Creativity

NaNoWriMo: A Pep Talk and a Warning

Merlin — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 12:20:48 -0500

I honor any project to write something — especially to write a long piece of ﬁction. It’s something I’ve always wanted to do but, like most people, I have always been too scared to attempt it.

So, kudos.

But, here’s the thing: it’s hard to start writing, and it’s almost as hard to keep writing. Believe me, I know. And, there will be times every day when you get discouraged or you want to throw in the towel because you feel lost or depressed or useless or just plain tired. Empty. That’s the word. Empty.

All I want to say is, keep at it. You can do this.

Every time you sit down to write represents a new chance, and I really encourage you to make yourself see it that way. That means set aside the time (with a beginning and end, if possible), take it seriously, and, most importantly, try not to think. Thinking is not writing; thinking is thinking. Thinking does not make books.

So, keep your hands moving [PDF], don’t self-edit, and above all, don’t let past failures (or successes) have any place at your desk during the time you’ve set aside to do your work. There’s no good that can come out of trying to see the present, creative moment through the overly emotional, shaded lenses of either the past or the future. Just be in the room with yourself and, as my pal Andy says, keep moving the cursor to the right.

And, the warning? Don’t read too many blog posts like this.

The hounds are out this month, guys, and they smell your fear and self-doubt. So, shovelbloggers will be offering you a tantalizing Vegas-style buffet of endless writing “help” that will range from the indispensable to the stupid to the unconscionably poisonous. And, smile though they might, those folks could care less if all those page views end up killing your word count or distracting you at the one delicate moment you were about to ﬁgure out your troubled third act. Their job is to make you stop working. Don’t let them. Okay?

Just as thinking is not writing, advice is not writing. Got it? So, don’t blow your day on metajunk.

This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t treat yourself to the best advice about becoming a better writer (see below), but it does mean you sure as shooting better not be reading blog posts about “surprising writing tips” during your Special Writing Time. Personally, I love books about writing, writing advice, and just plain talking about writing. But, I also know (all too well) that something that seems or feels helpful can quickly turn into an anti-pattern. Especially when it does anything to stop that cursor from moving rightward.

Seriously. Read the next sentence out loud to yourself three times. No, do it:

When I’m reading about writing, I’m not writing.

And, of course, the irony is, nearly every (good) book on writing will eventually end up telling you – or leading you to see – the same handful of things.

Set reasonable goals and honor them
Draft with complete abandon; edit with surgical precision
When you sit down to write, focus without distraction; when you’re not writing, keep it off your mind
Read great books (actual big books, not blogs or magazines) as often as you can
Just write, and just keep writing, and just keep writing, writing, writing. Then write more.

Good luck with your novel, and have fun. For what it’s worth, here’s a few of my favorite books on writing (alphabetically, by author). Just remember: if you read them during Writing Time, you must smack yourself. Hard.

Bolker, Writing Your Dissertation in 15 Minutes a Day; Sounds like a BS title, but it’s not. Again: process. How to think and when. How to approach a daunting project sensibly by “parking on a downhill slope.”
Goldberg, Writing Down the Bones; Shut off your monkey mind, get past discursive thinking, and keep that hand in motion. Like meditation, writing is a practice. You do it because you do it, that is why you do it.
Hart, A Writer’s Coach; Failures in non-ﬁction writing are almost always failures of process (especially during pre-writing). A must-buy for journalists (and serious bloggers).
King, On Writing; Writing is a craft, and it’s difﬁcult, and it matters. If you don’t believe it, get hit by a goddamned van. (N.B.: If you need to pick just one of these, get On Writing. No question. It’s the best.)
Lamott, Bird By Bird; Just so very, very wonderful. Heartfelt, funny, and desperately useful, if only for learning “The Shitty First Draft.”
Zinsser, On Writing Well; The Grandaddy of writing-as-craft books. Learn how making prose is like building furniture. You’re an engineer of words. Friend, you’ll close this book with a new obsession for tight and precise prose writing. I don’t pull it off every day (let alone every sentence), but it’s damned sure on my mind all the time.

”NaNoWriMo: A Pep Talk and a Warning” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on November 02, 2009. Except as noted, it's ©2009 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

Makebelieve Help, Old Butchers, and Figuring Out Who You Are (For Now)

Merlin — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 17:17:46 -0400

Makebelieve Help, Old Butchers, and Figuring Out Who You Are (For Now) - Vimeo [NSFW]

Here’s a video I made about a video I made. Consequently, it’s also about writing a book, fake self-help, the long road to developing expertise, and the ups and downs of repeatedly asking the world to tell you who you are.

The video is long. As usual. This is how it works.

I’d had this fancy idea that I’d do a DFW-style dump of annotations about what I talk about over these 40 minutes, and I might add that later, but for now here’s all you need to know:

Dish soap cleans dishes; Stuart Brown says everybody needs Play; Rands has a cave where he doesn’t multitask; The Dreyfus Model has ﬁve stages; Andy Hunt wants you to Think & Learn Pragmatically; my pal, Sean Hussey helped me ﬁgure some of this stuff out.

And, oh, what the heck. Here’s how to supercharge your zen turbocharger with “5 Surprising House Hacks!” [even more NSFW]

[Index Card Photo: Inbox Zero Tumblr]

”Makebelieve Help, Old Butchers, and Figuring Out Who You Are (For Now)” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on October 22, 2009. Except as noted, it's ©2009 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

Fake Rocks, Salami Commanders, and Just Enough to Start

Merlin — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 09:36:47 -0400

MaxFunCon: Merlin Mann on Doing Creative Work (via TSoYA)

Here’s the audio from a short talk I presented a few weeks ago at Jesse Thorn’s awesome1 MaxFunCon in Lake Arrowhead, CA. The talk is subtitled, “With All Due Respect to the Seduction Community”2, and it contains my typically NSFW use of, well, words, I guess.

It’s about how to get started—just started—with any project that really matters to you.

Listen above
- Embedded audio starts at 4:00 (where my talk begins)
Download MP3 of this episode
Subscribe to The Sound of Young America via iTunes or vanilla RSS

Foam Barriers (and Granite Fears)

It’s difficult to talk about how to get started with a project without addressing why it can feel so difficult to get started in the first place. And, as I said in the talk, I think this often comes down to perceived barriers. Barriers to even the most modest kind of starting. Barriers that seem entirely real, external, and immovable.

But, why “perceived?”

Thing is, when you really put your back into it, and push against your barriers a bit harder, they often turn out to be nothing very substantial at all. More like fake foam boulders that just look lifelike because they’re illuminated by the unreliable light of fear. See, fear’s the really hard part.

Yes, the barriers give you a theoretically dignified toupee for carpeting over your neuroses, but the underlying fears are still unspeakably real. And, you totally know it.

So, just humor me. Think about something you’ve been really excited to make or do.3 Maybe something you’ve been thinking about starting for weeks, months, or even years. Dance lessons? Short story? Web comic? MAME cabinet? Tree house? Doomsday laser? Excel spreadsheet?4 What stops you?

Remember now, we’re not talking about finishing a project or even making something that you know will be the greatest thing ever made. Just starting. What’s the barrier for you?

Well, at least in my experience, if you’re honest enough to push past those sensible, well-worn consolations of generalized procrastination and unrelenting “busy-ness,” you’ll discover how many hang-ups trace back to some dumb, shameful fear. Yeah, I know. Crazy hippie talk, right? Still.

Any of these sound familiar?

Fear of Apathy. “I can’t start this until I’m positive the work will never become dull or difficult.”5
Fear of Ambiguity. “I can’t start this until I know exactly how it will turn out (as well as the precise method by which I’ll do it).”
Fear of Disconnection. “I can’t start this until I’m totally up-to-date and current on everything.”
Fear of Imperfection. “I can’t start this until I know the end product will be flawless.”
Fear of Incompletion. “I can’t start this until I’m already done with it.”
Fear of Isolation. “I can’t start this until I know making it will never be lonely.”
Fear of Sucking. “I can’t start this until I’m already awesome at it (and know that even horrible people whom I dislike will hail me as a genius).”
Fear of Fear itself. “I can’t start this until I’m guaranteed that making it will never be scary.”

There are probably a lot more, but these represent a few of the greatest hits spinning on my own particular jukebox.6

And, sure, there’s a lot of overlap, or if you prefer, design redundancies. Because once you let one fear hang out with you, it starts bringing all its buddies along to the party. And The Fears are a tightly-knit, mean-spirited posse who egg each other on and love nothing more than trashing your house while you sob in the guest bathroom. Fears are total dicks.

Then, There’s That Talking Lizard

To make matters worse, when it comes to strictly creative endeavors like making art7, your regular, old, garden-variety fears find an enthusiastic ally in the entirely rational, if philistine, voice of your Lizard Brain.8

Listen for it, because that voice speaks so often and with such consistency and unquestioned authority that it can begin to sound like common sense—even intuition. It’s the voice that sees you thinking about making something, then calmly, firmly reminds you where you’re going wrong, wrong, wrong:

Grow up. “You already have plenty of things to do with your Real-Life Obligations without wasting time dicking around with some doofy ‘art’ project. That’s for kids and people with sandals in California.
So, stop being childish.”
Eat your vegetables. “Even if you cannot be talked out of making something, remember that those Real-Life Obligations all need to be completely taken care of before you even consider trotting off to pretend you’re David Foster Wallace.9
So, stop having fun.”
No one notices and no one cares. “Why bother? Even if you were talented and interesting (which you’re not), you know no one will notice if you never make anything at all. Because no one really cares. Including you.
So, stop trying.”
Your time’s passed, Li’l DaVinci. “Seriously, look at yourself. If you were ever going to be anything other than what you are or make anything other than what you’ve already made, you would have done it years ago. It’s too late now.
So, stop evolving.”

See? What’d I say? The lizard’s a dick, too.

But, honestly, do you ever hear yourself providing a running commentary on how much you suck? Giving yourself a spirited anti-pep talk? Sure you do. I do. Everybody does—including people who produce unbelievably, unexpectedly successful work.

It’s not that successful and productive people don’t see those same barriers or feel that same fear—it’s just that most of the good ones have figured out how to either accept the fears as a natural part of the process, or they just choose to ignore each fakey barrier the second it appears.

And, that is precisely what this starting business is all about. Putting aside every “reason,” and announcing to your Lizard Brain that it can either evolve or suck a nut.

Not that this is easy. But, you know that, right? Exactly.

The Switch Flips

Think about the times you’ve tried to get started, but things just weren’t happening for you. What wasn’t right? What were you feeling?

Could be lots of things,10 but I’ll postulate one theory on how a lot of us knowledge-worker types get derailed at the point right before we really get started. At the point when we’re most susceptible to an attractive nuisance.

So, imagine the place where you go to make whatever you make. Could be a studio, a library, an office, a cafe, living room, or what have you. You’re sitting there. And, of course, you’re not doing Real Work for your Real-Life Obligations. You’re trying to make something new and perhaps wonderfully unnecessary. “Something useless,” the Lizard Brain whispers, “That no one will care about. That you won’t finish anyway. That you’re too busy to do….”

You’re now shamefully staring at your blank page or an empty canvas or a fresh Compass install or that unpopulated Excel spreadsheet. And your poor mind is already feeling like a lost duckling. You’re desperately casting about for something to save it—if not a big idea or the muse of “inspiration,” at least something that you really know. Something that you can get the hook into. Something that’s…important.

That? That right there? That is the enemy, my friend. That fear of your own inability and of the triviality of your non-work is so toxic. Because it opens you up to insane anxieties about what’s happening outside the studio or the library or office or the cafe or the living room or the what-have-you.

It’s all those fears tearing ass like a colony of E.O. Wilson’s ants. In growing numbers, they’re on to the scent of your anxiety, so now they can build new and customized barriers in record time.

Then, in what can amount to a split second, a switch flips. The Lizard Voice has gotten too loud to be ignored. You’ve come to what you believe are your senses, and you feel compelled to escape this Elysian dream world of nonsense and feelings and unfinished thoughts and “what the hell was I thinking?” After all. You’ve got real shit to do, right?

Ah. Those three horseman of the maker’s apocalypse have come to your rescue: the unknown, the ambiguous, and the incomplete.

Better go check email. Might be something “important.”

The Opposite of That Thing

So, are you getting the perverse irony at work here?

Given that your fears know you too well, they can capitalize on any uncertainty that they know you’d find intolerable. So, even a surprisingly trivial matter—so long as that matter might represent items unknown, ambiguous, or incomplete to you—can suddenly seem extremely important and will swiftly divert your attention from the cool stuff you’d like to be doing onto….oh, whatever that other stuff might be. Better find out.

And, yes, I’m waving at you here, email inbox.11 J’accuse, you horrible little troll.

But, you’re getting it, right? How the Lizard Brain lies and you believe it because it’s easy to believe?

When your resolve melts—when that switch flips and you’re pulled away from a generative kind of anxiety to be thrust into the more caustic and strangely addictive anxities of “real life”—you’re giving up a precious part of your real “real life” in exchange for security of the familiar. Problems you understand. Anxieties you’re comfortable being anxious about. Busy, busy, busy.

Problem is, all of this becomes like chugging saltwater.

Drinking saltwater is a terrible idea. Because it makes you thirstier than you were before you started drinking it. So, you have to drink more saltwater. Then, that makes you thirstier still, so you end up drinking more saltwater. Which makes you also drink more saltwater. And so on. Until you die. Still thirsty.

Ditto empty email checking. Ditto anxiety about anxieties. Ditto every other Lizard Brain impulse to solve a perceived problem by amplifying the thing that’s actually causing the problem.

Tolerance: Bulwark Against Fakey Barriers

If making anything substantial really matters to you, you’re going to need to take the cure. And, the antidote is nasty, difficult, and tastes way worse than saltwater. The answer? You do the hard thing. No matter what it takes. You stick with it at the time you’re most tempted to run away.

Like I said in the talk, developing those invaluable tolerances (the tolerance for ambiguity and the tolerance for sucking) requires the exercise of some very small muscles. The muscles are super-hard to locate, and once you do find them, they hurt like a bitch to exercise. But, doing that exercise repeatedly will pay you back ten-fold.

Because that next time you’re in the studio or the library or office or the cafe or the living room or the what-have-you, and you start to feel the fears building barriers, you’ll know what to do. And you’ll know how to do it. Because you’ve done it before.

There’s no trick here, guys. No system. No diagram. No hack. No tips, no webinars, and no Digg-able bulleted lists. It’s simply work.

You sit, you work, you tolerate. Then you do it again.

Enough. Just for Now.

I’m not sure whether this is precisely relevant, but as I’ve been working on the “Large Writing Project” I’d mentioned in the talk (more on that soon), a particular phrase keeps going through my head:

How do I know what I need to know…for now?

Not, “I can’t start this until I know everything about everything,” or “I can’t start this until I’m 100% up-to-date on every aspect of my life” or “I can’t start this until my skills, tools, expertise, and experience are flawless.”

Just really asking yourself how you know whether you have enough of anything—be it information, tools, skills, or coffee—just to literally start. Just start. Not forever. Just for now. Start.

So, how about instead of waiting for the perfect conditions, maybe try thinking about this stuff in a kooky, opposite way:

Assume there will will always be tools that are better than the ones you have now.
Assume that events in the world will continue to happen or not happen regardless of whether you learn about them immediately.
Assume that you understand and control an embarrassingly minute percentage of the universe.
Assume that none of this matters if you’re determined to make something you care about today.

You already have everything you need. It’s all there. And it doesn’t take sandals, or perfect pitch, or iPhone 4.0, or full-screen mode, or a ★★★★-star reputation on the seduction community forum to get started. Or re-started. Or re-re-re-re-started.

Seconds Away

Your Lizard Brain is absolutely right when it tells you that most people won’t notice if you don’t make something, and that a lot of people won’t particularly care if you do. But, how you choose to respond to that existential kōan will say a lot about your potential as both an artist and as an engaged human.

Because, if you’re relieved that universal apathy provides legitimate cover for eight blissful hours of “managing email,” then you’re in luck. Every day for the rest of your life. Punch out.

But, if you’re like me, you may find you’re invigorated—even challenged—by all that bigger ambiguity. By knowing that, at any time, you might be seconds away from starting something amazing that seemed impossible a minute ago. Even oddly prepared to drop the lizard crap whenever the need arises.

Weird to think how insanely different your day could be today. Purely depending on what you do in the next 10 or 15 seconds. If that switch gets flipped in the right direction, then stays there.

What can you tolerate? What will you start? Now.

See? You’ve got enough of everything you need. You’ve already started. Now just keep going.

MaxFunCon. Seriously. This was the best conference I’ve ever attended. Don’t have the space here to say everything I’d like to say, so I’ll just say I agree with Adam, Matt, and some other enthusiastic folks. ↩
The Seduction Community. How to trick ladies into having intercourse with you. ↩
Make or do. On that index card with the “notes” for my talk on it, you’ll see the spanish word, “Hacer,” which can mean either “to make” or “to do.” I’ve always liked the idea that making and doing are very closely linked, especially for creative types. Plus, I enjoy an irregular verb with a silent “h.” ↩
Excel spreadsheet. I have no idea why poor Excel is my default array item whenever I have to mention something that’s not a fruity art project. What I really mean is “something practical that’s not all arty.” I actually like Excel a lot. Well. I like Numbers a lot anyway. Starting is interest-agnostic. ↩
Fear of Apathy. This is one of the central, giant themes in Csikszentmihalyi’s Flow theory—that we do our best work (or, as he puts it, “live optimally”) when we are highly challenged by work in which we’re highly skilled. Apathy, on the other hand, is what we get from the dreadful combination of low skills and low challenge. Check out this cool diagram. ↩
Jukebox. In (7, Bird by Bird), the wonderful Anne Lamott talks about having a jukebox in her head that plays all the greatest hits of her past failures. As it happens, I have the same model. ↩
Making art. Yeah, I know. We’re not supposed to talk about making art. It upsets people because it sounds all fancy. Screw that. I think one definition could describe art is anything you make and care about that nobody but you really needs. Which necessarily makes it important. ↩
Lizard brain. Nah, I don’t precisely mean the amygdala, and I’m not (neurologically) talking about the actual reptile brain. But, I do suspect that a lot of dumb self-talk has roots in whatever parts of your mind are diligently trying to protect you from bear attacks. ↩
Footnote note. You know who loved him a footnote? Yep. David Foster Wallace. ↩
Lots of reasons. Lordy, there are so many reasons you might have trouble here. Including wrong timing, wrong modality, wrong mood, wrong setting, wrong “focal length”, wrong expectations, wrong preparation. But, be careful that you not use that as a checklist for not getting started. ↩
What’s an Inbox, anyway? Y’know, increasingly, I believe those three adjectives (unknown, ambiguous, and incomplete) tell us much of what we need to know about understanding why inboxes can be so difficult to keep away from. Much [*cough*] more on this coming soon. Ellipsis. ↩

Michael Bierut's Notebooks

Merlin — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 10:30:41 -0500

Design Observer: 26 Years, 85 Notebooks

Why a notebook link from the guy who’s supposedly over notebook pr0n? Easy. This is all about how Michael Bierut has used his 85 notebooks over the past 26 years.

The notebooks function like a security blanket for me. I can’t go into a meeting unless I have my current notebook in my hand, even if I never open it. Because I carry one everywhere, I tend to misplace them a lot. Losing one makes me frantic.

It’s a fascinating mini-memoir, told through almost three decades of lines in a go-to capture tool. To me, this is much more about habits, cognition, and memory than paper and cardboard.

Like most designers, I get asked a lot about my process. A lot of my ideas are so simple and dumb that a simple dumb drawing is all it takes to describe it. I probably did the drawing for the cover of Tibor Kalman’s monograph in a meeting. Picture on the front, stacked type on the spine: what if we did something like this? That’s how it came out. If a process is supposed to have steps, to reﬂect a method, that isn’t much of a process.

I disagree. Any process that stops feeling like a process has become an ideal process.

[via: Kottke: 26 years of notes]

[Note: This post originally appeared on our daughter site, “43 Folders Clips,” and we liked it enough to republish it here.]

”Michael Bierut's Notebooks” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on January 29, 2009. Except as noted, it's ©2009 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

Video: Merlin's Talk, "Toward Patterns for Creativity"

Merlin — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 18:27:38 -0500

Merlin Mann - “Toward Patterns for Creativity” - Macworld PULSE

Here’s a video of my presentation, “Toward Patterns for Creativity,” from earlier this month at Macworld, here in SF.

My slides were kind of a mess thanks to a bonehead technical problem on my part, but you can follow along ﬁne below.

As I said, I’m very interested in seeing where a topic like this could go. Because I truly believe it’s an idea that could help push a lot of people to the next level.

Related: if you’re interested in where my head was as I prepped for this, be sure and catch the previous post, The Problem with “Feeling Creative”.

Also, if you haven’t done so already, do yourself a favor, and pick up the book I highlight in this talk: The Creative Habit by Twyla Tharpe.

Addendum: 2009-01-28 06:42:03

It should not go without mentioning ﬁve (5) John Gruber-related things:

Seriously. I really did like John’s talk, and I think he’s totally onto something with the Auteur thing. (cf.)
John very kindly let me borrow his laptop after my learning that my own was un-dongle-able.
The slide problem stemmed from my preparing the presentation on a newer version of Keynote than John had installed.
I’m pretty sure John did have Helvetica Neue installed. Because he’s a giant type nerd.
John invented Markdown. In which I write everything. Including this.

Which is just to say that John is a friend as well as my favorite person in the Apple universe. So, upon watching this a second time, I realize I’d hate to leave you with the impression that I feel anything other than embarrassingly abundant aloha for him.

Thanks, John.

[video via: Macworld Pulse: Merlin Mann | Macworld]

Like the Talk?

A big part of what I do these days is delivering talks like this and others all around the US and beyond. If you’d enjoy having me visit with you to present at your company, event, or conference, drop a line and my ninja assistant, Erica, will be happy to take your details and check for availability.

”Video: Merlin's Talk, "Toward Patterns for Creativity"” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on January 27, 2009. Except as noted, it's ©2009 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

Twyla’s Box: It’s Where Everything Goes

Merlin — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 16:44:33 -0500

Self-Reliant Film » Blog Archive » Twyla Tharp: Getting Things Done (with Boxes)

This post by Paul Harrill is a great take on what I’ve been saucily referring to as, “Twyla’s Box.” (Yes, again with the Twyla Tharp book.)

I’m sharing it here, because in addition to delivering a thought-provoking slap at the self-abuse of productivity pr0n (“Certainly if you ﬁnd yourself reading productivity book after productivity book you’re missing the point” [ouch]), it includes a canny synthesis of the overlap between (the best, non-ﬁddly parts of) GTD and those patterns that seem to help folks like Twyla Tharp to keep making for decades. Nice work, Paul. Loved this (and sorry for arriving so late to the party; I am now subscribed).

So, ﬁrst a quote from Paul’s post, followed by (forgive me) a long-ass re-quoting of Tharp’s chapter, “Start with a Box”, which I’ve lovingly copied straight from Paul’s swell post. Paul said:

For one thing, the book caters to artists, not paper-pushers. Sure, in some ways, work is work. But getting things done can be a lot harder when the “things” are ideas you’ve dreamt up entirely on your own. (I imagine this applies to programmers, too. Merlin, are you reading?) [Heh. I am now, Paul. — mm]

[…]

As Tharp states in the ﬁrst few pages, her book’s basic premise is that “[i]n order to be creative you have to know how to prepare to be creative.” The rest of the book talks about how to make a ritual of your creativity, how to work through creative blocks, and how to get out of (and altogether avoid) ruts.

From Twyla Tharp’s The Creative Habit chapter, “Start with a Box:”

Everyone has his or her own organizational system. Mine is a box, the kind you can buy at Ofﬁce Depot for transferring ﬁles. I start every dance with a box. I write the project name on the box, and as the piece progresses I ﬁll it up with every item that went into the making of the dance. This means notebooks, news clippings, CDs, videotapes of me working alone in my studio, videos of the dancers rehearsing, books and photographs and pieces of art that may have inspired me.

[…]

There are separate boxes for everything I’ve ever done. If you want a glimpse into how I think and work, you could do worse than to start with my boxes.

The box makes me feel organized, that I have my act together even when I don’t know where I’m going yet.

It also represents a commitment. The simple act of writing a project name on the box means I’ve started work.

The box makes me feel connected to a project. It is my soil. I feel this even when I’ve back-burnered a project: I may have put the box away on a shelf, but I know it’s there. The project name on the box in bold black lettering is a constant reminder that I had an idea once and may come back to it very soon.

Most important, though, the box means I never have to worry about forgetting. One of the biggest fears for a creative person is that some brilliant idea will get lost because you didn’t write it down and put it in a safe place. I don’t worry about that because I know where to ﬁnd it. It’s all in the box….

Dynamite, right? And I love Paul’s post-script here:

No “tickler ﬁles.” No “weekly review.” It’s even more simple. Boxes. Just boxes.

As I said in my presentation the other day, I also love the related topic of “Scratching,” where Tharp talks about kind of wandering around with a high tolerance for ambiguity, just letting ideas and inputs ﬂow over her. And, where do those ideas and inspirations go? You guessed it. The Box.

I won’t quote that one at length, but I do really feel like this stuff ﬁts together in a sensible, secular way. It’s just practical ideas, all pegged to pushing product out the door. Such appealing material that I feel I’ve barely scratched the surface of.

So excited to keep diving into this stuff. Feels like there’s never been a better time to ﬁre your muse.

PS: Can I also mention that Dan M., Paul K., and John G. were, to my knowledge, the only ones in the audience at my talk who audibly laughed out loud at the “Twyla’s Box” slide? Which is, you know, disappointing. Because I did say, “box.” I mean, come on, people, work with me, here.

PPS: All the sample slides above link to a Clips post with my full deck. Which, as ever, will make hardly any sense without my blathering alongside them. But, I think they’re kind of pretty, plus they remind me favorably of Mike Monteiro’s stuff (wonderful drawings you should totally buy).

”Twyla’s Box: It’s Where Everything Goes” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on January 13, 2009. Except as noted, it's ©2009 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

The Problem with “Feeling Creative”

Merlin — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 13:47:26 -0500

If your mall’s bookstores look anything like mine (and it’s probably safe to assume that they do), you’ll ﬁnd numerous sections devoted to helping writers, painters, musicians, and other aspiring artists to become successful in one way or another. There are books chock full of tips on ﬁnding an agent, on painting like the masters, and on composing and selling a hit song.

There are also dozens of books on “creativity” itself. Guides that are meant to help you access and unlock the artist within and to see the world in more creative ways. How to “be” creative, how to generate ideas, and how to learn to think “laterally.”

Some of these books are just terriﬁc, many are atrocious, and, at least in my anecdotal experience, only a handful challenge their readers with a fundamentally unmarketable premise:

Creative work only seems like a magic trick to people who don’t understand that it’s ultimately still work.

Bad for Business

But, let’s be honest. This is a tough idea to sell to folks with “real jobs” who are just looking for a diverting bit of creative tourism or who ﬁnd themselves yearning for a nostalgic amble past a mostly-abandoned adolescent arts hobby. People who want to learn how to feel creative. To feel successful. To feel like an artist. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

My sense, though, is that for most people who repeatedly do (and sell) creative work, this all seems a bit like wanting to feel like a world-class athlete. Because “feeling creative” produces great work in approximately the same way that “feeling like a doctor” makes you a gifted thoracic surgeon.

Let’s Talk About My Feelings

The athlete got good not by reading reviews of headbands, but by waking up early, lacing shoes in the dark, and hitting the track to train hard. While the surgeon got good not by watching reruns of Trapper John, M.D., but by slogging through medical school, residencies, and hundreds of hours of face time with patients, colleagues, and mentors. “Feeling” had nothing to do with it.

But is it fair to compare creative work with physical and mental achievement? Having strong legs and support from a young age helped the athlete, and any aspiring doctor who couldn’t pass 10th grade Biology is likely headed for a career outside the surgical theater. But, what about artistic “gifts?” And “talent?”

The Labored Metaphor About Mineral Mining

Even (or especially) for people with a notional gift for their chosen ﬁeld, talent — like luck, rich parents, and unmined gold — is just a raw material. It’s not the one-bit switch that determines artistic success. And, any “talent” one theoretically possesses is likely to stay stuck under a layer of river rock unless and until its claim-holder learns to repeatedly pan, sluice, or dredge it into something that can be reﬁned, polished, and, in most cases, vended. Fancy ladies buy gold jewelry; not drawings of mining equipment.

Still, unlike metaphorical mining, it’s rare for any artist who “strikes it rich” once to simply stop working. That’s not how the temperament operates. You slake a thirst for creating by ﬁnishing projects, then ﬁnding new ones. Again and again.

It’s this ability to create a long-lived career in creative ﬁelds that’s gotten me wondering about design patterns. And, it’s also apparently the topic I’ll be standing in front of a bunch of people, trying to ﬁgure out, next Friday at my Macworld PULSE session. Oh, yeah. That’s right. I’m doing a presentation in seven days, aren’t I? Hm.

Right. Macworld Presentation. Check.

Anyhoo, I’m working on the talk right now (and for poor Paul Kent’s sake, let’s agree that it’s “mostly done”). I expect I’ll report back soon as the talk develops (or, for poor Paul Kent’s sake, as it “gets one ﬁnal bit of polish”). I haven’t decided whether the whole thing is just a terrible idea to begin with, but I guess we’ll ﬁnd out in a few days.

Here’s what the proposal looked like late last summer:

Toward Design Patterns for Creativity

“Each pattern describes a problem which occurs over and over again in our environment, and then describes the core of the solution to that problem in such a way that you could use this solution a million times over without doing it the same way twice.” – Christopher Alexander, 1977.

For over 30 years, “Design Patterns” have been been used by architects, designers, and software engineers to share useful ways in which the recurring problems of their ﬁelds can be identiﬁed and solved. By documenting and categorizing the things that “tend to work” within a given context (and within a given set of constraints), individual patterns can provide the basis for a pattern language that encourages ﬂexible problem-solving that discourages the costly and time-consuming tendency to reinvent the wheel.

This presentation addresses the opportunities and challenges around developing design patterns for creativity. Is creativity simply an innate ability that one either has or lacks? Or, are there demonstrated habits, practices, and approaches to one’s work that tend to help produce more consistent output (along with a more healthy and long-lived career for the creator)? Are there environmental and cognitive changes that can improve the quality of our work? Ultimately, could patterns for creativity help us learn to stop relying on an unreliable muse to inspire (and complete) the work that matters to us?

We’ll look at the common myths of creativity and talk about ways in which the hard work of making anything might be improved by the application of patterns that have been shown to work for artists, writers, and makers of all sorts. We’ll also address some of the ways in which OS X applications might be used to apply and support patterns for creativity at the point of implementation.

Wow. That’s pretty ambitious for a 20-minute talk about a topic I don’t really understand, isn’t it?

All Downhill from Here

Well. If you’re going to Macworld, do stop by and say hi. I’ll be at PULSE and in a few other places that I’ll announce soon, but I should be pretty easy to spot. I look like this and am easy to recognize as the middle-aged man with the amazingly polished presentation about design patterns. And a giant tote bag full of unintentional irony. As usual.

Yep. Pretty much just dotting i’s and crossing t’s at this point, Paul.

”The Problem with “Feeling Creative”” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on January 02, 2009. Except as noted, it's ©2009 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

Eric Idle, on John Cleese's Writing Process

Merlin — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 17:07:25 -0500

Eric Idle, on John Cleese’s Approach to Writing

John Cleese sweated every word — to the point of exhausting collaborators like Eric Idle.

In other places, I’ve heard Cleese himself talk about his work ethic within the Pythons, mentioning how Graham Chapman might slip out early to start drinking, while Cleese would stick around and revise a sketch for another half-hour or longer. Over time, he felt the extra effort was what made the difference in the enduring appeal of his material.

It also helps explain why a classic like the Cheese Shop still delights a word nerd like me. Speciﬁcity.

[Note: This post originally appeared on our daughter site, “43 Folders Clips,” and we liked it enough to republish it here.]

”Eric Idle, on John Cleese's Writing Process” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on January 01, 2009. Except as noted, it's ©2009 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

Ze Frank: Executing and Theoretical Perfection

Merlin — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 06:44:33 -0500

the show with zefrank (2007-11-06 / “washington, ideas, brain crack”)

Ze Frank, on executing ideas even, or especially, when you can’t do them perfectly. (PNSFW)

[video via Waxy Links]

As some pals and I have been banging around ideas for new projects, I’ve been thinking a lot about Ze Frank, and realizing what a talented and brave fellow he is.

I didn’t follow The Show closely during its beloved one-year run, but I’ve enjoyed several episodes quite a lot, and, in the time since The Show ended, I’ve retroactively (sporadically) been catching up on some of the little projects Ze’s pushed out over the last few years. Proliﬁc, warm, and very engaging work.

The “brain crack” video arrived with perfect timing, because I’ve been obsessing over a similar idea. In the video above, Ze says, unblinkingly:

And the longer they wait, the more they convince themselves of how perfectly that idea should executed…But the bummer is most ideas kind of suck when you do them.

That’s inspiration that’s hard to beat.

Also, although most sports racers certainly will have seen it by now, Ze’s talk at TED from a few years back is a stitch.

[Note: This post originally appeared on our daughter site, “43 Folders Clips,” and we liked it enough to republish it here.]

”Ze Frank: Executing and Theoretical Perfection” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on January 01, 2009. Except as noted, it's ©2009 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

Photography, and the Tolerance for Courageous Sucking

Merlin — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 18:19:35 -0500

As I’ve started shooting photos more often, I’ve picked up on some interesting patterns: habits, if you like. And, as I struggle to absorb the insane physics of capturing light with some glass and a black box, I accept upfront that the improvements to my actual photos will be slow, incremental, and, largely undetectable to anybody but me – a fact that’s never more painfully clear than when I swoon over the work of the more talented friends who inspire me (Heather, Ryan and Chris each come to mind here).

But, being instantly great at this couldn’t be further from the point. Although I started taking photos to become a better photographer, I keep taking them because I’ve learned to love the process. And, luckily, at least as far as I can tell, dedication to the process can’t help but make you a better photographer – or a better whatever, for that matter.

An Urge to Push

I lug this clunky camera around with me every day because I want to, and because turning this hobby into a project that I work on a little bit every day ensures continuity and helps my modest bumps in skill to accrete – to make new friends with one other in ways that often surprise me (“Low ISO + giant aperture + standing very still? Wow, check that out!”).

I’m especially learning to embrace a priceless habit of shooting way more photos than I’d ever even process in Lightroom (let alone share with others). So, I’m getting more comfortable with trying different combinations of angle, framing, lighting, aperture, speed, and ISO. The calculus of capturing a “tack sharp” image encompasses an astounding combination of science, observation, and, in the fullness of time, intuition. But, to get there takes time and clicking. So, that promiscuity with the volume of photos I capture teaches me that it costs nothing to just get something in the viewﬁnder and shoot, shoot, shoot. Maybe something will turn out if I get enough of ‘em, right?

Cleft Unto the Suck

And, even if a given shot is shit – and, most certainly, the vast majority of all my photos are varying degrees of shit – you still learn from the bad ones and no damage is done. Truth is, at the level I’m playing, there’s no real cost associated with failure. Unless, you count the damage of working with unrealistic expectations or the paralyzing joylessness of the conventional wisdom that only some are “Blessed with Creativity…” [insert Tinkerbell glissando]

So, maybe, that’s what really grabbed me last night, when – depending on your perception of how this stuff works – I either started to lose The Fear, or I became one of those horrible little people who doesn’t realize how stupid they look ﬁddling with a camera.

It Starts with a Shoe

Yesterday evening, the three of us went out for pizza. And, at some point, as my wife and I took turns carrying our daughter home, Eleanor lost a shoe. This happens a lot with a 13-month-old. Of course, we didn’t notice the shoe had gone missing until we got back to the house, where I was quickly re-dispatched on a reconnaissance and rescue mission. Heading for the door, I started to grab my camera — but then stopped and winced a little.

“Oh, Jesus. Really?” some voice whined. “Now you’re That Guy? Can’t you just walk out there like a grownup, retrace your steps, and be back here in 5 goddamned minutes? You really need to drag your giant, douchey camera out for a four-block walk? Who’re you now, freakin’ Diane Arbus? Jeez, get a life.”

But, you know what? I told myself to shut the fuck up. And, I grabbed my camera and started downhill, into the darkness, toward one MIA Croc.

Fortunately, it was an easy enough trip, because there was Ellie’s shoe, upright and undisturbed, on the sidewalk at the end of the block. Of course (having the giant, douchey camera with me), I started snapping some photos.

First, I got a couple eye-level photos of the optimistic little shoe that turned out about as badly as most eye-level shots of the ground do. But, on review [always review the ﬁrst few shots and zoom way in], I thought the color looked cool on the dark street, so I got on one knee to take another. Yeah, better. But, it still looked like a lame overhead snapshot that was way too dark and noisy. So, I did something that surprised me.

I laid on the sidewalk. All the way down. On my gut on 50° of western San Francisco concrete.

And, I took my time, thinking about the aperture (all the way open for depth of ﬁeld) and the available light (very little, so I put the the camera right on the ground to steady it). I snapped a dozen or more shots with slightly different settings. No idea what I was doing. People walked by, cars passed, the L barreled by, but I kept shooting until I was satisﬁed that I might have something. Then, I grabbed the shoe, stood up, and trotted back up the hill, triumphant, with a recovered piece of footwear, plus what I suspected might be at least one pretty good photo.

I like how it turned out.

Yeah, I know, it’s no masterpiece, but I’m proud of it for reasons of my own. Because, last night, as I was splayed prone in the fog along Taraval Street, I realized I was getting a little better at this.

Not because I’d been magically touched with mythical creativity and skill, but because for a moment I was thinking more about how to use what I’d learned to get a good photo than I was about how I might have looked while doing it. And, that felt like a small turning point.

Tolerance for Courageous Sucking

Nobody likes feeling like a noob, especially when you’re getting constant pressure on all sides to never stick out in an unﬂattering way. And, in this godforsaken just-add-Wikipedia era of make-believe insight and instant expertise, it’s natural to start believing you must never suck at anything or admit to knowing less than everything – even when you’re just starting out. Clarinets should never squawk, sketch lines should never be visible, and dictionaries are just big, dumb books of words for cheaters and fancy people. Right?

I think ﬁnding your own comfort with the process (whatever that process ends up being) might just be the whole game here – being willing to put in your time, learn the craft, and never lose the courageousness to be caught in the middle of making something you care about, even when it might be shit and you might look like an idiot fumbling to make it. What’s the worst thing that could happen?

Well, you could quit, because it’s too hard to make stuff you aren’t already great at. You could convert all that pointless effort and practice back into MySpace updates and the production of funny cat pictures. No, it’s not technically the worst thing that could happen, but it’s a damned common pathway for fear to molder back into an emotional impulse to put on jammies and watch Judge Judy.

I’m not doing anything special here, and I don’t claim to have a magic formula for creativity, let alone for getting a half-decent photo of a rubber shoe. All I know is that sticking with things that don’t arrive with instant mastery does have its own reward, even if you’re the only one who ever collects it. Because the more you push through the barriers for these little avocations, the easier it becomes to remember you always have everything you need to just keep banging until you’re satisﬁed with any work that’s thrown at you.

Next time I need inspiration to get through a bad patch, or to get past that persistent feeling that I’ll always be stuck in the lowest creative gear, I hope I’ll remember to stop and ask myself what exactly is keeping me from just laying on the sidewalk until I get my shot. Even if it’s cold, even if I look like an idiot, and even if I risk missing the ﬁrst crucial minutes of Judge Judy.

”Photography, and the Tolerance for Courageous Sucking” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on December 01, 2008. Except as noted, it's ©2009 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"