it can be devastating when it just doesn’t click. What you do next is very important. The story you tell yourself in those moments may define the next few years of your life and work.

Psychologist Martin Seligman explained that there are three ways in which our internal beliefs or narratives become damaging: we make them personal (“I’ve failed, so I must be a failure.”), pervasive (“I failed in this instance, so I’ll probably fail in every instance.”), and permanent (“I failed once, so I’ll probably fail always.”)

Of course, each of these three narratives is a lie, but in the moment, they feel very true. The narrative fills the vacuum previously filled by our unmet expectations. It’s collateral damage we experience when walking through the refining fires in the depth of the valley of the cre- ative process.

Don’t answer to the name “Failure.” For better or worse, the story you choose to live out establishes your boundaries.

Failure is not a name to answer to or a badge of shame to wear.

QUESTION

is there a false narrative about failure that is preventing you from doing good work?

If you really, really wanted to ensure that something happened on a particular day, what would you do? Would you simply try really hard to remember to do it? Would you write it on a Post-it and hope that you’d see it at some point that day?

No, of course not. You would put it on your calendar.

The things that are important to us get coveted space in our schedules. We block time for them, because it’s the best way to ensure that they are accomplished.

Yet when it comes to idea generation, we somehow believe that it will simply happen at some point when we least expect it. We hold these mythical ideals of “eureka moments” as uncontrollable, spontaneous strokes of luck. This is untrue. We can increase the likelihood of experiencing them more often.

How? By scheduling time for them. By dedicating blocks on the calendar for thinking about problems and sparking ideas for them. I will often schedule an hour on the calendar with the title “XYZ Training Idea,” or “Chapter 21,” or something similar. These are placeholders for time to think about and generate ideas for important work I’m account- able for accomplishing.

If it’s critical, it goes on your calendar. Block a bit of time today (or this week) to work on ideas for a project that’s still unresolved. You’ll be surprised at how often creativity shows up right on time when you plan for it.

Don’t expect ideas to happen in the cracks and crevices of life.

QUESTION

Which project has open loops that you need to plan time to close? Do it today.

You have a finite amount of attention to spend on behalf of your daily work. How you allocate that finite attention is critical to your success. However, there are any number of distractions that can arise and pull you out of focus.

There is a dynamic that I like to call “the ping.” It’s a perpetual pin- prick in my gut that says, “You should go check your email!” or “You should go check your voice mail!” Or “You should go check your phone, because maybe the president of the United States is calling you with a national security crisis!” That’s the level of urgency the ping delivers, and it has us living in a state that researcher Linda Stone calls “con- tinuous partial attention.” I’m always kind of here, but I’m also kind of somewhere else at the same time. Do you think you do your best work that way?

Of course not.

Focus is an act of bravery, because to say yes to one thing, you must say no to many, many others. Yes, you may always fear what you are missing out on, but that is the price that you must pay for the clarity that comes with sharp, honed focus.

Be brave today and protect your attention. Dedicate some time off the grid to delve deeply into your most important, focused creative work. You will be rewarded.

Focus is an act of bravery.

QUESTION

Do you ever have time off the grid when no one can reach you? Carve out time today to focus on your most important work.

Some creative pros are so afraid of making a mistake that they’d rather freeze in place until they can figure out the right path forward. The one thing they are absolutely certain about is that everyone around them has it all figured out—that they are surely the only ones who are treading water. After all, look at all the confidence everyone else conveys!

The irony is that when you freeze in place, you only dig yourself deeper into your rut. Inaction is the enemy of discovery. The path to self- discovery is not through thought but through action. As Ellen Langer wrote in On Becoming an Artist, “Action is the way we get to experience ourselves. And so, we act not to bring about an outcome but to bring about ourselves.” We discover our unique contribution—our giftedness— not by contemplating what we might do but by actually doing things, feeling the resistance of the world when we act, learning about our response to that resistance, then adapting, trying again, and continuing the cycle.

Action is the only way to self-discovery. It’s the only path to fulfillment. It’s not what you know, it’s what you do about it that matters.

Be a person of action.

QUESTION

Is there an action that you know you need to take but have been hesitant to do so? Why are you hesitant to act?

When was the last time you failed? I don’t mean you struggled at making a new dish for dinner or couldn’t complete a crossword puzzle. When was the last time you took a risk, you really tried, you gave it your all, and you came up short? (Bonus points if it was in public.)

For many, failure is their biggest fear. They’ve spent much of their life shielding themselves from the potential of falling short to the point that they can’t even remember the last time they did. They take on proj- ects that are well within their abilities, and when they don’t quite hit the mark, they rationalize why what they did was actually a success if you think about it the right way.

If you don’t occasionally fail, you aren’t trying sufficiently difficult, ambitious things. You aren’t stretching yourself and testing your abilities. Most people can easily lift a ten-pound dumbbell, but you don’t build muscle that way. Instead, you lift a challenging weight over and over again until your muscle begins to fail. When you reach your absolute limit, you push harder, then you quit. The next time, your capacity is greater.

When you don’t fail, your capacity never changes. You simply live and work within safe, predictable limits. And you never know what you’re capable of.

If you aren’t failing from time to time, you are playing it too safe.

QUESTION

When was the last time you failed? Do you think you are stretching yourself enough?

Urgency and diligence are the foundation of hustle. If you want to succeed in your life and work, you will need to work very, very hard and in a focused way. However, there’s a difference between hard work and desperate work. Hard work is sourced in intent and is focused and resourced. Desperate work expends a lot of energy but is unfocused and often unproductive.

How can you know the difference?

► Hard work is targeted, whereas desperate work flails.

► Hard work has a clear end point, whereas desperate work feels never-ending.

► Hard work is from a position of strength, whereas desperate work feels like you’re always behind.

► Hard work feels good, whereas desperate work feels empty.

► Hard work has a plan, whereas desperate work is reactive to urgency.

► Hard work is measured in intervals of progress, whereas desperate work is measured by how much it temporarily relieves your anxiety.

► Hard work pursues the right idea, whereas desperate work latches on to the first available idea.

Of course, you must work hard. But be mindful of the subtle differences between working hard and working out of desperation. When you feel desperate, you don’t think clearly, and you feel too anxious to take the necessary time to play with your thoughts and experiment with ideas.

Work with diligence and urgency, but don’t work desperately.

QUESTION

Can you think of a time when you worked desperately rather than hard? What was it like?

Creative Day

There were several key moments in my career when I needed a clear next direction. In fact, this has happened in the wake of the release of every one of my books, when I’m very busy talking about my past work but uncertain about what my next thing should be. In those moments, I declare a “creative day.”

I get up in the morning, have my coffee and breakfast, then drive downtown in my city and walk along the river. Then I walk through the city, visit bookstores, pay attention to the stimuli around me, cross the river and walk through the neighborhoods on the other side, and some- times even see a movie if the mood strikes me. All along the way, I take notes, listen for patterns, and see what the world offers in the way of inspiration.

Here’s the thing: every single time I do this, I come away with a strong sense of what to do next. Simply breaking away from the email, the daily grind, and the pressure to produce and allowing myself to meander, think freely, and wander the world gives me fresh perspective and enthusiasm for my work. I come home from those creative days tired but refreshed at the same time.

When it’s time for a bold move, declare a creative day.

QUESTION

When might you schedule a creative day in your life?

It’s tempting to squeeze as much efficiency out of your days as possible, but in doing this, you risk forfeiting your best insights. Ideas rarely arrive just on time. It’s best to accommodate the unpredictability of the cre- ative process by allowing yourself some margin. If you think something will take an hour, give yourself ninety minutes. If you think it will take a week, plan for a week and a half. Yes, I’m aware that these inefficiencies make many managers squirm. However, this is anything but wasteful. It’s necessary.

Creativity is not efficient, but it utilizes everything. If you are pur- poseful and mindful, nothing goes to waste. By leaving a little bit of room in your process, you allow yourself the freedom to follow mental trails that arise or to play a bit with an idea before feeling the need to refine it. You grant yourself creative latitude. When the time pressure is off, your mind is free to roam without its executive function staring at the clock.

As a pro, you don’t have the luxury of unlimited time, but that doesn’t mean that you should artificially limit yourself either. Carve out margin for creativity, and you will experience insights you would otherwise miss.

Leave some room in your process for spontaneous insight and action.

QUESTION

How can you give yourself more space in your creative process?

Think back to a time when someone gave you a word of encouragement that lit your fire. What did they say? Why did it matter to you? How did it change your perspective or energy?

Isn’t it strange how one comment at the right time can stick with you for years? One person speaking directly about who you are or praising something you’ve accomplished can be a vector changer for your day, your week, or even your career. The funny thing is, that person may not even know how their words affected you. To them, it may have been an offhand comment at an opportune moment, but to you, it meant everything.

To encourage means to “put courage into,” which is precisely what you’re doing. You are putting another log on their fire. You will likely move on, but their world might be changed.

Who have you seen do something extraordinary in the past week? Maybe others didn’t even notice, but you know what it took for them to do it.

Who is acting bravely right now but may think no one sees them?

Who does the little things that hold everything together, even when no one is looking?

Who has had a series of losses and just needs someone to remind them of who they are and what they’re capable of ?

When you encourage, you put courage into the world. And it will likely come right back to you.

Take a moment to encourage someone else. It may change their life and yours.

QUESTION

Who can you encourage today?