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Waiting for an answer is the worst. Waiting for someone else to do something is the worst. They probably won’t do it as fast as you or the way you want it. On the other hand, if they do do it, (haha doo doo) and they do it the way you like, well, then you’ve saved hours, maybe weeks of time even and they have achieved a thing. I become “we” and you’re a team of sorts. What is waiting really? When it comes to work or artistic endeavors there is real and productive waiting. For example, when someone let’s say an intern who I’m in charge asks a question over email, many many times I can wait, and I’ll get a response to the effect of “never mind I figured it out.” Why? Why is this? While the answer may vary, I think it is largely due to a culture of relying on others to do our own work. Which is problematic because it becomes a really easy place to make excuses. “I’m waiting for a reply on that…” The unfinished end of that sentence said that people don’t say it “...until then, I’m going to do nothing!” “I’m waiting for so and so to get me that report”, “I’m waiting for a reply from my friend because I’m kinda’ stuck on this project.” Here’s an example from today for me. I’m editing a video for work. It’s pretty good, but not great, the story doesn’t seem to have structure. It’s unclear who it’s for and the premise is kinda loose and undefined. So, I sent a text to two friends in a group saying: can you help me out with this? tell me how to fix it/improve it. The things is...if i walk away for a few minutes, if I take a walk. Maybe reflect and/or write a blog post about waiting (now we’re getting meta) the actual answer I need is likely to come to me from me. No, I don’t mean the muse or magical fairy godmother of creativity I mean the answer is somewhere along the path of bad ideas. Now as I write these I come to see, what I really need. Write down a list of bad ideas and write them until a good idea comes along. A strategy Anyway, back to waiting. Waiting is really a pain. I really like these two terms that are similar: UIHO and UNODIR Unless I hear Otherwise and Unless Otherwise Directed. Two great (similar) strategies both to use on yourself and to use with your team. As a friend of mine described UIHO “It creates a bias for action.” Rather than waiting for instruction (that probably will never come) You say and think, unless other wise directed, I’m going to create this thing, make this video, add these sounds etc. It gives everyone the full empowerment: You to take action (or your team) and the supervisor can say “hang on, let’s do xyz.” While there is no rule that is always true. I have found that in work and creativity, that “waiting” is really code for “I’m stuck” “I’m scared” “I want to postpone.”
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I've come to one of those realizations that feels painfully obvious. It's painful to think that it's as simple as changing the order of words in a sentence:
I am inspired so I do the work. I do the work so I am inspired. Looking back as far as my teenage years, I can remember thinking these same thoughts over and over as I sat in my room on the third floor of my parents house trying to write a song: "I need a good idea" "I'm not inspired to write this" "it's already been done before." and so on and so forth. These were very true and very real to me. The were certainly not necessarily the capital 'T' Truth though. As that truth, well it doesn't really exist as we know. As always I digress. I've been a little stagnant in my creative work lately, and I think I have a tiny taste of what Dave Chappelle went through when he was offered a big contract for his show and he wanted to run away. I've been given so many resources to create videos, and a budget and yet, the creative in me is suddenly feeling all this pressure! Trust me, I'm not complaining, but it's worth asking yourself the question: "How do I keep doing what I'm doing" The presupposition in this question though is this: That doing what you're doing includes: growing, learning, making mistakes, putting out work that isn't perfect, but is pretty damn great! You do this by knowing that some days you will be inspired and most days YOU WON'T, but that every day you need to get out of your own way just enough do the work. For me the work varies day to day but if we take a simple example: (just insert your own work into the sentence here, naturally). I need to edit a podcast episode. I don't want to, I don't feel like it. I don't really know what the next step is. I'll go make coffee. Oh look instagram. Oh look my friend is calling etc. All things being equal. What happens if you put your phone on silent. What happens if you put it face down nearby (or gasp, in another room!) you open up your editing software and start mucking about. I'm not even talking about things as directed as Step 1. adjust the clip Step 2. move the clip to the timeline. I'm talking about a messy process, where you just start touching things, playing around! You open up the project, you pull some files in and just see what happens. You do this for a little while, suddenly you step back and WHAT? You've got something, is it an episode? maybe yes maybe no, but you've got SOMETHING and something is more than nothing. Something is more than "I just scrolled my instagram feed for 10 minutes and my life sucks." "Suddenly" you've been doing the work, and you're inspired to do more of the work, because you've been doing the work. It builds on itself. Not just that moment, but daily. So, if you're looking for inspiration, you may consider stopping that, and starting to doodle, starting to muck about (is this a British phrase?), starting to sing, starting to_________. |
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