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?

Complexity

This hangs on the door of my office. (Please forgive the marvelous quality of my Treo camera.) It is there to remind me to keep things simple.

We almost always begin with 1+1, right? It’s the core. The mission. The clear systems that get us from “A” to “B”. Then things get complicated. We bring someone else into the project or on the team, and they’re now working on a derivation of the original mission. They realize that we need to turn “1″ into “3/3″ because it will give us better pricing. Then someone else decides that “3/3″ needs to be “(9/3) / 3. And this goes on and on until our systems are so complex and there are so many derivations that it’s difficult to remember our original purpose.

We must strive for simplicity in our systems because dissonance - when the “why” and the “what” don’t add up - typically arises from unnecessary complexity.

That’s why I keep this on my dlog. (That stands for door-log… goofy, I know.) It reminds me each morning to keep it simple.