Helping creative entrepreneurs learn to be more resilient. I help people get un-stuck.
I got up at 5 am this morning and drove down town. The streets were empty, the neon lights of Broadway were slowly going off. This is the only time in Nashville you won’t hear music downtown. The moments right before the city wakes up and the hustle of the day begins.
While I was there I made this. On purpose. For me. 
Make something today.
I’m a photographer and like most of us, we also have a lot friends and acquaintances who are also photographers. There’s nothing wrong with that but I have noticed that if I’m not careful, all I see all day is someone else’s work.
Because of that I have a few people who I’ll sometimes check out and see what’s new. There are two specific reasons why I do this:
1) They’re friends: It’s important to celebrate each others success. We’re all on the same path here and trying to add value to the world. Follow your friends and let them know how awesome they are 🙂
2) I want to learn from them: I realize that I’ll never be in a place where I can afford to stop learning. Striving to be better at my craft is always a priority for me and I will continue to respect and learn from those who came before me.
(This is also why I listen to speakers, go to conferences, read books and blogs, and write. Continued growth and learning has to be a priority.)
Be Intentional
The best way for me to do this is to intentionally sit down and search out my friends and make an effort to celebrate their new work. And while I’m at it, go in search of something I can learn to better my craft. Maybe it’s a conference or awesome blog post I saw floating around. So I either do it then or put it on the calendar for later and I’m done for that week in following other photographers.
(The rare exception here is if I see something pop up in my news feed, twitter, or instagram and then I go see what’s up. This can be tricky though and requires self-discipline to not do it every time you see something pop up.)
Don’t Look For Inspiration
There is one reason I do not look at other people’s work and that is for inspiration. Inspiration is something that happens to you. It’s usually not something you can go find. You can be inspired by other’s work and I often am, but I don’t go looking for it to be my primary source of stimuli for my own work.
If I’m constantly flooding my mind with the thoughts of others and using that as my main source of inspiration, then what’s going to come out isn’t going to be true to me. And I’m not down with that.
As with everything, always start with why?
Why am I looking at their work? How does it make me feel?
Let’s support one another. Let’s celebrate one another. Let’s learn from one another. But Let’s respect ourselves enough to be true to our own work. Because we all need your work. We already have everybody else’s.
You don’t need permission to make something today. You don’t need permission to add value. You don’t need permission to lead.
You have all the tools you need right now, today, to start something. Don’t worry about anybody else. You don’t need anyone’s approval to start or to finish. Just do.
I have never been to the San Diego Zoo. This is something I plan to remedy in the very near future. But my wife, Jen, has.
Jen was born just outside of San Diego and lived there the first few years of her life. She was probably three or four and was walking around soaking up the scenes of the day at one of the best zoos in the world. Walking past giraffes and penguins and lions… then Jen approaches the lions cage. The lion looks at her and her at him. Jen then decides she is done and starts to walk away. The lion follows here every move. Then with a growl and a crash, the lion attacks the cage in an apparent effort to eat tiny three-year-old Jen.
This story is awesome for two reasons: One it’s crazy. Two it’s an experience that has stuck with Jen and her family for her whole life!
“Hey! Remember that time Jen survived a lion attack?!?!”
I want to run after those experiences. I want to chase down stories that I will tell my children and their children about. I want to experience something awesome.
If you want to have stories to tell, if you want to life an interesting story, than you have to go out and experience some thing awesome and you have to do it every chance you get.
Go get attacked by a lion and live to tell about it.
I was out a driving around today on my way to pick a lens from our local lens rental guys. When I arrived at the place, I got out, picked up the lens, returned to my car and it wouldn’t start. At all. The battery was dead. After a quick jumpstart it was up and running again and I was on the road.
This made me think about creativity and how very similar it is to the way a car battery works. Car batteries have a finite charge in and if left to run the car all by itself, they wouldn’t last very long. So along comes the alternator. one of the purposes of an alternator is to replenish lost voltage from the battery. When you start your car, the battery loses charge and the alternator charges the battery until it is full again.
Creative work is kind of similar isn’t it? If not finite, Creativity is at the very least limited/drained by our constant pursuit of great work and generating new ideas. We go from day-to-day thinking up new ideas and producing new work without taking care of ourselves creatively and we expect our battery keep going and going…. The truth is that sooner or later it will all catch up to us and we will burn out and have to stop making stuff in order to fix the problem.
So I thought I’d share some ways to build your own “alternator” in your life so that your “Battery” doesn’t burn out.
1. Pay attention to what’s going in.
What goes in is what comes out. Make sure it’s good.
Our brain is constantly bombarded with new information every day. The way your brain works (or wants to work) is better than any filing system in the world. Every bit of information it takes in throughout the day is processed and assimilated into categories to be used for whatever. Your brain is doing these processes rather you’re making a conscious effort about it or not. If my brain is doing this all on its own, then I better inform it of what I consider to be important so I can actually use it when I need it.
Build a running list of the following:
Books
Podcasts
Articles that apply to your field
Articles that interest you
Articles that apply to a current project
Awesome photos
And so on…
Your brain is going to soak it all up. Give it something to add charge to your creative battery. A good way to get started with this is to start collecting articles, podcasts, and videos or what ever you can find that might help you now or in the future. These resources will prove to be an invaluable well for you to draw from when you need it.
(I use apps like Feedly, Instapaper, and Pocket to store these resorcues for easy access later)
The biggest thing here, Schedule time in your day to do this. It’s important so just go ahead and make it part of your daily routine.
2. Make sure your not filing up with others voices.
Some days I log into Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram 10, 20, or sometimes 30 times. It is so easy to have at least 20 people’s voices floating around in your brain and effecting your work. We want to get rid of that and hone in on our work and our contribution today. Wouldn’t it be more of a service to my friends and followers on Facebook and Twitter if I could just set aside some time to interact with them and give it my full attention? Isn’t that what we think they deserve in real-life, face-to-face, old-school-style conversations?
Let me be clear, I love social media and I think it’s brilliant and absolutely awesome for your business, sharing your art/ideas, and connecting with people. But I believe that it is absolutely impossible to spend 2 hours a day on average (If you don’t think you’re spending that much time on social media, track it. I didn’t think so either. I was wrong.) looking at other people’s work and lives and not be affected by it.
Here’s what I do:
I don’t have to be constantly connected to the rest of the world. I want to be able to hear my own voice when I need to. Not have it drown out by others.
3. Do something Different
Experience happens in two ways: It happens to you, or you can happen to it. I’m talking about the latter. Get out and experience something you haven’t before.
This is all about exploring new things and finding out what sticks and what doesn’t. Did you like ice hockey? (actually, I’d probably die. I suck at ice skating.) Write it all down and pay attention to how these experiences make you feel. All these experiences, good or bad, are going to give you more life to draw from when you need it in your work.
This is about preserving your creativity and adding to the creative “Juice” so that you don’t drain it all when you need it. Having these practices built into my life has helped me to experience a better ebb and flow in my work and to create better work when it really counts.
I heard Todd Henry say recently on a podcast, “If you want to experience serendipity in your life and in your work, you have to structure your life to experience it.”
Start structuring your life to better fuel your creativity and do the work that only you can do. We all need it.
Questions:
What are some things that could be draining your creative battery?
Which of these systems will help you regain control and give you the creative charge you need?
What can you change today to help you on an upcoming project?
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