Do The Work.
I used to get pretty depressed when I saw that Photoshop loading screen.
Never during normal work hours though. My 9-to-5 was and is (and will probably remain for some time), “just a job.”
No, I’m talking about nights. And weekends. And lunch breaks. Vacations, holidays; basically any time I wasn’t working for a paycheck, I was hitting a creative wall. Because whatever unwavering, unblinking self-confidence Other Designers possess, I wasn’t born with it.
‘What is the difference between my day-work and night-work?’ I wondered. As frustrating as the work at my 9-to-5s can be, it was still satisfying. I still have those moments of transcendence, those blissful moments in my day where I didn’t feel the full-on affects of a crippling impostor syndrome. And I felt like I was wasting these moments on pay-check-projects that didn’t speak about what I cared most about (besides, y’know “Food” and “Shelter”; apparently I care about those things the most).
How could I get these moments of clarity on the work that was most meaningful to me?
Patience, Grasshopper
The perceived gulf between the haves (designers cranking out stellar, meaningful, personal work while swaddled in blissful fulfillment) and the have-nots (me) wasn’t necessarily talent or vision; it was time.
The fact of the matter is, between the hours of 8am and 6pm, I’m paid to sit with problems. It’s OK when I don’t arrive at the correct answer right off the bat. I do my homework, take my best stab, test the results and usually go back to the drawing board. While there are pressures, and deadlines and accountability, this process and the time they require are built into the estimations.
This wasn’t the case with my personal work.
Despondency, depression and frustration usually followed a first draft because the first draft wasn’t perfect. I had, in my head, what this work was supposed to mean to me, say to others and achieve after minimal effort. I was never gentle and always unreasonable.
TLDNR: I’ve got a tendency to be the worst boss I’ve ever had. Because of this, I’ve had huge problems with follow-through.
The resource I wasn’t giving myself at home which I had in the mornings and afternoons was patience. I never gave myself the time necessary to imbue these projects with the craft and meaning I expect from myself.
I’ve put a ton of research into the figuring out what’s been blocking me creatively. One of the keys that’s been jangling around in my head for a while (only recently has it really clicked) was John Cleese’s talk on creativity. I quoted the relevant bits here but by all means, go watch the entire talk if you haven’t. It’s about as brilliant as you’d expect.
I was always intrigued that one of my Monty Python colleagues, who seemed to be more talented than I was, never produced scripts as original as mine.
I watched for some time and then began to see why. If he was faced with a problem and fairly soon saw a solution, he was inclined to take it — even though, I think, he knew the solution wasn’t very original.
…By sticking at it, I would almost always come up with something more original. My work was more creative than his, simply because I was prepared to stick with a problem longer.
I was comfortable sitting and waiting with the hard problems at work. I wasn’t willing to give myself the same resources at home. Of course I always failed.
Show Up. Do the Work. Grind It Out.
Because quick and easy victories are few and far between, I started getting discouraged easily. I would tinker under this queasy specter of inevitable failure, try, fail and resign myself to mediocrity for the rest of my life, prematurely retire, have another idea, be compelled to explore it, try, fail, quit. Rinse. Repeat. You get the picture.
Something snapped in me when I read Steven Pressfield’s book The War of Art (a huge thank you to Jared for gifting it to me for Christmas). Pressfield’s concept of Professionals vs. Amateurs in particular snapped me out of my repetitive, mostly-destructive “process.”
The difference, he says, between an amateur and a professional is that a professional shows up every day, regardless of weather, mood or health. The amateur does not.
That was, in a nutshell, why I saw more success at my day job then my night-and-weekends one.
“Creation is an act of Sheer Will.” — Peter Hammond, Jurassic Park
Maybe you operate on that level of transcendent euphoria. Good on you. I don’t. But I am learning to compensate. “Do the work” has become my mantra. The mindset I’m going for? Relaxed. Humble. I’m not here to make a million dollars. I’m not here to impress my peers. I’m not even here to scratch my creative itch. I’m here to do the work, sit with the difficult problems and explore until I’ve done my due diligence. The difference has been night and day.
It’s still early in the process; I’m still working out the kinks. But I can’t go back either — the work on personal projects that I have been doing has been miles ahead of whatever finished product I eked out before.
I stopped waiting for the Midas touch and started learning how to dig instead.
Smarter People Who Said the Same Thing:
John Cleese On Creativity
Ira Glass on Story-Telling
It’s Not How Good You Are, Its How Good You Want to Be by Paul Arden
That Turtleneck is Choking You by Jordan Gadapee
and especially The War of Art by Steven Pressfield
About the Author: When Zach Herring isn’t designing useful user-oriented software, spending time with his amazing girlfriend hiking or running in the Flatirons of Colorado, rock climbing, watching Netflix or reading, he’s trying to figure out how to write an ‘About Me’ that doesn’t make him sound like a pretentious ass.
