Pushing past pickiness
They all look good. (Image by Photo Mix)
Whenever I’ve struggled to create something — a song, a piece of writing, a meal — the difficulty is not usually a lack of ideas.
Rather, it is found in the resistance to the ideas I already have. Each one is considered and rejected. I’m dismissing possibilities instead of developing them, and nothing is getting done.
The solution I’ve come to rely on: I just choose one of these ideas, no matter how ugly or ungainly, and move forward with it.
Ideas don’t have to be scarce; neither does my time and energy. Every hour I spend in the act of creation teaches me something useful. I’m honing my craft, even if the result is crap.
Ironically, the work that I do without expecting it to be good has begun to yield stuff that’s pretty good. Where I used to spend twenty minutes starting, failing, and quitting, now I spend those same twenty minutes (and another, and another) investing in my skills. I can get over the hump more quickly, sustain the effort without getting exhausted, and see something through to the end more easily.
As the ideas are used up, more appear. And even if they seem like real stinkers, they might still have potential. I’ve come to see that the ideas themselves are neutral — it’s the work that we do to bring them to life that makes the difference. After all, the Beatles’ “Yesterday” started off as “Scrambled Eggs.” Paul McCartney didn’t reject the crummy idea — he sculpted and shaped it until it became one of the great standards of the twentieth century.
The more willing I’ve become to make embarrassing things out of terrible ideas, the more I’ve finished work that I’m proud of.
As I tend my garden of ideas, I can now see potential where there was only paltriness. As a result of consistent practice, I’m more confident in my ability to cultivate these green shoots to maturity, creating a virtuous cycle in which things get done and the harvest improves in quality from season to season.
If you are picky with your ideas, start picking them anyway. Relish the awfulness. Write a terrible song or a shitty first draft; draw a really bad illustration; invent a useless product or service that nobody wants. Keep going with the next one and the next one and watch yourself get better. Enjoy the fruits of your labor.