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by
Chase Jarvis
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October 7, 2019 - January 20, 2020
The philosopher and boxer Mike Tyson once said, “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.”
Those sudden inspirations aren’t innocent, though. They are your brain’s last-ditch attempts to get you out of doing the work.
The discipline lies in getting the new idea down onto paper and then going back to finish what you originally started. This is just one of the reasons a session plan is important: it helps keep you on task.
Establish a Starting Ritual
Since you already have a plan to create something today, this means spending a moment seeing yourself creating the work in as much concrete detail as possible, before you begin.
Experiment. Once you’ve figured out what works for you, use the same playlist each time for a while. This consistency trains your brain to get into gear.
Tame Distractions Pare away any digital distractions, preferably so that you can’t return to them easily.
Get rid of physical distractions, too.
Log and Clock
Set a timer for twenty-five minutes, work without interruption, and then take a five-minute break. That’s one pomodoro.
Complete four pomodoros, then take a fifteen-minute break. Rinse and repeat.
Be Accountable
Accountability is hard from either side. Those who get it at work often don’t want it. Those who need it to be effective at home have a hard time creating it for themselves.
This doesn’t change the fact that accountability separates professionals from amateurs.
That is the beauty and the terror of true creative autonomy. No matter what level of fame and success you’ve achieved in the outside world, as a creator, you’re part of a select club of individuals who have to go into a room and figure out what you’re going to make next.
If one doesn’t exist yet for your medium, start one.
it’s about doing the work, logging the reps.
The work before the work never ends.
a poor craftsman blames his tools.
there’s a legitimate fear that if we actually make something, we’ll have to face the true state of our skills and accept how much improvement we still have ahead of us.
Permission to Suck
Jared Leto said, “I only succeed a little because I fail a lot.”
Step III Execute Execute your strategy and smash through obstacles.
7 Make It Till You Make It
The big secret in life is that there is no big secret. Whatever your goal, you can get there if you’re willing to work. —OPRAH WINFREY
Once you establish the right mindset—declaring yourself a creator, getting to work, starting a new project, opening a new business, whatever—you suddenly perceive the world in a new way.
Your brain is the best pattern-finding machine in the known universe, but it needs a mission.
Find other superlatives about "your brain"
You can’t help but see the world through an entirely new lens.
Our brains are amazingly good at this stuff, if we set them to the task.
Actively working on a creative project unlocks your intuitive power.
doing ought to precede thinking when it comes to baseline creative work.
Too much planning is a trap.
If you keep walking with your eyes open, you’ll course-correct,
“Don’t think about making art,” he said. “Just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it’s good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art.”
Andy Warhol
Intuition is a tool we don’t completely understand, but it’s kept our species alive all this time. Ignore it at your peril.
The better you get at delegating the right stuff to your gut, the more powerful the results will be.
So how do we screw up intuition? Simple: by overthinking it.
Pros don’t wait until they are pros to act like pros.
Don’t fake it till you make it. Make it till you make it.
being a creator means getting down to your work whether flow shows up or not.
Before you develop stick-to-itiveness, however, you will end up in a rut, with the internal conviction that you’re stuck on the wrong path.
You have to be willing to pivot to stay in tune with yourself. If you go on a hundred auditions and strike out, then decide you actually want to be on the other side and become a casting agent, that doesn’t mean you’ve failed. You’ve simply succeeded at intuiting the next stretch of your path. Oils
It was only through action that I was able to home in on what worked best for me.
You can’t think your way out of a rut. Start by taking action, changing your environment, putting words onto a page, whatever the next step might be. Eventually you’ll be back in the flow state.
No matter what’s blocking you creatively, your best bet is always to just turn up the volume: make more...
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ceramics teacher who divided a class into two groups.
stick to a simple, repeatable process: Day 1: Finish one piece of creative work today, without judgment—whether it’s a story, a photo, or a minimum viable product. Just complete the work, create it quickly, and be good with it. Day 2: Iterate on the work you did yesterday. Do a new draft or update the old one. Put the photo into Photoshop and make it better, add some polish to the lines of yesterday’s poem; just take yesterday’s baseline and make it better. Day 3: Repeat Day 2. Day 4: Repeat Day 3. Day 5: Decide it’s good enough and move on. It’s not
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8 YOUniversity
People can often do more, change more, and learn more—often far more—than they ever dreamed possible. Our potential is hidden in plain sight all around us. —BARBARA OAKLEY
Learning is the lifeblood of creative work.
