We all let the edges peel. The details just aren’t that important to us.
But they are. They’re the most important because when you let them peel away, you lose the substance of what you are. Your work suffers and you suffer.
More than that, the mentality that is OK with allowing the edges to peel back is one that will live a life without attention to detail and many nuances will be lost by the wayside.
Keep the edges cleaned up and everything else will follow.
Maybe your enemy will tell you why you’re such a fool. When your enemy speaks, listen!
Over the past year, there has been complete upheaval in much of the creative industry (and all industries!) and yet we must find a new path through this strange period of time.
It’s nice to think that everything will return to the way it was, but that is rarely the case in history. Things press on in a new direction and we’ve yet to see what that direction is coming out of this COVID-19 panic.
Yet with all the change and challenges, I see many people working hard and using the limited resources they have to create.
I heard an ad on the radio the other day where the guy was sitting in his kitchen and recording the voice-over on his iPhone. It made me think about how much we get caught up in the process of what we do and needing all of our ducks to be in a row before we act.
You must seize what you have and use that. Perfectionism is what requires everything to be perfectly lined up and ordered exactly how you want, but perfection is not possible so we must start now and use what we have now.
Don’t worry if you don’t have the best camera, just take pictures.
Don’t worry if you have the best ingredients, just practice cooking.
Don’t worry if you don’t have the perfect microphone, just record that podcast (or advertisement!)
Waiting for everything to be just right will waste away your life one day at a time.
Whatever it is, make it concise and efficient.
Whether a blog post. No extra words.
If it’s a morning routine, make it move quickly and get to work.
If it’s a product, make it streamlined and get rid of the fluff.
If it’s a video, shut up and get to the point.
No fluff. Get to the point.
You can divide people into two categories. People who dream and dream and end up failing, and those who ask for what they want and they succeed.
That’s it. That’s the key. When you ask people for what you want, you can elevate yourself beyond your wildest dreams no matter your skills. If you focus on actually getting good at something AND you ask for what you want, you’re going to be just fine.
It doesn’t have to be perfect to be pretty awesome and a bunch of fun. I get caught up being very hesitant to even begin working on something unless I know it’s going to turn out perfect.
That’s really stupid. Because you miss out on many good things. (and they're not automatically replaced with this mythical "perfection" you so desire!)
If you tell the chef that the lasagna was really good, he can rest assured he did a great job.
If he heard that you only thought it was “really good” and stormed out to your table and threw down his cooking apron and retired on the spot, we’d think he was having a mental breakdown.
Stop worrying about perfect. Nobody even knows what “perfect” is. Make it good and most of all, don’t let “perfect” keep you from making it in the first place.
I play with weeks of life like they’re tools to adjust the experience I have in the world.
Did I feel slightly “off” last week? Time to play and try something new. Maybe 15 minutes more (or less) sleep. Maybe increase the fat in my diet. Maybe workout for ten minutes more or less each day. Maybe cut off screens one hour earlier at night. Maybe cut off this or that social media distraction entirely.
It helps make all of the clutter and distractions of life feel much less permanent. That perfect in my opinion because I don’t want food, fitness, or approval of other people to ever play a foundational role in life.
Your habits set the foundation for the life you live.
Most of human behavior is a matter of habit. You don’t sit and think about every little thing you do. When you form bad habits or dip your toe into vices that leech into your life, you condemn yourself to live that life until you can break those habits.
Cutting corners, cheating, playing when you should be working, eating poorly, etc… they all manifest themselves in terrible habits that can derail your entire life and leave you feeling trapped where you don’t want to be.
Notice the triggers that make you feel like you want something and replace that bad habit you’re being triggered to do with something productive and good. Even a small productive habit is better than a small bad habit. Work to be better every single day.
Use energy and self-discipline to form good habits.
Don’t buy the hype. There is no upside to understanding the gravity of the thing you’re about to do. Who cares how big the audience is? If you fixate on that, you fixate on failure because it will affect you negatively.
Who cares if you blow the save at the end of the game, or who cares if you miss the big shot? Why do you allow the pressure to affect you?
It only affects you when you allow it to and that happens when you lose perspective and allow a moment to dictate your future to you.
That’s pressure, an illusion that makes you feel like you’re standing on the deck of a ship in a hurricane. Don’t fall for the trap. Pressure affects other people, not me or you.
The man who doesn’t execute is like a guy who is standing in a busy hallway telling everyone about his “awesome” ideas, but he’s talking about them and not doing them.
Nobody believes in you or your grand ideas.
The more you talk about your grand ideas, the more people look at you like a crazy person. It’s up to you to do them and make them work.
You’ll never be able to convince other people. Spend your energy doing and let them watch what you do.
We don’t admire people because they talk about doing lots of awesome things, we admire people who do awesome things.
Can you be happy if somebody gives you a small camera as a gift? Of course!
But not really. If you get a small camera, but the rest of the people in the room are all given a top-flight DSLR camera, you’ll probably be kind of upset.
However, if you get that same small camera but everyone else gets a pack of gum, you feel great.
I am sure that I’d fall into this trap and all of us probably would. The question is then, how can we be happy with what we get, what we have, and what we give completely independent of what those around us are doing or what they get?
Can we be truly content with what we have and where we are? Yes, we can and yes we must. Resist looking at others and longing after what they have, it’s the most destructive thing I can think of at this moment.
Thinking ahead and being thoughtful is great. Being very smart is a nice thing to have in life and business and art.
I’ve noticed that most very intelligent people tend to place an enormous amount of stock in their intellect and when they approach a new venture, possible business deal, or have a crazy idea they want to go for, they spend all their time thinking through the process and most often find all the reasons why it will be a total waste of time. That is then the reason used to justify not giving it a shot.
If you want to photograph a president, start by asking. Stop thinking about how much of a long shot it is.
If you want to form a relationship with a big shot in your industry, reach out and ask for the connection. Maybe, offer something of value to get your foot in the door.
Stop neutering yourself by cutting off opportunities because your ever-wise and perfect intelligence convinces you that it just can’t happen.
That’s why I say to “be dumb enough to be successful.” Intelligence is not a silver bullet and not being that "smart" can be of great use. I’ve found that many so-called smart people lack the boldness of the people they look down on as “dumb.”
In business, I’d rather be dumb and bold than smart and too timid to do anything with it. And some of the dumbest people I've ever worked with have been the most "educated". Don't let anyone's perception of your intelligence hold you back even an inch!
Maybe those people aren’t quite as dumb as you may think. Maybe they possess a certain boldness that could change your life if only you’d be dumb enough to try.
You are sure that doing that much work will get the job done well.
You’re wrong. It’s always at least twice as much work as you think and people will only care half as much as you want them to. Plan on that and you’ll win.
In the noise and commotion of the world, can we block it out? The addition of social media and the snap when a notification lights up our phone. Can we resist turning and looking? With the endless cacophony of background music, podcasts, notification “dings”, and the like, can we focus on our work?
This will be the great defining factor in much of the future success we have. Can we shut off the world of notifications and social media (which are built to suck us into the endless loop of doom-scrolling and dopamine chasing) and focus our effort and attention on building our business and spending quiet time with our family?
It’s hard, but we must practice and learn to sit quietly, without the background noise, to free ourselves from the trap.
“I spent so many hours working on it!” shouted the increasingly desperate man while watching his latest project fail.
It’s not all about the hours you put into it, it’s just as important what you’re putting those hours into.
When you’re climbing a ladder, the fear of heights kicks in when you look down. If you look upward, you continue upward without being afraid.
The same is true for your business and creativity. The moment you start looking backward at what you have achieved, you risk ego puffing you up with pride as you rest on your laurels and there is also a fear of falling back down to where you were and losing what you’ve worked hard for.
Taking risk brings you to greater heights, but looking down from those higher places will fill you with a fear that prevents you from taking risks.
You will be paralyzed from doing exactly what has gained you the success you have thus far.
Don’t look down and don’t look back. Look straight ahead with bright eyes, no ego, and a willingness to work hard and risky.
You don’t learn how to discover by going to school and you don’t discover new things by following what you’ve learned in school.
The school sets the boundaries and it’s up to you to break through them and see what is on the other side. You’re going to get laughed at, criticized, demonized, and put down, but the jeering crowd isn’t the one in the arena doing the work. They’re the faceless critic on the outside.
You discover new things by taking aggressive risks and challenging the limits previously known. School teaches those previously known limits so don’t worry about your mentor’s approval when you’re stepping out into the unknown.
Albert Einstein would rest sitting in a chair while holding a rock in his hand. As soon as he began to fall asleep, the rock would fall and wake him up.
This is the behavior of a crazy person, right? Wrong.
Einstein was after a mode of brain operation called the theta state where you have big brain wave activity but in slow frequency. I think of it as a slow, powerful heartbeat happening in your brain.
The theta state of mind is when your brain doesn’t stifle ideas and doesn’t make you feel guilty for trying new things. It is a positive and creative mindset.
This mindset you will fall into when you’re taking a shower or when you’ve been driving on the highway for a considerable amount of time, and generally when you realize you’re doing something and you don’t remember the last five minutes or so of what you were doing.
You’re in a state where you’re awake but also kind of daydreaming. Your body is on auto-pilot and not requiring you to think much of what you’re doing. You’re in the theta state and things are getting wild and creative. Give me more.
Never give up. Never ever give up. Never ever, ever give up.
Giving up begins with looking for excuses to cut away the precision in the work you’re doing. You find ways to justify rubbing the precise beauty in your work, life, practice, etc… and when things get messy and ugly, you throw up your hands and have a reason to walk away (why should I be the one to fix this mess? better to just capitulate and move on.)
But we can’t do this and we can’t even think of doing this. We must never give up.
I always do it. I promise I’ll be back from the grocery store in 25 minutes and it inevitably takes 35 minutes. I promise the delivery will be on Monday, but it ends up taking until Wednesday to deliver.
I’ve not yet in my first thirty years of life been able to get my timing down and not overcommit on a due date and deliver things when I say that I will.
The intention is there, things just take me longer than I think.
I’d say to live and learn, but how exactly do you learn to estimate better?