Zero Fluff

Your Phone Is Ruining Your Creativity

Nathan William

So I recently had a theory that I’ve since tested and it is for real. Here’s the hypothesis: your phone is ruining your creativity. Now before you string me up by your charger let me flesh this out. I don’t just mean your phone, I mean all entertainment, everything from Netflix to Instagram to whatever else you do to fill empty time. And I’m as guilty as anyone, so I tested this on myself. I stopped watching shows or movies of any kind, and I had my wife set a password protected time limit on my social media apps on my phone so I could only use them for 15 minutes a day, aka Instagram. I also stopped listening to music in my car, which, I know sounds brutal and for me is extreme because I’m basically an audiophile. But again, the idea is to give myself emptiness, time and space just to think, to look around and notice. One other thing I did is I left my phone on silent in my home office with the door locked during non-work hours and most of the day on weekends.

So, how has it gone? Well I thought it would be helpful, but I did not know it would be life changing. I’ve heard people like Simon Sinek talk about this, and I actually just recently heard a kid’s science podcast talk about a study on boredom that showed that the more bored you are the more creative your ideas become. And now from personal experience, they are both ridiculously right. Literally on the second day with all this empty time I just started filling pages with notes on ideas for how to approach my business, creative ideas for films, for new Zero Fluff episodes, for ways to spend time with my wife and kids. And now that it’s been a few weeks I can not say my ideas have slowed down much at all.

It also hit me like a ton of bricks: this is why people have so many of their best ideas when they’re in the shower! because typically (unless you’re really trying to run from something inside yourself) you aren’t watching shows or scrolling through Instagram while you’re mindlessly scrubbing yourself clean like you always do. And it’s also pretty classic for people to have dawning ideas while driving, again, a place where you’re not mindlessly entertaining yourself with TV or your phone, at least… I hope not. (Pause in the music) “ehhem.”

And beyond creativity I just have more time to think about what I’m doing, rather than perpetually cruising on autopilot. And when I think about what I’m doing, I make intentional decisions about what I want to do next. One of my greatest fears is waking up 10 or 20 or 30 years from now in a place I just don’t want to be and thinking, how did I get here?

There’s no shortage of hate for the effect of phones and tv, and to be honest they aren’t the real problem, they're just like any fine thing we abuse to avoid pain; to avoid being uncomfortable. But like I’ve said before, we need what you have to offer, your thoughts, your talents, your presence, and you need those things of yourself as well, and it’s beyond worth the discomfort it takes to get there.

Here’s what I suggest: Try this experiment and take a month to starve yourself of distraction. No shows, movies, music in your car, limit your screen time and if you find yourself waiting in a public place whether it’s for a friend to meet you for coffee or you’re in a waiting room at a doctors appointment, leave your phone in your backpack or purse or whatever and just give yourself a break. I would love to hear about what it does to you… The benefit for me has been priceless, and if it changes your life too, for you, I’ll only charge $50 bucks.

Recently I had a realization that is possibly the most influential idea I’ve ever had. And that is that the true reward of all of our passion and creativity and hard work is friendship. If you work for years aiming at money you’ll be disappointed when you get it. And if you work for years to attain accolades or fame of some kind you’ll be tremendously dissatisfied. You spend too much of your time on the journey toward your goals for it to just be about what you receive when it’s all over. The true reward is happening all along the way, and that is the friendships we forge as we strive together. And until you realize that and enjoy the process you’ll be incredibly frustrated, especially if you actually succeed.

The weird thing about friendship is it doesn’t exist on its own. It needs those other interests and passions to ignite and fuel it. But at the same time, ask just about anyone and they’ll tell you that their friendships are far more important than the things that brought them together.

This goes for everyone you work with, those you work along side of and those you work for. I mean, are you a good friend to your clients? Because the reward there isn’t money either, it’s the friendships you’re building. The money is just a great way of appreciating you for how well you serve them. Aim for the money and you’ll have a few pay days, aim for the people and you’ll have long-term friends who love appreciating you with their dollars.

Don’t get me wrong, your work is important. Just don’t be tricked into thinking it’s what you really want, because money and fame aren’t good enough for your hard work and creativity, but your friends are.

We Need Your Sexiness

Nathan William

Does self doubt pour cold water all over your artistic sexiness?

Recently I’ve been blown away by several artists and musicians and the thread that moves through each of them is a form of creative integrity that I can’t think to call anything other than artistic sexiness. I think maybe you know what I mean. It’s an artistry that just moves and drips with feeling. Where the artist is lost and gone and clearly has no idea where they are anymore. It’s when someone ignores every inhibition to make the purest thing they can conjure. It’s obvious when I experience an artist in their moment because It’ll stop me dead in my tracks and it makes me want to scream with a sort of pent up celebration. It’s incredibly cathartic and I think it’s because it is in those moments that I catch clear glimpses of what we were created for.

But the problem is doubt... fear from the massive vulnerability that comes with it. A voice of “what if they don’t like what they see?” And like all great lies that voice is half right. There are many who won’t get it. But art isn’t made for the masses. It speaks deeply to those who resonate with your story, and that isn’t everyone. Some of the best art is inherently polarizing.

If you’re an artist, there’s a bigger calling on you than you may realize. A chance to offer hope in a way that others desperately need. Please don’t let your doubts keep us from experiencing the work you were crafted for. We need your sexiness.

Speed & Creativity

Nathan William

Art doesn't like to wait. It likes to just pour itself out onto whatever medium is in front of you. When you feel something and the vision is clear in your mind the last thing you want is to charge batteries.

Making films is a very time consuming process, and all the more time consuming when we let it. I have a love hate relationship with production for one major reason: Gear. I have to often fight the temptation to be bitter toward gimbals and batteries and wireless transmissions and all of it. The reason is because it's all created in the name of efficiency, but often enough we end up fighting the endless amount of cables and signals and settings instead.

Ultimately I have no problem with gear, in fact I think it's incredible, as long as it's really helping you. And that's the real question. Is this thing you bought really helping you do better work? Or did you buy it because the work you're doing isn't satisfying so you find the fun in playing with cool toys... which of course doesn't satisfy and doesn't last very long at all, and then on to the next purchase with more cables and more technical support and more little things that annoy you about it even though you like most things.

Don't be sucker'd by the enormous business created around holding your camera in one place. There's an endless swarm of people who are willing to sell you their thing.

The point is, is it really helping you do better work? Because creativity doesn't like to wait.

Risk

Nathan William

For a while now I've almost been tempted to brand all of what we do as 'Risk'. For the vast majority almost everything we've ever done that's really succeeded started with a conversation where we said, "What if we did something really crazy?" Now, crazy doesn't mean the same thing in every situation, like for instance, in a music video I once directed, taking a big risk meant having the whole thing open up with a super slow four and a half minute long shot. In the world of music videos for rock bands that was a big departure from the norm, and a big reason why we did it. It's also worth pointing out that we didn't just do it to be different. It lended to the story in a way that a lot of faster shots simply wouldn't have. It reinforced our messaging.

The point here is extremely well captured in a quote from Seth Godin in his amazing book The Dip, where he says, "Playing it safe is the riskiest thing you can do." I think one good addition to that is as long as it's still saying what you want it to. Don't just do something different for the sake of different if it's a total departure from your messaging and your audience.

It's those works of art that half of us love and half of us hate... those are the ones that we all talk about, and that we ultimately remember.

Everything else is just a wash downstream in the flood of everything else.

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Also, check out our newest work here.

The Hard Work of Creativity

Nathan William

The creative process is like one wild goose chase after another. We've learned to embrace it. I was recently reminded of the famous quote from Stephen King, “Amateurs sit and wait for inspiration, the rest of us just get up and go to work.”

Great ideas are king and we fight hard for them. They feel easy when you watch them play out in their final glory but when you're making this work and your perspective of the end is dim and you don't know how to bridge the gap it can feel like reaching into the darkness and hoping you feel something you can grab ahold of. Doing good work is time consuming and hard and it's only made harder when you don't embrace the fact that this is the creative process. 

The sooner you get "comfortable" with the unknown, the sooner you'll stop wandering off the road that leads to your best work.

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Also, check out our newest work here.

The Real Work (Who We Are)

Nathan William

We spend a lot of our own time and money to do our own work. Work we love. Spec work. Often when we tell someone we’re doing something on spec they have a couple different responses, one is to feel bad for us because they assume we don’t have paying clients. The other is to be half inspired because we’re doing what we love, but of course (they assume) you have to do all the other boring work to pay the bills. One seems to pity us and the other somewhat assumes we’re too idealistic to actually be viable. Both ideas misunderstand us.

We aren’t doing these projects because we can’t find paying clients and these projects for us aren’t a side endeavor while we take leave from the slavery of the real work. For us this is the real work. And we’re in the driver seat. These projects are a beacon, a signal, a message out to a world of creatives and entrepreneurs and influencers to say, “This is who we are, this is what we believe.” And we don’t expect us to resonate with everyone, but that’s not the point. The point is to find the few we do resonate with, those who share the vision, who share the hunger for risk and beauty and innovation, who believe what we believe. We’re looking for you. We’re not in the business of trying to convince someone to take risks and to trust us as artists. We’re out to build relationships with the few who already do.

So when you see us pouring our own sweat and blood into the work we care about, it’s because this is who we are and this is what we believe. We're not afraid of failure, we're afraid to succeed doing work that doesn't really matter... If you don’t get it that’s ok, these just aren’t the droids you’re looking for.

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If you know someone who would enjoy this post I hope you'll pass on a link. Thanks.

Also, check out our newest work here.