SETH GODIN, a best-selling author of a number of self-improvement books, came up with a latest book on how to enhance our creativity entitled “The Practice: Shipping Creative Work”. Seth Godin defines creativity as “the generous act of making things better by doing something that might not work.”
A doctor
who sees a patient and is trying to heal his or her patient although it might
not work is doing creative and generous work. A leader who tries to lead others
with his or her cause is doing creative work because he or she wants to improve
the world, but his cause might or might not succeed. Creativity in other
words requires courage. But with courage also comes the
satisfaction of trying things out rather than not trying at all that guarantees
one hundred per cent failure and at the same time it guarantees a life of mediocrity
and boredom.
Seth Godin
includes the virtue of generosity in his definition of creativity because there
are people who are creative but doing illegal or selfish acts. They are
the people who are not after making the world better but on the contrary
destroying it such as a drug lord trying to come up with better and creative
ways to sell his goods that will not be detected by the authorities. Seth
Godin calls these people as “hustlers” and the good guy as the “generous
creative”.
Your
creative practice might involve writing, programming, drawing, recording
podcasts, coaching others, or cooking. Regardless of what you do during your
practice, the goal is universal – stop focusing on results and learn to love
the process. The more you embrace the process, the more you will trust yourself
to take small risks and produce creative work.
The author
illustrates the importance of focusing on the process through the pastime
activity of fishing. When Seth Godin was trying to learn fly fishing
through a coach, he asked the coach not to put bait on his hook because he
wanted to focus on the skills of fishing. His friends who were trying to
learn along with him, however, were so intent on getting a fish to bite their
hooks that they focused on willing, hoping and imploring but end up not getting
any fish. Because Seth’s goal was not to catch a fish yet, his detachment
from the result made him focus on the rhythm, posture and casting of the rod
and beat his friends later on in getting a catch.
The author
says, “Focus on the practice not the output because the practice is all we can
control, not the output.” It’s much like giving it your best in any
activity, and you don’t know the outcome, but the important thing is that you
are giving it your all because that is the only thing you can control and
something that will not give you regrets later on. In creative work,
practice is what will put your creativity to the next level. But you
might ask, “If I don’t focus on results, how will I know I’m improving? Seth
advises two metrics: how big is my discard pile? And how much work
have I shipped?
The
discard pile is all about trial and error. Drew Dernavich is a famous
cartoonist of New Yorker, a world-wide read humor magazine. Many consider
him a genius with his cartoons but when he revealed to the public the number of
rejected cartoons he had in a month, compared to the ones that get published,
it was a shocking revelation, the ratio was 10 to 1.
Only one
out of his ten submissions made it to the magazine. This illustrates that
even professional generous creatives still go through repetitive practice and
mistakes. The lesson here is that your “success” file will only grow in
proportion to your “discard” file. More success comes from more
errors. In other words, it’s the good old-fashioned “try and try until
you succeed”. Your discard pile might be lines of programming code that
didn’t work as expected, product ideas that failed to be profitable, jokes no
one laughed at, graphic designs no one shared on social media, or persuasive
speeches that failed to move people.
Shipped
work on the other hand is about making a commitment to stick to a schedule in
shipping or sending your creative work to someone or to some people regardless
of how you feel. There will be days you don’t feel like shipping or don’t
believe you can send a good work. However, after you make shipping on a
recurring schedule an unemotional rule, you’ll magically find the creative
energy you need to ship good work.
Every ship
date is a chance to improve upon your last work. By improving on your prior
work, you naturally build skill and refine your taste. Start shipping to
a few people such as relatives or friends. Then try to get their
feedback. Over time, with more skill and better taste, you will find the
courage to ship to more and more people. By learning to love the process,
increasing your discard pile, and shipping more often, you are well on your way
to producing better original work and become an established generous creative.
(ECC)
