I am a creative person. I have an inner need to create, build and play. I have a tonne of projects, some more involved than others. But how do you do it Nikolaj - you might ask. The answer is that:
- I am very curious about new things.
- I never expect perfect execution.
- I think of everyone as an expert in their own right.
Being curious
Being curious can be hard to force for all topics. Im not interested in everything. I do have my limits. But I do try to approach most with a curious mindset. I read in this book Chop wood, Carry water1, that every challenge is an opportunity to learn. I often think about that. Especially when things aren’t going the way I imagined or I am foreseeing things not going great. But yeah, follow your curiosity, you can only learn.
On never expecting perfection
This one is like 90% of the work. When I set out to do something, eg. create music, the goal is to create something, not to create something perfect. Particularly with music, I often enforce a time limit of 1-2 hours and then I tell myself that I have to publish by then. And sure enough, there is a lot of terrible music on my SoundCloud. It is very rough, and not super catchy, but it is out there, and I made it. If you give it a listen, please know that I am not delusional. I know that it is pretty bad. I am just not ashamed about it. It is very important for me that my projects don’t just lie dormant, on my windowsill or in my desktop folder. I really think that enforcing some kind of constraints can be a great way to ensure finishing.
A little guitar-pedal setup for creating terrible music.
You can always get better at getting good results. Speaking of getting better at getting good results - I often think about a paragraph in The lean startup2, where Eric explains how it can be beneficial to try the whole process out, before targeting efficiency. I recall that it is regarding the somewhat famous story about how Toyota became a success. I am aware that efficiency - is not equal to good results but perhaps you can achieve them more efficiently, with technique, experience, knowledge and mindset? I don’t know, just wanted to mention it. I stumbled into this reddit post3, which also has some truly great links and quotes. Check it out, if you are… curious.
Even this blog is kinda half-assed. I don’t spend hours on hours on writing. I just jam it in there, read it 0.5 times and publish. Sorry, but not sorry. Hope you like unfiltered brain juice.
Treating people as experts
You never really know how much someone else knows at something. So treat them as the expert, and you might learn something new. On top of that - achieving expert level of usage is never a linear path, especially within creative matters. Meaning that even people new to a field, can make discoveries, have questions or have perspectives that experts could learn something from. But really, I am just saying that we are all amateurs . I find that I very often get really good value for my money, by really asking into peoples process, thoughts and more.
Here is some inspiration:
- Can you explain more about fish math?
- Why did you get into fish math?
- What is the hardest part about getting into fish math?
- I have been struggling with fish division in fish math, have you ever encountered that?
- And so on … fish math.
Obviously swap out fish math with an actual subject. Or not.
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