A famous story about Picasso...
Once Picasso was walking through the market, a woman spotted him. She requested him to do a little drawing for her.
Picasso agreed and drew a masterpiece within a minute and handed the paper to the woman saying " That will be one million dollar".
The woman replied, "But Mr. Picasso, it only took you a minute to draw this masterpiece".
Picasso smiled and replied, "But it took me thirty years to draw a masterpiece in a minute".
The above story relies us the truth that to produce a masterpiece, you have to work for a long time even for a year or decades.
A recent study tracked the ages of Nobel prize winners, scientists and great inventors. Most of them work peaked during the late thirties. Even in the fields of science and math, creative breakthroughs often requires years of work.
An another study conducted at Carnegie Mellon university by cognitive psychology professor, John Hayes found that of 500 famous musical instruments, nearly all of them were created atleast after 10 year of composer's career. Hayes also found similar patterns with artists. It was mentioned in his book, "Ten years of silence ".
Creativity is not a quality you are born with or without. It is something that is discovered and improved through real work.
Now, how can you do your best work and achieve your goals???
1. Create junk
Junk???
Yes...
People tend to look at successful writers, writerswho are getting books published and maybe even doing well financially, and think that they sit down at their desks every morning feeling like a million dollars, feeling great about who they are and how much talent they have and what a great story they have to tell; that they take a few deep breaths, pushback their sleeves, roll their necks a fewtimes to get all the cricks out, and dive in, typing fully formed passages
as fast as a court reporter. But this is just fantasy of the uninitiated. I know some very great writers, writers you love who write
beautifully and have made a great deal of money, and not one of them sits down
routinely feeling wildly enthusiastic and confident. Not one of them writes elegant first drafts… For me and most other writers I
know, writing is not rapturous. If fact, the only way I can get anything written at all is to write really, really shitty first drafts.
—Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird
In any creative work, you have to create junk. Sometimes you have to write 4 to 5 terrible pages just to discover that you wrote one good sentence in the fourth paragraph of second page.
This task is like being a gold miner. You have to dig with pounds of dirt and rock and to remove those dirts to gain a small piece of gold.
2. Follow schedule
Inspiration is for amateurs.
The rest of us just show up
and get to work.
—Chuck Close
Amateurs creates when they feel inspired. But professionals creates on a schedule. Practicing your craft over and over is the only way to become decent at it.
Ira Glass, the host of the popular radio show," This American life" which is broadcast to 1.7 million listeners each week.
The following is the advice by Ira Glass gives to anyone looking to creative work.
"The most important thing you can do is to do a lot of work. Do a huge volume of work".
If you want to do your best creative work, set a schedule for your work.
3. Finish something
Finish something. Anything. Stop researching, planning and preparing. Just do the work. It doesn't matter how good or bad it is. You don't need to rock the world with your first try.
There are no great men, who became great on their first try.
Stop debating and do something.
4. Share your work
Share your work publicly. It will provide for doing better work. Sometimes you have to deal with haters. But the world needs people who puts creative work into the world.
What seems simple to you is often brilliant to someone else. But you'll never know that unless you choose to share..
Follow these simple steps and attain your goals...
Reference
1. "Mastering creativity" by James Clear.
2. "Bird by bird" by Anne Lamott.
Keep visiting...
Well written Pradeep!!! Keep going:-)
ReplyDelete