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“A man wants to walk across the land, but the earth is covered with thorns. He has two options—one is to pave his road, to tame all of nature into compliance. The other is to make sandals.”
—Indian proverb
Josh Waitzkin, the chess prodigy turned world-champion-martial artist, has faced and beaten the world’s best.
And at the highest levels of competition, there are always dirty players. Waitzkin encountered them in his chess career as a fifteen-year-old.
Read MoreThe space where you create matters. The office or coffee shops where you write. The studio where you produce music or paintings. Your editing suite.
Create an environment that summons your best work.
Michael Lewis, bestselling author of Moneyball, The Blind Side, and over a dozen others, recently shared the two main factors that he covets in his writing space.
First, he says to fill your space with love. For him, this comes from the pictures of family he has hung up around his writing room.
Read MoreA sense of urgency flows throughout the entries of Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations. He is constantly reminding himself to act. To stop delaying. To focus. To live.
“Concentrate every minute like a Roman…on doing what’s in front of you with precise and genuine seriousness, tenderly, willingly, with justice.” (2.5)
“Human life. Duration: momentary. Nature: changeable. Perception: dim. Condition of Body: decaying. Soul: spinning around. Fortune: unpredictable. Lasting Fame: uncertain.” (2.17)
“Don’t make room for anything…[that] might lead you astray, tempt you off the road, and leave you unable to devote yourself completely to achieving the goodness that is uniquely yours.” (3.6)
Read MoreIf you could have seen me just before I sat down to write this, you would have thought I had lost my mind.
And let me tell you, to an on-looker, I must have looked like a complete fool.
The cringe-factor was at eleven.
The scene was so awkward that if you had been walking into the room to say hello to me, once you saw what I was doing you would have quietly turned around and tip-toed away hoping that I hadn’t noticed you were there.
So what was I doing?
Read MoreToday I want to share with you Rick Rubin's nine approaches for getting unstuck. In the book he applies these strategies to the Craft Phase of the creation process, but most could be applied to the earlier phases as well (Seed Phase, Experimentation Phase).
Before abandoning a stalled work, Rubin says, "it's worth finding a way to break the sameness and refresh your excitement in the work, as if engaging with it for the first time." (185) As a record producer, Rubin sometimes suggests exercises to his collaborators to encourage this experience. Here are the nine strategies he uses:
Read Moreou and I have talked about Rick Rubin's book, The Creative Act, before. Over the course of the book, he describes four phases of the creative process: Seed, Experimentation, Crafting, and Completion. Use these four phases to clarify your own creative process.
The Seed Phase.
Throughout the book, Rubin talks about creative ideas as “seeds.” In this phase, you collect as many potential ideas as possible.
Read MoreThe creative process is anything but obvious—a truth that the outside world can never truly understand. The daily struggle. The adrenaline. The second-guessing. The blood, sweat, and joy.
The myth of the genius artist and the flash of insight is just that, a myth.
It’s only part of the story.
As a creator, you know that the creative process is never just one thing. It’s never just insight, or just hard work. The creative process is made up of intervals, like breathing in and out.
Read MoreIn the spirit of deepening knowledge through the process of review, I want to re-share an essay from this newsletter last summer, on July 10, 2023. At the time, I was deep into an exploration of the creative act through reading Rick Rubin's book.
There are moments in life where you can step out of time and touch awareness. This essay was the product of one of those moments for me. I hope it encourages you today. To collaborate. To relate. To seek out creative partners in unexpected places.
Read MoreIndifference.
It’s one of our greatest fears as professional creators. We pour our heart and soul into our work, and gather the courage to share it.
And the response is…silence.
Non-response.
Crickets.
The opposite of indifference is remarkability.
Remarkability is the quality of work that gets people talking. It’s when people feel compelled to share their experience of your work with others.
But how can we make remarkable work? I want to share with you two ways.
Read MoreWho are your mentors?
A trusted mentor has perspective and experience that we don’t have. They have been where we want to go. They have made the film, written the book, faced the criticism. They have picked up the pieces when all seemed lost.
We go to great lengths to cultivate mentors, and when we have one, they are worth more than gold.
Yet there are two common mistakes I see creatives make when interacting with their mentors: disregarding the mentor’s advice, and failing to follow-up with their mentor.
Read MoreNo significant growth happens inside of your comfort zone.
Building muscle, learning a new language, learning a cutting-edge skill in your field. All require you to endure discomfort, stress, and even pain to reach the goal.
Think of two artists. One seeks out a single activity every day that pushes her out of her comfort zone. The other avoids all discomfort and tries to replicate past successes.
After one year, which artist do you think has experienced more creative growth?
Read MoreIn a superstar economy, the best get way more than the almost best.
So how should you respond as a creative artist? Here are two advanced ways you can position yourself to succeed:
Cross-train to become the best at a niche, cutting-edge aspect of your discipline.
Instead of fighting to be hired amid a sea of qualified artists, organize a project that others want to be a part of.
Let’s break it down.
Read MoreBoredom is boring. It feels painful. At the slightest twinge of it, our brain screams for relief.
Perhaps that's why so many companies exist to entertain us. Constantly. No need to wait in line—here’s a video. No need to drive in silence—take your pick from this podcast, audiobook, or album. Going to the bathroom? Don’t just sit there, take TikTok with you!
It seems our mission is to eradicate boredom in our lives as if it were a plague.
But is boredom a plague? Or could it be a hidden wellspring of creativity?
Read MoreAdam Grant knows how to produce at an elite level.
At age 28, he became the youngest professor to be granted tenure at the prestigious Wharton School. He later became its youngest Full Professor.
He was Wharton’s top-rated professor (yes, there is such a rating) from 2011–2017.
Before becoming a professor, Grant was an All-American springboard diver, an advertising director, and a professional magician.
When writer Cal Newport profiled Grant for his book Deep Work in 2016, Grant had already published sixty peer-reviewed articles in his field.
Read MoreI started The Creative Process Newsletter back in June so that I could share timeless principles and concrete examples of creativity. Now that we are over six months in, let’s reflect on what we’ve learned. Here are five top lessons that I focused on in my newsletter articles in 2023.
Read MoreLast week we talked about how to prepare before a Creative Deep Work session. It’s just as important to take time at the end of a session to reflect. To finish well.
Think of your reflections as feedback, not judgment. How did things go? What can be improved?
Asking the question “where did I fail today?” is a supremely hopeful question. If you don’t identify where you’ve faltered, you are more likely to fall into the same trap in the future.
If you want to get better faster, start reflecting on your work every day.
Here are four questions you can ask at the end of each session.
Read MoreYou and I have talked before about the creator’s daily struggle and how important it is to cultivate your very own creative deep work routine as a daily habit.
Sometimes the hardest part is just to start. That first five minutes. That’s why it can help to add a ritual to the beginning of your work sessions.
Think of it as a mindful warmup, a transition from everyday noise to creative flow.
I call it the Prepare Phase of your creative deep work routine. Here’s how to do it.
Read MoreSometimes the smallest experiences can lead to significant realizations. Here’s a story of one realization that has to do with film music, friendship, and a box of donuts.
Some time ago, I went with some of my university music students to meet Ron Jones. It was an extremely snowy and icy day in Winter, and we almost didn’t make it over the pass in our fleet van.
But this was not an opportunity to be missed. Ron is an accomplished film and TV composer. He worked in Hollywood for decades as the lead composer for shows like Duck Tales, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Family Guy, and many more.
Ron had generously agreed to give us a tour of his studio and a private seminar on careers in the film industry. We learned all about his composition process, saw his studio in action, learned about networking and the realities of the film music industry.
But my biggest takeaway from that day was not about music. It was about friendship and hospitality.
It was about how to be a good hang.
Read MoreTwo quick words of wisdom for you today, from Marcus Aurelius.
“Stop letting yourself be pulled in all directions.” (Meditations 2.7)
Know your life’s purpose: “People who labor all their lives but have no purpose to direct their every thought and impulse toward are wasting their time—even when hard at work.” (Meditations 2.7)
Don’t be distracted this week. Take action to extract yourself—kindly but firmly—from commitments that pull you away from your purpose.
Mark
P.S. A great way to find your purpose, or to keep your focus on it, is to journal about it every day.
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