Talent and Tools

Abraham Lincoln composed the Gettysburg address on a piece of ordinary stationary he borrowed from a friend while staying in their house. James Joyce wrote with a #2 pencil and a cheap notebook. Van Gogh rarely painted with more than  6 colors on his palette.

How is this meaningful?  Consider how many statesmen are out there working with a fleet of speechwriters and stenographers whose words will never make an impact.  Consider how many writers with state of the art computers with spell checking and access to an immense library of material will never finish the book they’re working on.  Consider how many artists with private studios and hundreds of tools will never create something worth more than the canvas it was painted on.

You see, there’s no correlation between creative talent and the quality of your tools.

A lot of times as a creative person, you’re tempted to hide behind your tools.  Artists attempt to dazzle you with the variety of colors and materials and effects they can generate.  Third rate movies slosh special effects to try to cover up a disinteresting story.  Very often  the tools of shock or outrageousness is put in place to cover a lack of talent.

Even worse, beginners often use their tools as an excuse for not performing.  If only I had ____, then I’d do something special.  Or worse, when I get _____, then I’ll get serious.

The fact is, your tools are no excuse.  The best artists simplify, reducing their tools to those that are easily manageable and familiar to the touch. Fact is, plenty of people have access to the best tools.  Very few have the talent to do something with them.

Don’t use your tools as an excuse to perform poorly, and don’t allow their facility to squelch your creativity.

 

Writer’s Block

“The worst thing you write is better than the best thing you didn’t write.” – Unknown

In your creative pursuits, sooner or later you’re sure to run up against writer’s block. It’s not a malady exclusively reserved for novelists – as a musician, artist, writer, athlete, student or thinker you are going to occasionally “hit the wall”. The words don’t come, the ideas don’t flow. You can’t see your next move and are uncertain of where to begin. You misstart, abandon efforts, do-over. It’s a frustrating situation with no discernable path to take.

A lot of times it’s the curse of excellence. Maybe you feel under pressure to live up to your last effort, or to match the achievements of someone else. Maybe you’ve relied on a very active muse that fails to show up now. Maybe your last efforts were so focused, you’ve literally exhausted your sources and the well seems a little dry.

The best advice I’ve ever received on beating this situation is simply to do. Write, or play, or think. It doesn’t matter if it seems mundane, or if it’s not your best effort. It doesn’t matter if it turns out to be something you’d be ashamed to let see the light of day. The very act of creating is the greatest impetus to tapping your creative spirit. Even a bad effort can be later edited to something acceptable. It can produce mistakes you learn from and occasionally award you with a little direction. It gets unclear ideas out on the playing field where they can be refined. Best of all, it defeats the desire to stand still, to slack off. You never learn or grow from NOT doing.

I struggle with this problem a lot in songwriting. It never ceases to amaze me how I can write volumes about nothing with no effort and create songs practically on the fly, but manage to choke up when it comes to putting a “serious” song together. The pressure to do better, to live up to a standard I set for myself is often suffocating. So when I start to choke, I write. Silly songs about everyday details, or about utter nonsense. And it always helps. Nine times out of ten, whatever I do finds a home. The music gets refined, the lyrics rewritten and before you know it, there’s something I can live with.

So don’t choke. Just do.

 

Everyday Zen

Buddhists seek something they call Zen, a state of enlightenment by which you are as in-touch with the universe around you as you can possibly get. Maybe you get the image of fantastic visions, or superhuman feats of concentration, or some sort of undefined peace that surrounds and engulfs you, allowing you to connect to worlds beyond the material.

In practice, Zen is nothing like that.

Some psychologists did a study in which they hooked a number of people up to machines to record their brain activity, and put a ticking clock in the room with them. Most people’s EEG readings indicated that their brains reacted to the stimulus for a few seconds, then it failed to register. But the Buddhist monks kept recognizing the tick every time it happened. There was a lot of confusion over that reaction, but to the knowledgeable, the solution was obvious. The Buddhists simply paid more attention to their lives.

The world around us seems to conspire to keep our lives hectic. People convince themselves that they need big experiences, interesting distractions at every moment of their lives. We fill our homes with background noise to keep out the quiet and juggle multiple projects at nearly every waking hour. We’re bred to be thrillseekers, to make the next experience bigger and better than the last.

But you’ll find that big experiences wear off pretty quickly. People work themselves into a religious fervor at a retreat only to find that next week they can’t even get excited about going to their church. They start with mild drugs and progress steadily toward harder ones, looking for the better high. Multi-millionaires keep looking for that next million. You can find distraction easily, but not satisfaction.

A personal story – when I was a young guitar player early in high school I lusted after a particular brand of guitar that was far beyond anything I could afford. I watched the brand develop over the years and long considered it the crowning achievement of instruments. If I could ever have one of those, I would get rid of all my others – because I’d have the very best and that would be all I needed. Many years later as an adult I had a chance to buy one that was very gently used. That was it. I had reached the pinnacle. I would be getting rid of my inferior guitars to concentrate on this one alone. To make a long story short, I now have three of those, as well as most of my older ones and some other brands I’ve bought since. While the thrill of meeting my longtime dream held me for a while, it was not long until it was commonplace as well, and I was looking for the next thrill.

There’s another Zen proverb I heard where a student meditated for years to attempt to achieve Zen and finally experienced a fantastic vision. He shared it eagerly with his teacher, who told him it was his imagination. Later the same day in conversation, he shared the experience of eating an orange, how he noticed in detail how cool and sweet and flavorful it was. That, the teacher said, was enlightenment.

If you really take a closer look at your ordinary, boring life, you’ll discover something wonderful. Our lives are incredibly joyful. All around us there is beauty, love and understanding. Even the most common tasks can be experienced with joy beyond any purchased thrill you could manage.

For example, most of us avoid spending time alone, and if we do, we fill it with every sort of distraction we can manage. But try spending a couple of hours alone with no distractions. Take a nice walk and notice the beauty of the landscape, the sounds it generates, the creatures you run across. Notice the strength of your own body, the rejuvenating power of a deep breath. The pleasure of the sun on your face. Stoop and look at the incredible variety of materials that makes up the ground you walk on, the taste of the wind when rain is in the air.

I have always been a big music fan, and one of my favorite activities as a pre-teen was to turn out the lights, lie down in front of my speakers, close my eyes and listen to a favorite album all the way through. A lot of my friends thought it was weird, but it was my way of giving it my full focus. I got to experience the music thoroughly, and it was literally a growth experience for me. I heard all the subtleties that get drowned out when you’re only giving the music half your attention, and to this day I can mentally construct those albums note for note in my head.

The world around us, the relationships we share, the thoughts we construct can be the most joyful of experiences if we will slow down long enough to experience it. There’s nothing wrong with being a busy person, with doing great things or having once in a lifetime experiences. But make sure you’re not discounting the experiences at hand in anticipation of a “better” one to come.

This moment has never come before, and will never come again. There is something unique and thrilling about every one of them. The life you’re living right now has joys that many will never know. Do yourself the favor of getting to know them.

 

Rubberducking

A big part of getting something accomplished is working through the little problems en route to the goal. Getting through the times when you’re stuck for an idea, or a solution doesn’t present itself, or when it appears like your only alternatives are dead ends. There always seems to be those moments when you’ve put all the pieces together, but it’s still not running.

The best way to get yourself through this is to pull someone else into the mix – someone with fresh eyes and insights that can show you what you’re blind to. But that’s not always going to be available to you.

“Rubberducking” is a great technique to call into play. It’s just the act of talking to yourself, out loud. The picture is of a guy having a conversation with his rubber duck; but the mechanism of the problem solver is getting you to vocalize things. You might want to talk to a reflection in the mirror, your pet, a toy or whatever you feel most comfortable anthomorphizing. It really doesn’t matter, just as long as you express yourself in audible, spoken dialog.

The reason for this is that forcing your thoughts to align enough to sensibly state yourself forces those thoughts to congeal and become something more easily criticized. The silly will sound more silly, the brilliant more brilliant. Either the thoughts come together more solidly or show their cracks.

One situation where rubberducking is very handing is when you have to brainstorm alone. Forcing yourself to phrase everything conversationally will add just enough structure to the mix to make your results wothwhile.

Talked you your rubber duck lately?

 

Oblique Strategies

When you find yourself trying to solve a problem, combat writer’s block or just looking to stir a little creativity into something you’re doing, it’s not uncommon to hit a point where you feel you just aren’t making progress. Maybe all the art you make looks the same. Maybe you’ve pounded the fundamentals of a free throw but just aren’t getting better. Maybe you’re trying to improve an existing process and you just can’t see how it could change for the better.

Preset methods of doing things are wonderful, particularly when the mold has been cast by an expert. But when pouring yourself in the mold is not giving you the desired result, it’s time to break it.

Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt formalized a method of jogging the mind they called the Oblique Strategies. In its commercial implementation, they were a deck of cards, with simple “out of the box” strategies to adopt or consider when you found yourself stuck. They’re basically a series of statements that encourage you to think out of the norm. So when you’ve butted your head against a problem and the regular approach is getting you nowhere, you draw a card which prompts you “don’t forget that you COULD approach it with this attitude”.

Many of them are quite abstract, and it takes a bit of brainpower to understand how you can apply them to a particular situation. And using them effectively takes a bit of balance. It’s not a fortune cookie – just because you draw “Abandon desire” doesn’t mean you necessarily must for this application. But at the same time, you want to give the suggestion a fair shot. If you simply rifle through the deck until you find one that you think will work, you’re just pouring the deck into your old mold along with yourself.

Here’s an example. Suppose I’m trying to perfect my free throws and seem to be getting nowhere. I pull out my deck and draw “Cut a vital connection”. I think a bit and it seems I have a ritual of putting my toes just behind the line and dribbling twice. That’s my “setup”, and I always do it. So I sever that connection by dismantling the ritual – going straight for the shot instead of the ritual. Maybe that changes the way I grip the ball and I come to understand something more about my shot. In a couple of days I still feel stuck and draw “Magnify the most difficult details”. I think a bit and realize that I’m quite disconnected and relaxed during the warmup and post shot. So I focus on the load, aim and release. Soon I understand I’m comfortable with the load, so I spend some time just working on the aim, then maybe the release. And maybe I discover that my problem is that I get flustered with the aim, so I just wing that tiny part. Actually, I did find that out – true story.

I’m not suggesting it’s a end-all solution to your stalemates, but it can be an effective tool for getting past them. In the end, a card from the deck is just a reminder that you’re human, and you have a lot of talents and opportunities to exploit if you can avoid getting stuck in a rut.

Maybe they’ll work for you. Here’s a list of some of the cards from the first 3 editions:

• Abandon desire
• Abandon normal instructions
• Accept advice
• Adding on
• A line has two sides
• Always the first steps
• Ask people to work against their better judgement
• Ask your body
• Be dirty
• Be extravagant
• Be less critical
• Breathe more deeply
• Bridges -build -burn
• Change ambiguities to specifics
• Change nothing and continue consistently
• Change specifics to ambiguities
• Consider transitions
• Courage!
• Cut a vital connection
• Decorate, decorate
• Destroy nothing; Destroy the most important thing
• Discard an axiom
• Disciplined self-indulgence
• Discover your formulas and abandon them
• Display your talent
• Distort time
• Do nothing for as long as possible
• Don’t avoid what is easy
• Don’t break the silence
• Don’t stress one thing more than another
• Do something boring
• Do something sudden, destructive and unpredictable
• Do the last thing first
• Do the words need changing?
• Emphasize differences
• Emphasize the flaws
• Faced with a choice, do both (from Dieter Rot)
• Find a safe part and use it as an anchor
• Give the game away
• Give way to your worst impulse
• Go outside. Shut the door.
• Go to an extreme, come part way back
• How would someone else do it?
• How would you have done it?
• In total darkness, or in a very large room, very quietly
• Is it finished?
• Is something missing?
• Is the style right?
• It is simply a matter or work
• Just carry on
• Listen to the quiet voice
• Look at the order in which you do things
• Magnify the most difficult details
• Make it more sensual
• Make what’s perfect more human
• Move towards the unimportant
• Not building a wall; making a brick
• Once the search has begun, something will be found
• Only a part, not the whole
• Only one element of each kind
• Openly resist change
• Pae White’s non-blank graphic metacard
• Question the heroic
• Remember quiet evenings
• Remove a restriction
• Repetition is a form of change
• Retrace your steps
• Reverse
• Simple Subtraction
• Slow preparation, fast execution
• State the problem as clearly as possible
• Take a break
• Take away the important parts
• The inconsistency principle
• The most easily forgotten thing is the most important
• Think – inside the work -outside the work
• Tidy up
• Try faking it (from Stewart Brand)
• Turn it upside down
• Use an old idea
• Use cliches
• Use filters
• Use something nearby as a model
• Use `unqualified’ people
• Use your own ideas
• Voice your suspicions
• Water
• What context would look right?
• What is the simplest solution?
• What mistakes did you make last time?
• What to increase? What to reduce? What to maintain?
• What were you really thinking about just now?
• What wouldn’t you do?
• What would your closest friend do?
• When is it for?
• Where is the edge?
• Which parts can be grouped?
• Work at a different speed
• Would anyone want it?
• Your mistake was a hidden intention

 

Storytelling

Every salesman with some experience under their belt will tell you the secret to pushing a product is not the product, but the story. If you want to sway opinion, you never do it on the merits of the product. It’s all about the history, the romance, the mystery.

Pay a bit of attention to the promotion of politics, religion and relationships and you’ll see “The Story” played wherever there’s no clear-cut advantage to a position or issue – and often if there is. People are interviewed for jobs because they’re looking for the story behind the facts on your resume. Biographies sell so well no matter how shallow because people are looking to fill in the story behind the person.

Sometimes the story is implied. There’s nothing to a event t-shirt to make it any more desirable than your basic cotton undershirt that comes 3 to a pack. But you wear the logo proudly because of the story people assume is behind it.

Storytelling is an art, and at the same time a very effective tool that can be applied to a lot of situations. The right story is only effective to its particular situation, so it’s difficult to come up with general examples. Here’s a very specific one which you can hopefully catch the vibe and apply to your own situations:

Ex: the Gift

You are a little concerned about delivering your significant other a piece of jewelry, when you really think they’re expecting more. Give a story instead. Start with some cheerful (as in, don’t sound like you’re complaining), humorous descriptions of fighting the traffic and other shoppers and work in how long you agonized over just the right gift to find, because ordinary was just not good enough for them. Explain how you were looking for something really exotic that no one else would have and that as this gift caught your eye, all you could think about was how the blue in it was such a great match for the color of their eyes, and that the salesperson talked about how it was made by hand by a family in Hong Kong and each one was completely unique, and you just couldn’t get out of your head how this beautiful, unique piece of art was just like the beautiful, unique person they are. Comes across a lot better than a pendant in a “happy birthday” gift bag.

I’m certainly not suggesting you lie or misrepresent yourself to make things look better. You want to stay rooted in the truth. But a lot of things go on in your life to prompt actions that you may not immediately realize. Something about the gift you chose reminded you of the person receiving it. Something happened in your life to bring about the achievements you’ve put under your belt. Something happened to influence you to make a deicsion. In many cases, it’s just a matter of thinking it over and understanding why you made the choices you did. And most of the time, there’s a somewhat compelling story around those shallow facts.

People are drawn to stories. We love to tell them and we love to hear them. And the older you get, the more valuable we find them. We tend to save them for social occasions among our closest friends, but they’re applicable in so many situations. The story is usually the difference in whether or not someone cares about an outcome; at the least, it’s a prime mover. It’s the heart that’s injected into the cold facts.

The flip side to this is receiving a story. Nothing is more disheartening than pouring out your story to an uninterested recipient. It’s a subtle statement that says that the other person’s experiences are not valuable, or that you just don’t want to seek a greater degree of friendship with them. However, you can often bridge this gap if you can get them to tell a story of their own, that you can relate to a similar incident in your life. It takes a sharp mind and a lot of thinking on your feet, but it can really be effective.

One of my job interview tricks was always to scope out the interviewer’s office space for pictures of themselves. If someone displays publicly a picture of themselves at a location, or with a prize or the like, you can be pretty sure a story along similar lines that opens the door for them to tell you their story will result in a great experience for both of you. If they held it in a generic conference room, I always asked if it was too much trouble to see the workplace. Once you’re walking their inner sanctums, you will come across a world of opportunities to spin tales. And if you had a somewhat stuffy interviewer, the more casual setting of walking the premises will often get them to open up a bit.

So in a nutshell:

• Tell a story to sell someone on your opinion, your offering or yourself.
• Be sensitive to signs of disinterest, and give them the chance to offer their own story.
• Listen to other people’s stories to endear yourself to them.

These are basic life skills. Everyone applies them socially, and often unconsciously. Apply them with purpose and you’ll be amazed what you can achieve.

 

Keeping an Open Mind

People are very open-minded about new things – as long as they’re exactly like the old ones.
Charles Kettering

People are creatures of habit. From your earliest stages, you’re prodded along the way to establishing fixed patterns of behaviour, of getting into a routine. Not that the approach isn’t beneficial – it’s not that difficult to see the necessity of routine in toilet training, bedtimes, cleaning your room, etc. Good personal habits will help establish you and provides a familiar base to work from.

One of the problems of getting older is that you rely more and more on those routines. They’re familiar, comforting, trustworthy. As you grow and learn about all the hazards life can throw at you, you yearn for those familiar patterns. Some idolize them. Most will settle firmly into more and more of them as time goes on.

But a lot of times, reliance on those patterns keep us from giving new ideas a fair shot. Sometimes “it’s always been done this way” becomes less of an analytical tool and more of a defense mechanism against anything unfamiliar. You do see it in older people a lot, but it’s far from uniquely a product of age. Talk about religion, politics or any other topic that people feel strongly about and you will very quickly catch wind of people who have their minds made up, despite anything new they may learn.

Certainly the old “tried and true” approaches have value, or they wouldn’t have lasted as long. Certainly there are basic components to your character and goals that are non-negotiable. But learn to have an open mind; to give new ideas a proper evaluation without immediately passing judgement upon them. This is the mental policy that lies behind dogmaticism, fundamentalism, sexism, racism and a whole host of world-blighting emotional ailments.

At your current age, you believe quite wholeheartedly in Santa Claus. I expect at some point you will begin to see the evidence, start asking questions and eventually admit that your benefactor is not who you originally conceived him to be. That’s normal, and part of growing up. The surprising thing you will learn is the number of people who stop using that approach as they grow older. I could detail for you instantly a number of people I know who are suffering from that approach today:

• Friends who doggedly support the political party they’ve always affiliated themselves with despite the fact that its agenda is completely out of line with my friends’ current beliefs
• Friends shackled by a religion that they are unwilling to question, and completely unwilling to see that it doesn’t live up to the standards they hold other religions to
• Friends stuck in low-end jobs because they can’t conceive of themselves finding a better opportunity
• Friends living in deep debt because they assume this manner of living is the accepted norm

Don’t ever stop learning, stop evaluating what you encounter in life. Put things to the test and learn which ones stand up over time. The world changes, your life changes. If you’re not changing, you may be falling behind.

Keep an open mind.