Accidental Creative

No One Sets Out To Be A Smooth Jazz Musician

Dave sends us this tidbit from the Onion. Ever wonder how little decisions can lead to big mistakes? Here’s a comical  retrospective of one jazz musician’s tumble into commercial viability. (Fake, of course. C’mon…it’s the Onion!)

"Cover bands don’t change the world", but they do make riding in an elevator a little more pleasant.

No One Sets Out To Be A Smooth Jazz Musician [The Onion]

Sanders Says

Some of you may know Tim Sanders from his books Love Is The Killer App or The Likeability Factor . I first came to know of him when he was the CSO (Chief Solutions Officer) at Yahoo. (Or is that Yahoo! ?)

Tim has a blog that I follow called Sanders Says . In his latest post, he is encouraging organizations to stop "grinding" on people and allow a healthier pace of work to emerge. This hearkens to my repeated theme of "rhythmic" productivity that is so important to effective creativity and long-term viability. While you’re over at Tim’s blog, make sure to browse some of his other posts - there’s gold in them there hills! (That’s old-time speak for "it’s good stuff!")

Don’t Wear Out Your People [Sanders Says]

Quotable

"Bad design is smoke, while good design is a mirror."
Juan-Carlos Fernandez Ideogram, Mexico

Cube Numbness

Ahh…that wonderful pinnacle of invention called the "cubicle." What began as an experiment to foster human interaction in the workplace has become synonomous with redundancy, boredom and blandness. Many (most) of us spend our days crammed into them, plugging away at whatever’s in front of us.

But fear not, my cubicle-dwelling friends. Pam over at Escape From Cubicle Nation  has offered some tips on how to shake up "soul numbing" as a result of long-term cube exposure.

The first step to creative brilliance is to simply wake-up. The alarm’s ringing, folks.

Link Roundup

It’s been a busy week here in AC world, but here are a few gems I managed to stumble across:

37 Signals on Stefan Sagmeister - Can design make you happy? (And giddy?) [37 Signals.com]
Pop Songs Threaten Nursery Rhymes - Maybe "cover bands" can change the world. [Agenda, Inc.]
My War On Clutter - Merlin Mann’s clutter-post-mortem. (The comments are great.) [43folders.com]
Chris Glass - Amazing design, writing, photography. [ChrisGlass.com]

 

Chasing Cool

I recently finished a book called "Chasing Cool ." It’s about the corporate temptation to try to "be cool" rather than allowing coolness to emerge from relevance.

I recently did an interview with a writer for HOW magazine (hi Lisa !) about designing for a specific target and stated that "relevance is proven by action." In other words, the attempt to be relevant immediately proves us other-than-relevant.
How do you handle the coolness factor? How do you avoid the temptation to "chase cool"?

For me, it’s a continual examination of my motives. Am I "positioning" myself? Even the attempt to "not try to be cool" can be a veiled attempt at coolness. (It’s amazing how so many teens who are a part of "counter-culture" look alike, dress alike, listen to the same music, etc.) We all want to connect with others in our expression, but we also can’t allow our unique edges to be smoothed over by the stream of cultural mediocrity. Culture tends toward the middle because it’s the safest place - like a dip in the middle of a sagging bed, we all roll to the middle.

Many of the people we call "cool" never wanted that tag - in fact, if you ask them, they would say they’re "geeks", "nerds" or misfits. It’s their willingness to shed popular opinion that gives them the ability to stare the fear of rejection in the eyes and walk through the heart of it. I’m still working on this one, but it’s definitely a battle worth fighting and winning.

Bird By Bird

Anne Lamott, in her wonderful work on writing called “Bird by Bird”, recounts a thesis on birds that her brother was writing in school.  As she remembers it, he was sitting at the kitchen table surrounded by open books, crying from being overwhelmed by the amount of work to be done.  As she tells the story, her father walked into the kitchen, noticed her brother slumped over the table and said “Bird by bird. Just do it bird by bird!”  

How many of us, as creatives, are regularly paralyzed by the seemingly overwhelming tasks in front of us?  The biggest obstacle to surmount is also the biggest asset we have - our conceptual nature!  We tend to see the greatness of the finished product in our minds, but we’re unable to understand or deal with the smaller chunks of tasks required to get there.  It’s this inability to define the "next thing" that causes us to shut down, completely discouraged by how impossible it is to do anything worthwhile. I call it "expectation escalation" - comparing everything we do to the best thing we’ve ever done - and "comparisonitis" - comparing everything we do to the best things anyone has ever done. (I’m guilty of both on a regular basis and it freezes my creative possibilities when I allow it.)

Because the world tends to be driven by results, we are pulled right along with it.  Process loses all value and we get swept up into the current of “what have you done for me lately?”  We want greatness, but we’re not always willing to pay the price for it.  

So what is the price of greatness? 

Patience. 

We forget that nothing happens all at once.  No great work of art, entrepreneurial venture or feat of architecture appears spontaneously out of thin air.  Each required months or even years of experimentation, learning, crafting and even blood, sweat and tears.  This is in addition to the years of training each artist had to forego and undergo in order to simply begin such a project. 

The thing to remember is that we are not going for the quick pay off.  If the goal is to use your creativity as a means to get rich quick or to be famous – best wishes!  But please know that you will eventually find yourself right back in the place of the beginner, desperately looking for meaning in what you make. If, however, you pay the price to develop disciplines and discover who you truly are as an artist, then you have something sustainable and meaningful to say.

Art - and life - is about improvisation, discovery and awe. It is about leaning over the edge and staring deep into the abyss. It’s about staring into our own inadequacies and, just as we think we might come up short, finding the answer that we need was there all the time. As we create we not only reveal Reality, we reveal ourselves.

It is important that we not allow expectation escalation and comparisonitis to suffocate us. 

GTD Dojo

Business 2.0 has a great story this month on David Allen . For those who are "geeked-up" on all things GTD, ("Getting Things Done"), the article provides much of the back-story on David’s life and career and where he sees the company going. There are a few productivty tidbits tossed in as well for those willing to dig a bit.

In case you missed it, we recently interviewed David for the Accidental Creative podcast. (The interview is currently out on David’s podcast feed as well.)

Article: "The Master of Geting Things Done" (Business 2.0)

Stimulus Finding

One of the regulars in my podcast diet is Cool Hunting. The latest episode is a profile of Lori Nix , whose art must be seen to be believed. I am always amazed at the extent some artists go to in order to realize their vision. Semantics are critical and vision is everything.

Cool Hunting - Lori Nix

Quotable

"They anxiously do what they would rather not do, or at least they have no pleasure in doing. Their satisfaction consists solely in avoiding, never gaining, something. What emptiness."
Soren Kierkegaard