The Heart To Start: Stop Procrastinating & Start Creating

by David Kadavy

Only put off until tomorrow what you are willing to die having left undone. —Pablo Picasso

On my podcast, Love Your Work, I asked Jon what advice he had for others who were trying to find their way as creators. He said to remember that “no matter who you are, you really are the only person with that voice. And that is the thing to really lean into, even if it’s weird.”

We are the same way. When our true self doesn’t get a chance to follow its desires – when it doesn’t get the creative exercise necessary to arm it with a vocabulary in which to express itself – it acts out in strange ways.

The same way a rocket needs to escape the gravitational pull of Earth to get into space, your art needs to escape the pull of ego to get into the world. You’re going to need some serious fuel to make that happen. That’s what we’ll cover in the coming chapters.

One of the best forms of that fuel is your own curiosity. If you learn how to connect with your curiosity, not only will it propel you through the hard work of getting started, it will be there to keep you moving.

If you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it. —C.S. Lewis

As society progresses, a vacuum grows between the status quo and the true desires of people in the world. The more distance that grows between what people are really thinking and what is actually going on, the more powerful that vacuum becomes. Seth Godin talked about this in more detail in his book Unleashing the Ideavirus: If something is going to go “viral,” he explained, it has to puncture a “vacuum.”

This is what happens when you puncture a vacuum. You tap into the thoughts of not just one person but many people. All that pressure propels your idea. It makes people share it.

But one factor is absolutely critical to doing something notable: You have to listen to the voice in your head and pursue its ideas.

Tapping into the collective consciousness with the help of the voice in your head is a source of powerful ideas, but what you feel in your body when you create can also be a fuel source that helps your art connect with someone.

After my morning writing session, followed by a midday workout and lunch, I lie down on my bed, I put on a sleeping mask and noise-canceling headphones, and I listen to Andrew’s app, “Relax.”

That Which Pulls You Through is the thing that is so strong it can fuel you through the inevitable discomfort of making your art real. No matter how much you love your craft, there are going to be times when you feel as if you can’t possibly make it to the next level.

It might seem as if That Which Pulls You Through has to come from a painful experience, but it can also come from generosity. As author Seth Godin told me, “Generosity is an excellent antidote to fear. If you’re doing this on behalf of someone you care about, the fear takes a back seat.” Notice that Elise Bauer wasn’t simply reacting to her illness. She wanted to take the good things and “bring some of that to other people.”

We are cups, constantly and quietly being filled. The trick is, knowing how to tip ourselves over and let the beautiful stuff out. —Ray Bradbury

Watch out for times when you are Inflating the Investment. What low-commitment things do you end up doing instead of making your art? Change your perception of what it takes to get started. Your art will not only fill the tiny spaces in your life, it will expand and grow into a body of work.

All the best ideas come out of the process; they come out of the work itself. —Chuck Close

Growing up, whenever I was assigned writing in English class, I was always paralyzed by being assigned to write an outline before writing a paper. I always wondered, how are you supposed to decide what you’re going to say before you actually say it? As I started to write more, I discovered that it worked better for me to write a draft first. Then I’d use that draft to write an outline, and I’d use that outline to write my final draft.

It wasn’t until I wrote my first book that I realized my teachers had been pushing me into the Linear Work Distortion. It’s easy to fall into the trap of expecting creative work to happen linearly, as if writing is as simple as putting one word after another, or as if painting is as simple as putting a brush to canvas. When we try to emulate the great work that inspires us, we follow this false progression and end up frustrated. It keeps us from getting started. The Linear Work Distortion is the false belief that creative work is a neat, step-by-step process, wherein the final product steadily reveals itself. In fact, that’s not how creative work really happens. It’s often messy, and iterative.

Part of what makes giving yourself Permission to Suck so powerful is the way that it uses your own perfectionism to your advantage. When you start off with bad work, the very fact that you started propels you to do better work.

Art is a lie that helps us understand the truth. —Pablo Picasso

With Motivational Judo, you use the force of your own ego to kickstart your project and keep yourself moving.

If you pay close attention, you’ll notice that you cheat yourself out of making your art all the time. Throughout this section of the book, we’ve seen it in action. We dream beyond our current skill level so we can convince ourselves we’re not ready to start. We tell ourselves we don’t have the time. We take pride in our identity as perfectionists. All these create valid reasons to not get started. All of these let us feel good about ourselves in the meantime.

This is why my ten-minute timer was so powerful. Even if I felt thirsty or hungry, or if I felt an urge to check email, those urges weren’t strong enough to take me off task. There was a stronger force fighting back: my own need to see myself positively. I couldn’t fail at trying to write for ten minutes – it would be too damaging to my self-perception. Even my ego couldn’t come up with a reasonable excuse. By “lying” to myself by committing to ten minutes, I was able to gain enough momentum to make resistance melt away and to keep writing for much longer.

By using many of the tricks in this book, you can ensure that when you start, you have the momentum to keep going. If you start with something you’re curious about, you’ll work harder than you would have otherwise. If you are attuned to a feeling of excitement for an idea, you’ll pursue ideas with the fuel to keep you moving. If you search for the thing that will pull you through, you can get through the tough parts of the project. One final way to keep yourself going is to begin in the part of the project that will build momentum in other parts of the project.