Where I find Inspiration

Writing these blog posts, creating photographs, and filming videos and tutorials all take various degrees of creativity. So how do I find new ideas to work on?

The short answer is that sometimes I don’t. I’ve been going through about a year and a half of creative burnout, but I don’t think it’s been a lack of ideas, just a lack of confidence in the work I’m doing paired with mild frustration with how quickly my business is growing. (I know, the dumbest thing to do is to disengage from a slow-growing business because then it stops growing altogether.)

I find my inspiration from everything around me. It goes like this:

I watch a bus picking up kids for school in front of my house and I am reminded of a childhood school experience of my own. That’s a blog post idea.

I see a beautiful rim light casting a perfect shadow and giving amazing color to the bus while it’s stopped and I make a note of playing with that type of backlight, maybe including a model wearing yellow/orange.

I see the way the stop sign swings out on the side of the bus and think about a tutorial on animating an articulating arm and flashing light effect.

I hear the bus drive away and I think about doing a DIY video on better soundproofing and acoustics for a home office setting.

Inspiration, or the spark of an idea, begins in everything I see around me, but the real art is created as the process rolls along and I build my version of what I’ve observed.

Look around and play with ideas. Use your brain like a virtual hand and feel every side of the idea and really think about what you see and hear and imagine.

Technological frustrations

Sometimes the tech just doesn’t work as we want it to. No matter how many hours we agonize over it, it doesn’t do what we want, it doesn’t respond, it doesn’t work!

But it’s all just a machine. It’s not intentionally trying to hurt us or cause us grief and anguish. It sure feels like that, though.

The problem is with you or me. We’re doing something wrong, we just don’t know what it is, yet. So we get frustrated and we have the nerve to blame the technology. Funny, isn’t it?

Work hard or work smart?

It’s a trap!

Spending all that time trying to work smart is pretty dumb. You could be getting stuff done.

I’ve found that, for myself, it’s very difficult to maintain a good balance between the adage that we should work smart, not hard. I love thinking about the work I want to do, but getting started can feel impossible.

This is where you have to stop believing that it’s all about working smarter, not harder. Working hard is working smart because you’re getting work done. Getting work done is the number one most important thing. PERIOD.

While you’re working hard, take notes, and observe, and learn, and develop systems that will help you work hard and fast the next time you do it. But stop spending so much time thinking about what you will do, it’s a waste of energy and you deplete your stores of self-discipline. You feel like you’ve worked a full day when all you’ve done is thought and planned how much work you will do.

No one’s coming to save you

You can read the books, you can write your mantras, you can look for magical solutions from the people around you, but at the end of the day, no bank or credit card is coming to bail you out, no millionaire will finance your dreams, and no workforce is going to show up and do the heavy lifting for you.

Start by creating new habits which you can repeat every day that push you and your business in the direction you wish to go. Start now.

Avoiding deadlines

I go through periods of my life where I don’t want to establish deadlines for anything I’m working on. However, I know that I need deadlines. I just don’t want the pressure of keeping the deadlines or the accountability of something that lets me know I’ve failed to meet a goal I set out to accomplish.

Set deadlines for everything you do. Pick up a task and give yourself ten minutes to finish it and you will.

Don’t set a deadline and it simply will not get done.

There is nothing worth doing that isn’t worth having an end goal in mind for it.

When we avoid setting a goal (a standard by which we can determine success or failure) we ensure that the lowest level of work will be done and there will be no growth or accountability.

Don’t avoid deadlines. Embrace them.

The skew of artists and storytellers

Most of the great artists are shaped by the harrowing conditions in which they were raised and (sometimes) continued to live in. These conditions seem to make great artists and creative minds.

The stories and artwork that come also naturally borrow characters and themes from those less-than-ideal conditions.

With that in mind, how much do we conceive of the way life was decades or centuries ago through the eyes of these artists who got the short end of the stick?

Combine that with the fact that the extremes make for the most captivating stories and also that good things tend to become mundane and forgettable, whereas we remember every negative comment or situation with acute pain throughout life.

Clearly, there were many awful living situations, but I have a sneaking feeling that very much of life was very mundane and “normal” compared with the stories and pictures we see and use to shape the feel we have for bygone decades.

My son was throwing stones into the lake

I took a walk with my two young boys the other day and they spent a few moments throwing stones into the lake nearby, as young boys do.

I watched my two-year-old picking up stone after stone and flinging them as hard as he could into the water. He would get excited when he got a big splash. But he never quite made the connection that a bigger stone means a bigger splash.

Despite this, he kept eagerly leaning over and grabbing stone after stone and energetically throwing large and small stones into the water.

As he is unaware of the workings of physics so also we may be unaware of all the ins and outs of some of the work we do.

As we grow up, we want to be more efficient, but I think we should work to never lose this child-like ignorance when it can benefit us in this way. My son was doing the work and letting the results happen. Because he was tossing stone after stone, he had many moments of big splashes, but he had many more moments of little, forgettable splashes. But he kept throwing and he got plenty of big splashes.

Always create. Keep building new projects even when you don’t know how they’ll turn out. Keep building and keep shipping. We don’t have all the answers and you never know when you’ll get that big splash, so keep picking up stones!

Just do it the right way

I’m always looking for a hack or a shortcut. The harsh truth is that there are not many true shortcuts that are worth it in the end. If the job is worth doing, it’s worth doing right. And if you don’t think you have the time or energy to do it right the first time, do you think you have time to redo it later when it breaks?

The secret to productivity

It’s simple but difficult.

  1. Shut off your phone and close all background noise. Music, podcasts, and that TV on the wall. All this stuff will keep you slightly distracted, but you also retain nearly zero information they’re sharing.

  2. Focus on one hour at a time. You can’t eat an elephant in one bite. You can’t do 10 hours of work in one sitting. Sacrifice the day, one hour at a time, to accomplish your tasks.

That’s the secret to being productive.

Humbled, but quietly

Some days are a measuring stick for how good you are. Most of us are not as good as we think we are, but a small number of us are much better than we may think.

Don’t let the realization that you’re not as good as you believe be something that discourages you. It should be the rocket fuel that boosts you to the next level of excellence. Let the rubber-meets-the-road moments humble you, but quietly humble you. No screaming outbursts because you’re sure everyone else can’t be that much better, but a quiet realization that you’re calibration was a bit off and you’ve got work to do.

Fundamentals are great, but…

Fundamentals are really useful and will elevate you to a very nice level.

However, in your pursuit of solid fundamentals, never let them box you in. Leave room for the creative and never allow yourself to get bloated by the “rules”. Agility is a must-have.

The fundamentals are great, but your ability to creatively improvise and break the rules is what will allow you to take advantage of disruptions and arbitrages in the market.

As they say, know the rules, so you know when to break them. Fundamentals lose their usefulness when they limit you from achieving your goals.

Make the choice to be uncomfortable

“Motivation” is a false god. It’s fleeting and we spend so much time chasing it. It’s not the real issue we have getting started and maintaining a great work ethic.

Daily discipline is what we need. It’s not a scary thing, though. Just attention in a few areas will work wonders.

First, don’t waste the first half of your day. It’s when you’re most fit to make hard decisions.

Second, choose to do the uncomfortable thing. Do the uncomfortable job, task, conversation, or workout. Force yourself to take the first small step and do the uncomfortable task.

Motivation is no long-term solution. It sounds nice, but it lasts for about five minutes. A mindset that attacks the uncomfortable stuff makes you stronger as a person and lasts a lifetime.

The Business Bubble

Most certainly when you run your own business, you must treat working on that business like it’s completely apart from the rest of your life.

Bad things happen, distractions take away focus, people get angry and your mind may feel like it’s turned upside down but the show must go on. Show up, prioritize the work, and make it happen.

I find it helpful to treat work like it has nothing to do with regular family or personal life. When you intermingle them, you link them in a way that they rely on each other and your mood and feeling in personal life will bleed into and usually be a destructive force to the business at hand.

No matter how distracting the outside world is, shut it out of business and we’ll all be more effective in what we want to get done.

Take the steps

We all want to take the elevator up to where the successful people are. We spend so much time looking for the elevator that we ignore the stairs right in front of us.

If we would start up the steps now, we’d be at the top before the elevator-searchers find the “easy” way to riches and fame and comfort.

Get going and get climbing the stairs!

Forgetting time

I was reminded this past weekend how time flies when you’re doing what you love. I was out photographing a couple for a series of portraits and got completely lost in it. Five hours whirled by and I was completely unaware of where the time had gone.

If you can find a way to do what you really love, you really will never work a day in your life.

The straight foot is not afraid of the crooked shoe

It’s a notable thing that often those who have the most to hide work hardest to show their best side. They post the most happy-go-lucky social media tidbits and pictures of happy moments when the seas of turmoil are churning.

The man who has things set in order and is running a tight ship doesn’t need to worry about the way it looks from the outside. He has nothing to hide and no image to build. The thing itself is good so he doesn’t need the PR.

This straight foot (righteous man) is not afraid of a crooked shoe (having a bad outward appearance) because it knows that it is, itself, a good thing. Therefore anything that does get shared or learned about him should be good and clean.

The “Instagram public relations expert” shows only the good bits and everything else is fiercely hidden for fear that the truth may appear.

Never let social media suck the life out of you. Keep your smile and your optimism. Those photos, things, poses, angles, etc… are little more than a brief moment in time.

Don’t apologize for being crazy

It takes guts to say something that is against the established norm. People will say it’s crazy. However, if you care to look back 100 years, there are heaps of things that were “common knowledge” that we now know are themselves a bit crazy.

When you have a theory or an idea about something, don’t apologize for it or feel the need to defend the statement by saying “but” and offering some explanation nobody cares about (they already think you’re a bit crazy) just let the idea or thought stand on its own and let the bullets whistle around you.

You’re the one who had the guts to take the risk of being ridiculed to put your views out there. You’re the one who isn’t so scared of being challenged that he hides in the crowd of public opinion. Be proud of yourself for that and let the jokers laugh.

Being alone and quiet is required

The famous artist, Pablo Picasso once said “Without great solitude, no serious work is possible” and I think he’s accurate in his assessment.

All the background noise, the music, the podcasts, the TV, the distractions of social media and smartphones all need to be shut away for the good stuff to appear.

It’s very difficult to shut it off and look away, but it’s the most unimaginable feeling when you’re able to sit alone, quietly, and concentrate on work more purely and fully.