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.

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.

 

 (reset) Expectations [16:55m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Proactive vs. Reactive

I’m starting a new blog series today called “Battle Lines.” I’ve been seeing more and more creatives struggling and wrestling with their creative lives not because of a lack of resources, skill or knowledge but because they are drawing the “battle lines” in the wrong places. As a result, they spend their time fighting ghosts and mustering up all of their strength to combat the wrong enemy. In this series, I’m going to name a few of the places where I see this happening and (hopefully) challenge myself and all of us to begin engaging on the real front lines.

The first “false front” I’d like to mention is that of being Reactive vs. being Proactive. This typically manifests itself most obviously in the form of victim language. For example:

“I wanted to [insert creative idea here], but they made me [insert organizational replacement here.]”
“I would love to [insert dream here], but [insert person] would never go for it.”
“It’s not worth the effort to [insert creative activity here], because in the end it simply won’t matter.”

These are all statements made from a victim posture. They are reactive statements. (Notice that I didn’t say that they aren’t true - they very well might be, but we still must recognize them as inherently reactive.)

LISTEN TO AN AC PODCAST ABOUT PROACTIVE VS. REACTIVE

The problem with this kind of posturing is that it’s essentially the same as allowing someone else to control your life. You are willingly living in a prison that you helped build. You are allowing someone else to limit your creative engagement and the fulfillment you find in your work. You are eating your own heart.

The journey toward engaging with a creative ethic begins by asserting that no person has the ability to steal your creative engagement. They may not like your ideas and they may consistently disagree with your vision, but they cannot steal your ability to engage fully in whatever you’re doing. You can still choose to be proactive rather than reactively acquiescing or folding like a cheap lawn chair.

As a word of precaution, please know that you cannot control the results of your decision to “reactively” withhold yourself from the creative process. You cannot “silo off” one area of your life and think that it will not affect every area of your life. If you choose to harbor anger, bitterness, resentment or grudges in one area of your life it will most certainly spill over into all other areas. If you think you can slack off creatively at work and that it won’t affect your creative engagement in other ways, you are wrong. It will catch up with you.

You must engage. You must make the choice to bring yourself fully to the creative process regardless of your circumstances or how unfair things might be within your organization. It feels good to turn everything inward and stew on negative stuff, but ultimately the only person you’re harming is you. You must assert ownership of your own creative engagement.

Here are a few practical questions to help you get started:
1. Are there areas in your life in which you’re actively withholding yourself? Why? What would full-on creative engagement in those areas look like?
2. Are you proactively creating anything other than what’s required by your work/career? If not, why? How can you begin to work that into your life?
3. Do you have other people in your life who share your passion for creating that you can share work-related issues with? Sometimes it helps to get the perspective of someone outside of the situation.

The next part of our series will be on “Possibility vs. Pragmatics” thinking.

Five Lies Creatives Believe

Having been involved in the world of “how-on-earth-do-things-get-made” for a while now, there are some patterns I’ve noticed within the minds and lives of artists - especially those creating within organizations. When these lies become a part of the way we see the world, they become artificial boundaries that limit our ability to engage and create.

Here are five believable lies that seem to be common:

1. I am what I make. This lie tells us that our value as a team member - nay, as a human being, is dependent upon the perceived value of what we make. This one is a sinister little devil because most organizations are set up to reward those who live out this lie to the extreme. That makes it tougher to opt-out without opting-out.

2. Why try? I’ll never be as good as (insert accomplished artist here)… This lie tells us that unless we hit some invisible standard (and probably unrealistic) standard we’ve set, nothing is worth making. We fail to realize that (insert accomplished artist here) probably felt the same thing from time to time.

3. I’d might as well just give them what they want. This lie tells us that challenging clients or managers is useless because they’re only going to tell us to do something “compromised” anyway. The assumption underlying this lie is that striving for our best work is only valuable if the work is accepted and praised.

4. Because of my abilities, I am entitled to (insert benefit, award, promotion, peer approval, etc. here). This lie causes us to turn inward and withhold ourselves from the creative process. It’s a “my way or no way” kind of thinking that ultimately results in us eating our own heart. (Quick tip: except for your bookie, no one owes you anything.)

5. Risk is bad. Certainty is good. When a culture of fear emerges within an organization, whether it’s fear of failure or fear of success, it squelches personal and organizational innovation. All brilliance demands risk. It is the novelty of the connection that is the very definition of brilliance, and the closer “to the expected” an idea is the less likely it is to be brilliant.

So…these are a few of mine. (All of these, by the way, have been present and accounted for in my creating life from time to time.)

Can you add some to the list?

A Bouncing Baby Series

Today we launched our new series called “Pace” which is about some of the basics of establishing rhythm and “intervals” in our creative life. As I was preparing to launch, I was reminded of something that happened a few months back.

Last Christmas I needed to make a quick trip to the store to pick up a gift certificate for a family member. This is normally a quick and painless thing, right? But at this time of year nothing is painless when it comes to retail. It was raining heavily outside and upon walking into the store I already felt like I’d braved the gauntlet at a water park.

I was not comfortable.

I was pleased, however, to notice that there were only two people in line at the checkout stand. I made quick work of navigating the kiosks and displays in time to claim the title of “third in line.” I thought I would be out of the store, to my car and into some warm clothes in a few minutes flat. I was wrong.

One person in front of me was trying to pull some kind of money-changing scam using clothing instead of currency. (At one point she actually tried to return the clothes she was wearing and use a 30% coupon to re-purchase them.) The other person decided that she couldn’t remember if she had a credit card with this particular store and asked the cashier to call corporate and do a credit check. Lucky for me, it turns out that she didn’t have one and she decided to open one right there on the spot.

As I stood there dripping and cold, I suddenly felt a familiar urge well up inside of me - the urge to assert my rights. It was the sudden compulsion to explain to everyone else in the store how petty my little transaction was and that if they would simply turn around and look at me they would see that they are clearly inflicting terrible amounts of pain on an innocent and clearly justified bystander.

I’ve felt this feeling before. Usually it was within an organizational setting when I’ve been pushing for changes or over-extending myself in unhealthy ways to get things done. In some of my darker days, if there was even the slightest sense of lack of support from the organization I would spin out into a downward spiral of victimhood and self-pity. (Hey…I’ve learned all of this stuff we talk about the hard way, believe me.) In my better days I would simply take a defiant and compliant attitude and simply serve up whatever was expected, even if I knew we could do better.

That was until I learned a very important lesson about success in any field or by any definition - it requires patience. Quickened, miracle-grow teams or careers do not have the same root systems to support them that patient, organically grown understanding does. Having patience in the creative process means understanding that no one thing is ultimately important, but that every single thing is ultimately important. In other words, when we begin focusing impatiently on results and become myopic in our focus we miss opportunity because our field of vision is too narrow. We need to run to opportunity without sacrificing experience. We also tend to judge ideas too soon because we’re more focused on outcomes than process.

There is a kind of patient surrender of our rights that must happen in the creative process if we wish to achieve brilliance. We are not surrendering our individuality, we are simply laying down our need to assert ourselves and allowing the process to take over. We might think we know who we are and what we’re good at, but when we learn to lay down all of these notions we find that we’re discovering ourselves in the process of creating our art.

As we discuss “Pace” over the next four weeks, recognize that any kind of growth, process, or progression requires patient observation. There is no such thing as overnight maturation. We must come to patiently enjoy the process. The gold is not on the other side of the world, it’s two inches beneath our feet. Start digging.

Podcast: Gregg Fraley

In our Improv:the art of art series I had a two-part interview with Gregg Fraley. Gregg is a consultant, speaker and expert in the field of innovation and improvisation. He’s also the author of Jack’s Notebook: A Business Novel About Creative Problem Solving.

In this excerpt from the interview, Gregg explains how we can better incorporate improvisational technique into our day-to-day creating.

The Shiny Black Box

One of the most (potentially) frustrating things for anyone attempting to create is dissonance. Productivity guru David Allen has described it as all of the “stuff” that’s floating out in the nebulous regions of our mind that we know we need to do, but haven’t yet addressed. In our creating, I tend to define dissonance as when the “why” and the “what” don’t add up.

In organizations this often occurs when there’s a break between client strategy and creative strategy. (In other words, when what we’re doing doesn’t line up with what we say we’re trying to do.) It can also play out systemically in our organizations when the “why” (what we say we’re about, our stated organizational values, the “main thing”) doesn’t line up with the “what” (our systems, our day-to-day work, the product we produce.) When this break begins to creep into our teams, we often experience the emergence of the “black box” phenomenon.

The “black box” is the (unknown, unseen) place where the “why” formula resides. Because we aren’t able to see the connection between cause and effect (the over-arching “why” and the practical “what” of our work) we assume that there must be some mystical, unknowable force (let’s call them our manager) who holds the key to understanding the universe. The problem in this situation is that it can be incredibly demotivating to live within a system where there’s a cause/effect disconnect. Ultimately it leads to disconnectedness and apathy about results, a lack of ability to generate ideas and see connections, and a culture of self-protection. (There’s often an unwillingness to take risks when cause/effect connections are tenuous.)

There are tons of ways that this can creep into our lives and orgs, but for now here are a few things to keep our eyes this week on as we go about our work:

Leaders: We must eliminate any dissonance that exists within the org. We must focus on making the “why” (the existence questions of the org) and the “what” (our systems, processes, work) line up. Drive clarity. Have effective feedback loops (both ways - I’ve often really stunk at this in my leading.) Make it safe to ask the “why” questions. Eliminate the myth of the black box. Stand in the gap for your team.

Creatives: Seek clarity. Stop playing the victim. (If we give a self-pitying mindset any ground, it will grow like kudzu.) Ground yourself in the 5 W’s (who, what, when, where, why) before moving to the “how.” If you can’t answer the 5 W’s, then stop work until you can. Have the equivalent of a “client strategy” in your personal creating. Be your own creative director.

Seriously, people. If we don’t get a grip on dissonance it will take us down. As my friend Brian always says, “small weed now, big problem later.” Over time, weeds in a sidewalk will allow room for water to get in. Over the seasons, water freezes and thaws, expands and contracts, and destroys the sidewalk. Do the little bit of work now to uproot the weeds now. It’s a lot easier in the long run.