Accidental Creative

Play vs. Work

“What work I have done I have done because it has been play. If it had been work I shouldn’t have done it. Who was it who said, “Blessed is the man who has found his work”? Whoever it was he had the right idea in his mind. Mark you, he says his work–not somebody else’s work. The work that is really a man’s own work is play and not work at all. Cursed is the man who has found some other man’s work and cannot lose it. When we talk about the great workers of the world we really mean the great players of the world. The fellows who groan and sweat under the weary load of toil that they bear never can hope to do anything great. How can they when their souls are in a ferment of revolt against the employment of their hands and brains? The product of slavery, intellectual or physical, can never be great.” Mark Twain 

Why is it that we feel the need to draw arbitrary lines between “work” and “play?” So many people, in fact, dream of working themselves around the clock for several years in order to claim the prize of “early retirement.” It’s thought that if we can only get all of this “work” stuff out of the way, then we could really enjoy ourselves and do whatever we want - take up a hobby, write our novel, etc. We have so cast the dichotomy between work and play that we are incapable of seeing them as two sides of the same coin - an expression of our engaged curiosity.

In fact, we’ve so taken this to categorical extremism that it affects our mindset about what we’re up to in the world. I often hear, “I’d really like someday to be engaged in helping orphans” or “after this I’d love to spend time mentoring young designers” or other types of “wishful” thinking. But, for now at least, we’re a prisoner of this thing called “work” until the “great someday.” We divide ourselves into two modes and assign a purpose to each. One is for our “passions and interests” and one is for our “work.”

We have confused “occupation” with “vocation.”

We each (hopefully) have an occupation. It is the way we make money, pay the bills and contribute to the economy. It’s our job. It leverages our skills to generate value for the organization of which we’re a part. It is largely extrinsically motivated (pay, rewards, recognition, etc.)

Though we often don’t realize it, we each also have a vocation, which is the unique contribution that we have to offer the world. It’s the central thing that puts a “fire in our gut” when we encounter it or engage in it. It is intrinsically motivated. It’s the thing that fuels our passion, keeps us moving forward and in some cases even obsesses us.

Vocation is typically much more aligned with our “gifts” than with our “skills.” Skills can be developed, but gifts are unique ways of engaging the world that cannot necessarily be taught. They seem to be innate. (For example, many visual artists simply see the world differently than other people. Others can be taught to replicate a shape or a line on a page, but the truly gifted visual artist simply has a unique way of seeing perspective, shape, texture, light, etc. The same holds true with the gifted musician. Playing a piece by rote is different than experiencing the world as music.)

The tension that causes us to draw lines between work and play is the tension between our occupation’s responsibilities and our vocation’s pull. We know what fires us up, but our day-to-day tasks do not fuel that fire. We feel robbed. Though some people are able to bring the vocation/occupation dissonance into alignment, most of us will spend our day-to-day activity performing tasks and engaging in activity that leverages our skills rather than our gifts. But when we begin to understand our vocation, we can cast our day-to-day activity in light of what we value as opposed to what we feel obligated to do.

The beginning of relieving this tension and reclaiming “work as play” is to identify our vocation. What is it that fires us up? What do we obsess on when there is no extrinsic reward? It is important to be a specific as possible. For example, a few years ago I began this journey of excavation and realized that underneath much of my passion is a desire to see people freed up to be brilliant. I noticed a pattern in my life of being deeply moved by stories of underdogs, people who had accomplished things in spite of the critics, and people who had taken extreme (though calculated) risks to deny fear and embrace possibility. This “freedom fighter” ethic had always been present in me, but I’d not identified it so specifically. Now much of my day is seen through that lens. My occupation does not always line up with my vocation as “freedom fighter,” but because I’m aware of this vocation I’m able to bring “who I am” to “what I do.”

Though the process can take a long time, I’d encourage you to make an attempt identify your vocation. Here are a few questions to help you get started:

1. When are you most “moved” emotionally? Cite a few specific instances. Are there any connections between them? What are the commonalities? 2. How can you better bring your occupation in-line with your vocation? Are there ways in which you could leverage your gifts in your work as well as your skills?
3. Are there any ideas you’ve had that you’ve always wanted to execute, but have been putting off? Do they line-up with your vocation? What would be the next step to get started?

In the next part of our series “Battle Lines”, we’ll be tackling masks vs. identity.

AC Groups

One of the key things that I’ve “harped on” as often as possible is the importance of having a community - a small group of people - with which to process, co-create, dream and share insights.

 

My intent with AC has always been to create a virtual community of like-minded creatives who are striving to engage, grow and learn. This can’t happen in isolation. It takes a village to raise an artist. (Ooh…that was bad.)

 

I’m excited to announce that we’ll soon be launching “AC Groups.” These groups will be organic networks of ACers in various cities across the globe.

 

A few things:

1. We need hosts. In order to host you need to be able to (a) communicate via email with others in the group, (b) choose a public location for the group meeting and (c) do some low-key facilitation of conversations.

 

2. These are not an “official” AC effort. It’s kind of an experiment. We’re providing the forum for connecting, but each group can do as it pleases in terms of content. We’ll offer recommendations each month, but these are not mandatory curriculum.

 

3. This will become more of an emphasis moving forward. It’s important that we be connecting with other like-minded people if we want to continue to grow.

 

So…are you interested in hosting? (We already have groups forming in LA, St. Louis and Denver.) If so, let us know in the comments or send an e-mail to interact [at] accidentalcreative.com .

We’ll be posting AC Groups locations, contact info and more in the next several weeks. We’re… so… excited… we… can… hardly… stand… it.

How Rich Are You?

Want to know how rich you really are? Check here.

The Billionnaire Who Wasn’t

I’m reading the most incredible book right now. Must… get… back to it… - TH

Where Art Thou?

Oh Apple, where art thou?

Hello Candy Store…

Hello candy store…call me “kid.”

The Creative Squeeze

Thanks to AC-er Tracy Mazuer for pointing me to this video. It must… be… watched…

Possibilities vs. Pragmatics

We’re in the midst of a blog series called Battle Lines in which we’re looking at some of the places in which artists draw arbitrary and sometimes destructive battle lines in our creative lives. In the last part of the series we discussed the battle line Proactive vs. Reactive and how we can often slip into a victim mindset, especially within an organizational setting. In this part we’re going to look at how easy it is to slip into pragmatics thinking as our primary reaction to creating solutions.

“Our aspirations are our possibilities.” - Samuel Johnson

I have an extreme aversion to “psychobabble.” This is the kind of talk that involves self-important sounding words that temporarily instill a sense of comfort, but don’t really inspire change over the long-term. Perhaps one of the reasons I’m averse to this kind of language is because I’ve so often heard it tossed around in “creative” circles. We somehow think that if we could only get our thoughts in the right place, everything else will follow. While I don’t doubt that a proper mindset is critical to healthy, sustained creating, it is also important for us to follow that with engaged activity and discipline. We must work.

But for some of us, this is where the going gets…what’s the word….yeah…tough. We have been met with disappointment, rejection or unfairness in our organizational life and as a result we have begun to limit our thinking to only that which is “practical” or likely to get “through.” For others of us, we’re not really certain of who we are and what we have to offer the world, so we tend to stick close to the rails and never venture out into the open. (Sometimes this is due to a fear of failure, but just as often it is because of a fear of success - can we sustain the success once we’ve achieved it?)

So the battle line with which we must struggle is this: how can we push pragmatics farther into the creative process so that we can dwell more on possibilities? How can we avoid making a decision too early so that we have more time to generate the right idea?

How can shun our fears and choose possibilities over pragmatics?

So often we’re unaware that this is even an issue. We move through our days solving problems, creating art that’s acceptable, earning our “keep.” But the fire in our gut has extinguished. There’s no longer a sustained curiosity for our work. We’re cranking it out, but we’re no longer enjoying the process. For people who tend to lean toward the “conceptual” end of the spectrum, this can often be attributed to a lack of an answer to the “why” questions.

“Why are we doing this? Why is this significant? Why am I involved in this project?”

Instead, we’ve grown accustomed to running with only answers to the “what” questions. (Which mostly involve concrete answers about the product itself.) We must recognize and make peace with the reality that this is the way that organizations are wired. Organizations are about the “bottom line” and always should be - that’s why they exist and there’s nothing wrong with it. The real tension emerges when the organization continues to demand something that we can no longer give.

In order to embrace possibilities over pragmatics, we need to change the stakes of the game. We have to decide what we’re really playing for. We cannot stand on the fence between, “the recognition is my reward” and “engagement in the process is my reward.” We must choose a side or we will live fragmented lives. We must live within the realities that organizations create, but with the deeper understanding that our identity is not determined by what is accepted or rejected by them. The org does not define us, rather we define our work by how we choose to engage.

If we immediately think pragmatics when given a task, we are forfeiting the creative mandate. If we default to what’s easiest or most obvious, then there is a good chance that fear has taken root in our lives. And this is the beginning of creative death.

Here are a few questions to help us wrestle through this:
1. Do you often default to your first idea when working on a project? Why? (It’s OK if your answer is “because it’s always brilliant.” We’ll address that later…)
2. Do you find yourself using, “yeah…but…” language in meetings or ideation sessions? How about in your personal creating?
3. Are there lists of projects you’d love to tackle but haven’t started for seemingly practical reasons? What are those reasons?

4. Are you able to enjoy the creative process even if your favorite idea is not ultimately “acted upon?”

We’re going to continue wrestling through some of these creative “battle lines” over the next few weeks. Again, the goal here is simply to unearth some of the hidden stuff that we’re often too busy to notice. The hard work…your part…is figuring out how to act on it.

In the next part of the series we’ll be tackling the arbitrary line we draw between play and work.

Ira Glass on Expectations

In light of our latest podcast on Expectations, here’s a video of Ira Glass of This American Life fame articulating the “expectation/skill gap” and how difficult it can be to live in that tension. [Discovered via 43folders]

AC #117: (reset) Expectations

Sometimes our [sub-conscious, unseen] expectations can impose artificial limits on our creative process. In this podcast we’re looking at how we need to occasionally reset our expectations of ourselves and our understanding of others’ expectations of us in order to be freed up to create.