In the popular imagination, creativity is like the element aether: it’s invisible and it flows through living things. Hard to pin down, impossible to bottle and sell, a little spooky, and frequently misunderstood. Creativity is quite similar: definable, but tough to quantify.

However, creativity is definable.

Creativity (from an old Random House dictionary):

1. the state or quality of being creative.

2. The ability to create meaningful new forms, interpretations, etc.; originality

In the first definition, the word state is interesting. Why? Because this implies that creativity is a mindset, a mood, whim or emotion. The second definition implies action; having the ability to create or reinterpret things.

Take these two keywords out, and you have a state of ability. And what is an ability but competence based on natural skill, training, or other qualification?

Looking at creativity from this perspective, then, creativity could be defined as the way a person uses their talents, natural and acquired, to create, reinterpret, and improve upon things in the world. Note that none of these definitions implied creativity was limited to artistic fields of human endeavor (visual art, literature, music, etc.).

In my opinion, this is where the problem comes in. Obviously, creativity is vital in these fields. Without innovation and reinterpretation, we’d be living in a world of tourist-destination art dealers and commercial radio. Each of these has their place and appeal, but they don’t really push the boundaries or explore new territory. They play it safe, give the people what they want, etc. Yes, they’re expressions of creativity in their own regard, but if you were to ask Seth Godin, he would say ‘they’re not remarkable purple cows. They’re boring old brown cows.’ (link to In Praise of The Purple Cow)

But let’s back up. The point is this: creativity needn’t be applied only to the arts. Everyone has inborn creative abilities and skills. No one starts from zero. The difference is in how people perceive their own creative abilities as well as their regard for creativity and innovation in general.

Perhaps because the use of the adjective creativity has been used in limited scope to describe artistic achievements, a number of ideas myths have taken root in the popular imagination regard the creative state of ability. Let’s look at some of those myths.

Being creative means having big, profound ideas. Some creative ideas are indeed profound, but most big advances build upon a thousand little innovations and reinterpretations. These little innovations are easy to overlook, easy to discount, because they themselves are not spectacular or age-defining. Henry Ford’s assembly-line business model was built upon thousands of tiny little innovations: advanced lathes, interchangeable parts, ball bearings, improved files, etc. Without the little ideas that led to these staples of industry, the big ideas wouldn’t be possible.

Some people are born creative. Everyone else is S.O.L. Every individual has some degree of creativity and capacity for innovation, but only some people engage in these traditionally ‘creative’ pursuits. These folks are labeled creative to the exclusion of everyone else (going back to the fundamental misunderstanding that the label ‘creative’ should only be applied to these pursuits).

Yet, anyone who has thought ‘I can do this better/differently,’ or ‘I can make this’ and has followed through on that thought has shown creative ability.

Creative thinking cannot be learned or taught. This relates to the last point: the idea that some people have it and others don’t. And for those that don’t possess the ethereal qualities of a ‘creative person,’ no one encourages them. ‘Don’t bother trying,’ people say. ‘They’re just going to be fry cooks.’ It’s a self—fulfilling prophecy, like the one described in this study

Great ideas, creativity and inspiration are like lightning. They only strike in random flashes of brilliance. This is partly true. Truly innovative ideas can strike at any moment. But some people have far more ideas than others. Is it because they’re born creative? No, far from it. The reason? These people are already working diligently in their field, on their craft. They’re not waiting for inspiration to strike. They’re already doing the work, putting in the time, holding that lightning rod.  The more they work, the more they gain an understanding of their own creative process, and the more they eventually create.

When an interviewer asked acclaimed songwriter Leon Russell about his recent outpouring of new material, Russell said

“I finally learned how to write without inspiration, and can write whenever I need to. It only took me about twenty years to figure that out.”

Creativity originates entirely from outside ourselves: muses, genetics, whatever. Maybe this is partially true. We as people derive a majority of what we think, feel, believe and do from the world around us. And isn’t one part of the definition of creativity to ‘create meaningful new forms’ (implying the new form is based upon an older one)?

Maybe creativity does come from some Jungian collective-consciousness idea stew, but to rely wholly on that supposition may lead a person to look into the stewpot and one day find it dishearteningly empty. If ideas come from outside ourselves, that’s fine, but this view neglects two crucial details: somebody has to keep adding ingredients to the stew, and that stew is worthless unless someone is around to ladle it out.

When creativity is attributed wholly to outside forces, it’s also quite easy to shift the responsibility for not creating to those uncontrollable forces. As if it’s the muse’s fault that one’s ass is not in their chair, working on that big project.

I should add that if the idea of mythical muses makes it easier to write that memoir, great; set up an altar and burn some incense for the daemons in the walls. But ultimately, only one person is responsible for their won creativity and creative work.

Creativity just means having ideas. This myth is half-true. Yes, ideas are required for creativity, but so is the development of these ideas into something tangible. An idea without action is like a horse without legs; fun to talk about, but unlikely to do anything useful.

I’m not writing this to be exclusionary. Everyone should have ideas. Lots and lots of ideas, practical and whimsical. But to be creative you need to do or create something with those ideas.

Creative people are, by nature, self-destructive. This myth has an understandable basis: a list of ‘eminent creative people with probably mood disorders’ reads like a who’s who of artistic overachievers: Hemingway, Faulkner, Woolf, Twain/Clemens, Dickinson. More than one of these folks offed themselves. Further, according to Maureen Neihart (Psy.D), mood disturbances (madness) are more likely to appear in people who demonstrate high levels of artistic creativity. Neihart writes:

“Both by their nature and by their identification with eminent artists, creatively gifted individuals may put themselves at risk for serious emotional disturbance.”

This leads us to a problem when people apply a strange logic and take this finding to its terrible (and false) converse: engaging in self-destruction as a means to enhance or increase creativity.

While self-destruction may be a symptom of extremely high intelligence and creativity, being self-destructive for the purpose of increasing intelligence and creativity is moronic…and dangerous.

If you want to learn more about this fascinating topic, check out Neihart’s excellent article Creativity, the Arts, and Madness

Forgive me if this post is a little heavy, a little too serious. But in years past, at one point or another, each of these myths inhabited some nether region of my brain. I believed them consciously or otherwise. Now that I’ve learned a little more, I realize they’re mostly bunk.

Finally, before you go thinking that I’ve gone all serious-confessional on you, I’d like to close with a quote by Edward Albee, a playwright best known for the terribly funny play ‘Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?’

“Creativity is magic. Don’t examine it too closely.”

Image credit: Helga Weber

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One year ago today, I started Happenchance: Creative Techniques for Creative People. After three designs, a couple disasters, and a lot of back-of-the-envelope brainstorming, I feel like I’ve built a rockin’ resource for people who create things great and small. My reasons for starting the blog shall remain shrouded in mystery, but just know that writing for you has been great fun…and one hell of a learning experience.

In the past year, I’ve published 58 posts from 5 countries and two continents. Traffic is growing and more people are subscribing.

Any commemorative occasion calls for some kind of retrospective. Today is no different. So, to answer the question that’s on everyone’s mind…

What Have I Learned?

More than I can remember. Seriously. The question is too broad. Let’s say ‘what have I learned about creating stuff?’ That’s easier to answer, and more relevant to the mission of this blog. Here goes…

1. You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to start and build your inertia.

2. Idea capture is everything. When you capture lots of ideas (bad and good), you have the luxury of selecting the best.

3. Talk is cheap. Results matter. Ideas are nothing but hot air…until you pump that air into a balloon and let it fly.

4. Our brains can function even better when we learn how to use them. For example, by understanding associative techniques and the use of spacing.

5. The only thing to fear is fear itself. Especially the fears and neuroses we create for ourselves.

6. Hard work is underrated. Thanks to my former South Korean students for this lesson.

7. The perfect time is now. Not tomorrow. Not next year. Now.

If you want to get a better idea of what Happenchance is all about (and the preceeding wasn’t enough for you), check out my page for new visitors.

What Comes Next?

Long range: The same as before, only better. I’ll continue to provide you with useful, high-quality (if occasionally infrequent) content. I’m also developing a couple of excellent products, but the deadline is still pretty far out. I want to take my time on them in order to really make them shine.

Short range: The next post will  be an exploration of creativity and some common myths surrounding it. Look for that within the next few days.

Subscribe!

If you like what I’m doing here and you want to give Happenchance a birthday present, why not subscribe? Or follow the writer on Twitter. Both are free! Even better, you could send some money to the International Campaign to Ban Landmines.

Photo credit: 3boodnasser

You may also enjoy:

1. How to Manage the Fear of Failure
2. How I Became a Better Writer
3. How to Manage Your Inner Critic

Binge: A period of unrestrained, immoderate self-indulgence.
Inspiration binge: A creative technique involving the unrestrained, immoderate, and self-indulgent consumption of cultural entertainments, usually for the purpose of generating ideas.

Even without purging, binges get a really bad rap. In most cases, this is deserved; too much of any substance (fried chicken, dry martinis, trailer meth) is going to cause long-term harm. Even reading too much over a long period of time can have some detrimental effects…but don’t take it from me:

“Reading, after a certain age, diverts the mind too much from its creative pursuits. Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking.” -Albert Einstein

However, when you’re really out of ideas, when your soul is as ‘thin as a playing card‘ (Oates), an inspiration binge can help you generate new ideas, induce inspiration, and help you get unstuck.

Think of an inspiration binge as a mostly harmless nudge, a break from the usual routine for the purpose of making new neural connections and refilling the creative well that is so easily drained.

My experience: Returning to America after 1.5 years in Asia kicked my ass. Readjustment and basic day-to-day stuff drained me. I tried to go with the flow, to keep up the momentum on my projects, but that didn’t work.

So I stopped trying. For a short time.

No worries, no stress; I just said ‘screw it, I’m going to do whatever I damn well please.’ For me, this meant burning through three books, watching a couple good films, going to a concert, listening to some new tunes, and killing several hundred zombies. I didn’t do much else, save a bit of journaling and a blog post.

After five days, I realized I was ready to get back to my projects. While not intending to, I had a boatload of story ideas, a solution to a rather sticky problem, and a generally left more excited about the work I had been doing.

So, in my case, an inspiration binge allowed me to:

• Renew my focus.
• Generate new ideas.
• Refine old ideas.
• Experience inspiring creative work.

Consider this: great ideas are either totally original concepts and ideas (rare) OR a combination and synthesis of existing ideas and information. You think Shakespeare came up with all those funny dramas on his own? Of course not; he collected stories, folktales, and histories. The guy practically invented the ‘ripped from the headlines’ genre, the headlines being Holinshed’s Chronicles.

Hey, I’m not advocating patent theft of ideas. There’s no need; we have Hollywood for that. I’m just saying that a) most ideas are synthetic derivatives of other works or ideas and b) other works can be one hell of a source of inspiration.

Sometimes it just makes sense to overload your mind with new material for the purpose of generating new ideas. How many times have you had a cool idea while reading, listening, watching, or making?

Like anything else, an inspiration binge might not work for everyone. And like other binges, it’s probably not a good idea to go on too many of these. Yet, for me, in this instance, an inspiration binge was just the thing I needed to get back on the rails. If you’re interested in such a pursuit, here are some ways to make the most of your very own inspiration binge:

• Pick out stimulating works. Read reviews. Seek out the good  stuff.
• If a book bores you, find something more engaging. No shame in not finishing a dull work.
• Keep an idea bank or notebook (knockoff moleskine) handy. Record ideas…but don’t act on them immediately.
• Determine how long your binge will last; set an end date.
• Don’t do an inspiration binge as a time waster. Non-engaging, passive activities (television) aren’t going to provide much stimulation or inspiration.
• Allow yourself to indulge without guilt.

That’s it. Have a nice binge…but don’t get lazy, and stay away from the trailer meth. Good luck.

If you enjoyed this fine post, subscribe to Happenchance for more creative techniques. And remember…every time you share a Happenchance article, someone sighs with satisfaction  (though maybe not because of the article).

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Here in Cambodia, things move slowly. Transportation is bumpy and hurts like hell. Buses, bamboo trains, boats, and bicycles…most never exceed 50km/hr, and if they did, they’d all explode into a million little pieces.

While travel takes a lot longer than in developed countries, moving slow has its benefits: a chance to see the details of the country, plenty of time to read in transit, and a general feeling that getting to a certain place by a certain time is entirely out of your hands. Buses break down. Roads become impassible.

Rather than try to hurry, it’s much easier to relax, give in, and just expect things will take (much) longer than they could.

This leads me to today’s post: 8 reasons to slow down. I believe travel is not unlike creativity. Both take effort and action. Both are different kinds of journeys. And both can benefit from from slowing down and taking more time to reach the desired end.

My view: creativity doesn’t like to be rushed. Creativity likes to have ample time to explore new angles, ferment new ideas and concepts, and allow the intuition and undermind to run amok.

Reasons to slow down include:

1. Making fewer mistakes. Rushing and hurrying cause us to overlook details major and minor. With plenty of time, we can afford to be meticulous.

2. Having less stress. I don’t know about you, but hurrying makes my heart race. The slightest problems cause disproportionate exasperation. Mistakes are made, which causes more stress. Going slow, you have a chance to breath and relax.

3. Having more time to enjoy the present. Hurrying is all about displacing now, putting it behind us, and being somewhere else in the future. But now is all we really have. Why not enjoy it?

4. Appreciating the detail. Angkor Wat is a massive temple; its scope and scale are breathtaking. But the best part is enjoying the bas-relief friezes. They stretch for hundreds of feet and feature scenes from ancient Indian epics. At a glance, they all look kind of similar, but once you slow down, you begin to see the details that piece the stories together.

5. Developing concepts fully. When you’re creating something, that first burst of energy is great, but the work doesn’t end there. More ideas lie under rocks, waiting for you to turn them over. Our brains work in strange ways, and sometimes a little time makes a big difference.

6. Slow time gives you time to think. Rushing from one thing to another, we think only of the next move, the next step. Moving slow gives your intuition a chance to work things out.

7. When you slow down, you’re always on time, with time. By going slow, you have to allocate extra time to compensate for your slowness. This allows you to arrive early or finish with plenty of time to spare.

8. Flow requires low stress. By rushing, we create stress that is counter-productive to a state of conscious competence. Professional athletes and musicians, when they’re doing their thing, they’re cool and composed, unhurried.

Over to You:

• Would you rather travel by boat or train?
• Do you like to hurry?
• Is it possible to move fast and still see everything?

Next time:

Just because it’s fun to play the devil’s advocate, I’m going to follow this post with some Reasons to Hurry Up.

Photo credit: gusjer

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Have you ever become completely lost in your favorite activity? Lost track of time? Felt focused, energized, and completely unselfconscious? As  if your body and mind were working in perfect harmony?

If so, you may have experienced something by described by the Hungarian professor Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi as the Flow state. In his book Flow: The Psychology of Optimum Experience, CM explains what Flow is, when people experience it,  and why it’s so important.

Athletes call this ‘being in the zone.’ Buddhists might call this simply mindfulness or low-level nirvana. The Greeks would describe this as being taken over by the muse.

Whenever you see an amazing performance or creation, it’s a safe bet to assume the performer or creator was experiencing flow.

Why is Flow Important?

According to Csikszentmihalyi, once a person achieves a certain level of income (maybe $35,000 US/year), their happiness levels are about the same as people who make $300,000/year. What does this mean?

Making more money doesn’t make people happier. Owning more  stuff doesn’t make people happier.

Experiencing Flow makes people happier.

Experiencing flow will not only make you happier, but it will improve the quality of your work. Writers say the work they produce while in the Flow state is some of their best. People who perform together like athletes and musicians spend a lot of time talking about chemistry. Why? Because good chemistry leads to more frequent Flow in groups. This leads to better overall performance.

What is Flow?

Flow is attention. Total and complete attention. Or, in Csikszentmihalyi’s words, Flow is:

“being completely involved in an activity for its own sake. The ego falls away. Time flies. Every action, movement, and thought follows inevitably from the previous one, like playing jazz. Your whole being is involved, and you’re using your skills to the utmost.”

Other characteristics of flow include:

• Feeling energized, focused, engrossed, and unselfconscious
• Experiencing great clarity, engagement, and total immersion
• Being blissfully ignorant of things like hunger and fatigue

When do People Experience Flow?

Everything I’ve read suggests that most people find flow while doing one of two things: hobbies they love or working at their job. The latter is a little surprising, as a lot of people will tell you they don’t like their job. Jobs, though, have all several of the components required for flow: a rule-based system, feedback, clear and definable goals.

A person is most likely to find flow while engaged in an activity where the challenges match the skill level. During low-challenge activities, people become bored. If an activity is too challenging, they experience worry and anxiety. The chart below describes when people are most likely to experience flow.

Besides doing hobbies and activities, many people find Flow in social situations. Why? Conversation and social interactions have definite rules, they provide immediate feedback, and they’re rewarding for their own sake.

Other flow-inducing activities include creating music and art, writing, writing code and building websites, playing sports, learning and studying, reading, watching good movies, playing chess and other board games, building things, traveling, climbing and abseiling/rapelling,  skiing, surfing…this list could keep going.

Video games seem to be designed with flow in mind. People have written papers on such things. Jenove Chen, for example. Why are games so likely to help people find flow? They have all the attributes required for finding flow: a  system with clear rules, immediate feedback (scores), goal-based challenges. They also require full concentration, engagement, and a certain amount of skill.

Finally, people rarely experience flow during passive recreation. Csikszentmihalyi cites a German study that found people who read more books reported more frequent flow experiences. On the other hand, the more television a person watched, the less likely they were to experience flow. Why? Television is a passive medium. Watching requires little skill and provides no challenge. Plus, commercials destroy concentration.

Tips for Finding Flow

Finding flow can take some work. I wish there were a magic button you could push. But, as they say, wish in one hand… Regardless, here are a few tips from my own experience that you might find useful.

• Ensure that an activity challenges you and engages your interests.
• Have clear goals. If you know exactly what you want, your mind will help you get it.
• Engage all your senses. One painter (I’ve lost the source) said sniffing a painting helped.
• Create a comfortable environment.
• Forgot about other people. Forget about other activities. Forget about failure.
• Use background music. For me, lyrics are distracting, so I stick with jazz, classical, and some jam bands.
• Eliminate all distractions. This could be other people, cell phones, email, whatever.
• Look and listen for feedback.
• Put in adequate time to learn the required skills. Most challenging activities have a learning curve.

Further Reading

• The book Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.
• Wikipedia entry on Flow. Plenty of good resources at the end of this entry.
• Article from Psychology Today called Finding Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.
• Solving Procrastination Using Flow by Kevin Chiu.

Over to You:

• Where do you find Flow?
• Do you have any tips for finding flow? Are there meta-skills for entering flow?
• Any meditation or Zen practitioner out there? What’s your take on this concept?

Flow diagram credit: Dr.  Enh
Photo credit: morphomir

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This is the third article in the series Removing Barriers to Creating Amazing Things. Previous articles have dealt with removing physical barriers and managing your inner critic. This big honker of a post will examine our attitudes toward failure and end with some strategies on managing the fear of failure.

But first I want to start with some song lyrics from Ben Folds Five. These lyrics are from the song Regrets off the album The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner.

“I thought about the hours wasted
Watching TV, drinking beer
I thought about the things I thought about
Until immobilized with fear
And all the great ideas I had
And how we just made fun
Of those who had the guts to try and fail
And then I ended up in jail
Regrets, regrets”

Fear of failure is like an invisible fence, the kind used for dogs. In an invisible fence, wires are buried around the perimeter of a yard. The dog wears a collar with a radio transmitter. When the dog gets near the perimeter, the collar emits a little warning buzzer. If the dog keeps going, the beep gets louder, and if he goes outside the perimeter, he gets a little shock.

This is classic classical conditioning at work. After a few shocks, the dog only needs to hear the buzzer to know that if he goes any further, he will experience an unpleasant feeling.

Fear of failure is quite similar, except that instead of wearing a collar, we have these pesky things called brains. As I said previously in How to Manage Your Inner Critic, the brain wants us to be safe, comfortable and protected. In order to do this, the brain creates an invisible perimeter and tells us not to go outside.

“Enemies lurk outside,” the brain says, “and you could be hurt. You could fall on your face. Stay in here, where it’s safe.”

When we get close to this invisible fence, instead of a warning buzzer, we experience all kinds of strange things: scenarios in which we are ridiculed, abandoned, humiliated, and ruined. When we get even closer, instead of a shock, we get things like anxiety, cynicism, and perfectionism.

But you know what? That collar only has a limited range, and once you go far enough outside the perimeter, the collar stops working altogether. Of course, you might find that another invisible fence lies farther out in the distance, and the shocks are greater, but that’s no different.

Fear sucks.

“Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear – not absence of fear.” -Mark Twain

In the past, fear served humans well. Fear kept us safe from predators, the elements, and other humans. When venturing out into new lands, we had to be especially careful. Tigers and hostile tribes lurked in the bushes, waiting until the prime moment to pounce. By creating scenarios and imagining these threats, the brain made us keep our guard up; it’s easier to fight when your weapon is at the ready.

Now, at least in the  developed world, we have little to fear from predators and enemies, but the brain continues to conjure threats and dangers.

Why?

Any creative endeavor involves setting out for new territory. Thoughts of doing and creating amazing things make us uncomfortable and anxious. When we create, we put ourselves and our hearts out there. We open ourselves up for public ridicule and shaming. Sure, some people are happy to create only for themselves, and that’s fine, but having an audience will, I promise, influence and improve your work. Having an audience is like having a source of feedback.

And there’s the rub.  You need feedback to improve, but when the brain gleefully points how awful it is to fail, we stop ourselves from taking the steps necessary for that feedback.

What’s Wrong With Failure?

Our attitude toward failure is learned in school and reinforced through mass culture. If you do horribly in a class, you ‘earn’ an F (for failure!). The problem is that ‘earning’ an F usually results from not trying. Laziness and apathy were the cause of this failure.

As we get older, though, we begin to perceive failure a little differently: failure changes from laziness and not trying to actually trying but not having any success. Failing starts to equal doing something wrong. Failure can also mean screwing up…big time.

This is a huge shift. Think about it. Look back at the lyrics from the beginning…who is the bigger ‘failure?’ The guy who sat on the couch drinking beer and laughing at the people out there failing? Or the people actually trying and failing?

History is filled with people who ‘failed.’ You’ve probably heard these stories a million times, but just in case…

• Michael Jordan failed when he tried out for his high school basketball team.
• Thomas Edison failed 10,000 times before invented the light bulb.
• Robert Pirsig failed 121 times to find a publisher for Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.

You get the point. If we say that failure is not getting something right the first time, then these people were bigger failures than the Hindenburg. Yet today, all three of these failures are regarded as wildly successful individuals.

As creative people, we are  way too hard on ourselves. Every rejection is personal,  and every unrealized dream is the end of the world. Yet, by giving into that mentality, we start to think about taking the easy road, the path most traveled. If we give up on what we were meant to do, we will end up doing something we don’t want to do, only because it is the safe, easy, and fail-proof path.

Redefining Failure

“A calm sea does not make a skilled sailor.” -African proverb

As people who create amazing things, we need to redefine failure.

Merriam-Webster’s first definition of failure is an omission of occurrence or performance. Yet, if you’re actually trying to do or create something, then you have performed something. The problem is you didn’t get the desired result or outcome. So, in this sense, you have had only limited success.

When your creation fails, it does not mean that you failed. It just means you either didn’t find the right audience or you need to improve your skills. We all have setbacks and we all make mistakes.

Learn from your failures. In each lies valuable lessons.

Remember: Every failure is an education.

Before we get into strategies for managing the fear of failure, let’s take a look at some symptoms of this odious problem.

What does fear of failure look like?

Fear of failure takes many forms, but it usually comes down to one thing: not trying. How does fear of failure manifest itself?

• Procrastination: We put off doing things in order to avoid the imagined pain of doing them. In reality, the pain of not doing them is usually worse [than the pain of actually doing them].
• Anxiety. The thought that we might fail paralyzes us and prevents us from even trying. If you think about some big idea and you get a weird feeling in your stomach, that’s anxiety. Fortunately, it’s easy to channel this anxiety into creative energy, but you have to get started to do it.
• Cynicism: Some people become cynical and say everything is shit. This is really just an excuse not to try (and to keep your fragile little ego safe in the process).
• Waiting for something or someone. You can wait for years, but nothing could come along. No one will rescue you. The world won’t change in your favor.
• Worrying about others. People don’t like to upset the dynamics of their social circle. Yet, when you start trying things, you run the risk of doing just that and, if you have limited success, those who were made uncomfortable by your efforts will be the first to point out your failures.
• Perfectionism. Nothing is perfect. Nothing. You can spend years working out the final details, but eventually you have to say enough is enough and trust that you’ve done the best you could.

Managing the Fear of Failure

In my opinion, the most important thing you can do to manage the fear of failure is to ask yourself one question: “Realistically, what is the worst that could happen?”

That’s it. Imagine the worst-case scenario. This is very powerful. When you really scrutinize all the worst-case scenarios, you realize they’re not that bad. In almost all cases, you’ll still have your family, friends, and finances. You might look like a goof for a few minutes, but people forget things quite quickly. And… assuming you learn from whatever missteps you make, eventually the things you do and create will supplant any early setbacks.

Here are more techniques for managing the fear of failure:

• Judge success based on your own results. Don’t compare your results to those of others. We all progress at a different pace.

• Just get started. This is often the most terrifying part of any endeavor. The first steps are the hardest, but once you get moving, you can make this creative inertia work for you.

• Set small, concrete goals. Rather than focus on one huge goal, focus on small and specific goals.  Let’s say you want to make a living as a painter. Not easy, but doable. Focus on selling one piece a month.

• Remember that you are not your work. If something you make is poorly received, either look for ways to improve it or chalk it up to a learning experience and move onto the next thing.

• Set a cut-off date. You’ve seen the guys that are rocking well past their prime. Their goal is to get a record deal. While their persistence is admirable, they never set a concrete goal or took responsibility for their own success. They waited on someone to rescue them. No one did.

• Take responsibility. Your success depends on you alone. While it’s easy to blame external forces (the shitty economy, a rotten town, lazy friends), these are all beyond your control.

• Recognize that nothing is a sure thing. All endeavors require risk. Entrepreneurs risk capital and reputation. Artists and creators risk their mental well-being, but that risk is the price of  admission for playing the game.

• Rest assured that failure gets easier. The first ones burn, but after a while, it gets easier. Especially once you get some honest feedback and learn to learn from your mistakes.

Who am I to talk about failure?

I am proud to say I have had a lot of ‘failures.’ From each I learned some valuable lessons.

• I failed Calculus. Twice. I also learned two things: one, it’s okay to quit things that just don’t work. Two, don’t go to class with a hangover.
• The first time I ever sang in front of an audience, my guitar and voice were out of tune. My voice cracked. I forgot the words. I quit after my second song and left in shame. Yet, a few months later, I was happily crooning away in front of larger and larger audiences.
• My first attempt at creating an information product, Pizza Confidential, sold only a few copies. I spent more on advertising than I made in book sales. Yet, from that experience, I learned some valuable lessons. (If you know anyone who delivers pizza, do me favor and send them the link).
• The first time I spent any significant time away from home, I set out to hike all 2,176+ miles of the Appalachian Trail. After a couple months, though, I bitched out and went home. A couple years later, I am wrapping up my first year of living abroad.
• I am collecting an impressive pile of  rejection slips for my short fiction. At first they were form letters, but I’ve also started to get some valuable personal feedback from editors.
• This list could continue, but that’s enough for one post.

Over to You:

• How has failure helped you grow?
• Have you ever been paralyzed by what you later learned was an irrational fear of failure?
• What can we learn from the failure of others?

Here’s to a 2010 full of failure! ! !

If you enjoyed this post or others, share it! Tweet it, Digg it, Stumble it, email it to friends, or submit it to your favorite online service.

photo credit: tommy the pariah

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1. How to Manage Stage Fright: Not Just For Musicians
2. How to Manage Your Inner Critic
3. How I Became a Better Writer

This is the first in a series follow-up posts  to last week’s post on removing barriers to creating amazing things. The last post was on removing physical barriers. The following posts will deal with removing mental barriers.

First: Before I start, I want to say first that I’m a little uncomfortable writing these kind of posts. Why?

I’m suspicious of anyone who tells people how or what to think.

While Happenchance is about helping people do more and better creative work, and I’ll concede that’s a kind of personal development, a lot of personal development (a.k.a. self-help) creeps me out. There’s a lot of bad advice out there. Sometimes people die. Others waste thousands of dollars on feel-good seminars, books, programs, etc.

But there’s also tons of good advice, some created by wonderful, well-intentioned people. Today, I hope to share some of that advice without sounding like a charlatan, a self-righteous toad, or a pseudo-guru.

Remember two things:

• There is no change without action.
• The only people who (think they) have all the answers are either insane or candidates for assassination.

Here goes….

Inner Critics and Editors

“As long as a man stands in his own way, everything seems to be in his way.” Ralph Waldo Emerson

The inner critic is a rotten friend to have around, like the guy that shows up at your party just to tell you your party sucks…while he drinks all your imported beer.

The mind is a funny thing. It can conceive things unrivaled in nature and unimaginable to past generations, but it can also turn a man into a quivering jellyfish, afraid of his own toaster. In the case of inner critics, it can fill a person with self-doubt and prevent them from creating something amazing.

Anyone who creates anything has critics. That’s the price of playing the game. Yet, our inner critics are the harshest and most destructive critics of all.

Judgmental, intimidating, berating, etc., inner critics are actually the mind’s perverse way of trying to protect us. The mind wants us to be comfortable and complacent, to avoid shame and ridicule. Their logic is like this: ‘if I don’t create anything bad, I will avoid shame.’  Yet, not trying is the most shameful thing of all.

Inner critics may speak in the voice of teachers, friends,  or parents, but the message is the same: “this is shit.” They are an accumulation of negative experiences that accumulate about us like iron shavings around a magnet.

Other things the inner critic might say:

• You’ve never done anything right.
• Everything worth doing has already been done. Why bother?
• So many people are so much better than you.
• You’re a phony, a fake, a fraud.
• You have the brain of a marmot and the heart of a gila monster.
• [insert your favorite negative quote here]

Note that the internal critic tends to speak in the second person, as if it is a voice outside your own head. Remember, though, that these are voices in your head. As such, you can manage them, control them, and eventually beat them into painful, bloody submission.

How to Manage Your Inner Critic(s)

A negative inner monologue is essentially a learned behavior that must be unlearned. This may take some time, but it is possible to learn to manage or even silence your inner critic. You may have to try several different methods. As far as I know, there is no silver bullet for silencing inner critics (unless your inner critic happens to be a werewolf).

Here are tricks for managing and silencing your inner critic.

• Separate early drafts from revisions. For me, the trick is telling the inner critic that I will do well,  but I  must go through several revisions and make some mistakes along the way. Nothing works right on the first try. Once I learned this lesson, things became much easier. I suppose I gave myself permission to fail.
• Tell them to take a leave of absence. If you have a running dialog with your inner critic, tell them to take a leave of absence (with pay) and promise they can come back and help during revisions. The inner critic can be a pretty good bullshit detector if you can learn to work with them, but just like any relationship you need plenty of space.
• Question the voice. If you have one voice that is particularly bad, ask yourself what right that critic has to stop you from what you want or need to do. Others say to question the motivations of these voices.
• Acknowledge the voice. One psychologist recommends a technique called ‘thank you-goodbye.’ He says that inner critics are well-intentioned but they only know how to convey their message in negative terms. I haven’t used this but it seems legit.
• Make a deal with the critic. Write down (on paper) what they say, make a promise to deal with it later, then forget about it. This technique makes the most of our tendency to procrastinate. Who cares if you break a promise to your critics? They’re jerks anyway.
• Decouple what you create with who you are. I’ve written some awful stuff, but its not who I am, just something I made while I was learning. When I look back at what I’ve done, it’s easy to see a progression from awful to less-awful to mediocre. Along the way, if I had said ‘that’s awful, so I’m awful,’ then I never would’ve reached the level of mediocrity I’m so proud  of today.
• Give yourself permission to fail. Every failure is an education. By failing, we learn what doesn’t work. Sometimes we learn what does. The people who succeed are usually people who have a nice track record of failures and clusterf$@ks. The only way to have good ideas are to have lots of  bad ones.
• Write about it. While journals won’t solve all your problems, they are useful for keeping your inner critics in check. How? By writing their arguments and objections, you can see how silly and irrational they actually are. Then you can craft arguments to destroy them once and for all!
• Have confidence in yourself and your abilities. This may be the most important trick in the book. If you say you can’t do something, you probably can’t. Instead, grab your inner critic by the hand, co-opt a popular campaign slogan, and chant ‘yes we can, yes we can’ until you start to believe it.

Resources

Article from Psychology Today: Before You Create, Pacify Your Inner Critic

Fighting the Internal Critic by Betty W. Phillips, PhD

Wall Street Journal Article on Silencing Your Inner Critic

Over to You:

• Do you have any tricks for managing your inner critics?
• What are the strengths and weaknesses of inner critics?
• Am I a charlatan?

Later this week, I’ll be putting up a collection of resources on language learning. Next week I’ll continue the series on removing mental barriers with a post on How to Manage Fear of Failure.

If you enjoyed this post or others, share it! Tweet it, Digg it, Stumble it, email it to friends, or submit it to your favorite online service.

photo credit: fpat

You may also enjoy:

1. How to Manage Stage Fright: Not Just For Musicians
2. How to Manage the Fear of Failure
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I’m not a smart man.

In fact, I’m a little dim, like a fluorescent bulb that’s about to die. Sometimes I forget how to tie my shoe.

Yet, to do the things I like to do, I need all the brains I can get. For this reason, I keep two kinds of journals, make a lot of lists, take a lot of notes, and use all the mind tricks I can. Minds maps are one of my favorites. Used in conjunction with my knockoff moleskine and daily journal, it’s like having an extra brain.

I use mind maps because they are fast, visual, and associative. Using a mind map is like thinking on paper. Why else use mind maps?

Mind maps help you:

• Write faster and with greater ease
• Smash the walls of writers block
• See a problem in a new way
• Organize large amounts of information
• Discover new connections between concepts
• Solve complex problems
• Remember past events with great clarity

About two years ago, I started messing around with mind maps. I’ve used them for fiction writing, note taking, and blog posts. In fact, almost every post I write starts out as a mind map. Maybe its because I’m lazy and dim, but I’ve found using a mind map or concept map cuts my writing time almost in half and gives me a more concise final product.

Additionally, researchers have shown that using mind maps increases recall by 10% among motivated students.

If you’re interested, read on…

How to Make a Mind Map

First, let me say that I don’t always follow the ‘official’ instructions to the letter. My maps are usually devoid of drawings, sloppy, and notoriously monochromatic.

Think of a mind map like the root system of a tree. The central idea is the tree, and each supporting idea is a root. Each main root will have several smaller roots growing out from it.

1. Start with a blank sheet of copy paper, oriented horizontally. Write the main idea in the middle. Since I need to do some planning for a temporary move to Chiang Mai, Thailand. Let’s use that for a quick and dirty example.

2. From the main idea, add the main categories. Silly pictures helpful.

3. From each main category, add relevant sub-categories.

4. Add supporting information as needed. Making your mind map will spark new ideas. When I started this, I only had six main categories, but by the time I finished, I had ten, and I’ll probably add a couple more.

5. If you like, you can add color. Just for fun, I did. The final product:

For other, better examples of mind maps, check out some of these: Link 1, Link 2, Link 3, Link 4

Now that I’ve got all this information down on paper, I have a pretty complete picture of what I need to do to make my temporary move happen. The next thing I’ll do is turn this into a project list; each category will have its own to-do list…but that’s a post for another day.

Bonus tip: To keep all your mind maps organized, use a three-ring binder with clear sheets/sleeves. After you finish each map, date it, give it a page number, slide it in the plastic sleeve, and make an entry in the index.

Mind Mapping Resources

Video Interview with Tony Buzan (plus video tutorial) Buzan popularized the modern mind map.

Wikipedia Entry on Mind Maps

20+ Mind Mapping Resources

How to Make a Mind Map

10 Tips for Highly Effective Mind Mapping Sessions

Over to You:

• Have you ever used mind maps? What do you think of them?
• Mind map vs. concept map: which is better?
• If you have some pictures of some cool mind maps you’ve made, post a link in the comments.

I’d love to hear from you.

If you enjoyed this post or others, share it! Tweet it, Digg it, Stumble it, email it to friends, or submit it to your favorite online service.

Tree photo credit: jeffersondavis. All other photos taken by the author

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A physical barrier is anything that slows you down or prevents you from creating or doing amazing things. A physical barrier can be something as simple as having to take an extra step to do something. Physical barriers can seem like minor inconveniences but they can create a lot of mental resistance.

Imagine, for example, you want to be a professional gamer (We have those here in Korea). You’re training on Wii, but you have to share the television with your roommate; they’re training on an XBox 360. Every time you want to play the Wii, you have to crawl behind the television (with the dust and spiders), unhook the Xbox and hook up the Wii. The extra steps aren’t physically difficult, but unless you’re super motivated to ‘practice,’ you might just end up watching drama.

The same could be said of a website checkout system. The less steps a customer has to take, the higher the conversion rate. Think about irritating sites that make you register just to view a forum. Most people would just look elsewhere.

Why? It’s easier.

People are lazy, and I’m no exception. Like objects in motion or at rest, we tend to take the path of least resistance.

By removing the physical barriers to our creative work and activites, it makes our lives just a little easier. We face less resistance. Here at Happenchance, I like silly formulas, so here’s a new one:

If a physical barrier = mental resistance, then less resistance= more amazing things.

Let’s have a look at some ways to remove these physical barriers and get a little more awesome.

Eliminate Setup & Startup Time

Think about how many steps you have to go through to get started on a creative project. If you have to drag your materials out of a closet, plug things in, sharpen your tools, or bribe someone, you have a physical barrier.

Someone once said a song can write and reveal its basic essence in about 15 minutes. The song isn’t finished, but when the idea comes, it comes pretty fast. For someone who occasionally writes songs, quickly and easily capturing that basic essence is an important step.

Problem: I have a recording interface for my laptop. To use it, however, I have to fire up the software, adjust the settings, and hook up the cables. By the time all that is done, I’m usually frustrated. This device works fine for recording a developed idea, but for capturing new  ideas, it fails.

Solution: I bought a cheap tape recorder. If I have a song idea, I press record and I’m good to go. Once I started doing this, I found I could get ideas down on tape twice as fast and, interestingly, I had twice as many song ideas. Now I capture the basic ideas on the tape recorder and, once they’re sufficiently developed, allot some time to record a proper acoustic demo on the interface.

If you have the space, leave your tools setup so you only have to do one or two things to get started.

Examples:

• Writers: keep your main notebook handy, your word processor files in easy-to-find locations.
• Visual artists: keep your materials out and ready to go.
• Digital workers: have a good file management system, easy-to-access bookmarks, and let your browser remember passwords for the websites you frequent.
• Finally, while this isn’t creative work, I found keeping a backpack full of camping gear & dried food ready to go made it a lot easier to go on impromptu camping trips.

Use Quality Tools

You can’t turn a screw with a plastic screwdriver, and you can’t make a decent screwdriver without quality vodka. Quality goods are cheaper than they’ve ever been, but there’s a lot of shoddy stuff out there. While sometimes using junk can yield interesting results, using the right tools helps ensure the best results.

Problem: When I was fifteen, I went to a pawnshop and bought the cheapest guitar I could find. The action (distance between strings and frets) and intonation were terrible; after a couple weeks of diligent effort, my playing still sounding like a goat choking on nails. Even though I was making the correct chord shapes, they sounded out of tune and clanky. I gave up for several months…

Solution: I eventually saved enough money for a decent guitar.  This one had good action and intonation. Once I had a quality instrument, I picked up where I left off and made a lot more progress a lot faster.

Examples:

• Using a good pen and paper makes writing more fun.
• Musicians should get quality gear and keep it in tip top shape.
• If you use a computer at all, perform regular maintenance (removing temp files, defragmenting, etc).

Use Your Time Well

Time, like plutonium, is a limited resource, and like plutonium, you can use it for the purpose of world domination. Unlike plutonium, it is not a tangible, physical thing, but as long we exist in space, we exist in time. So…for our purposes time is physical.

Problem: In the past, I always wanted to write for myself, to create things besides school assignments. I told myself I would write when I had some free time, that I’d get around to it eventually. Sometimes I did, but usually other things would find ways to use my time. Over a two year period, I wrote maybe ten pages. Sad, sad, sad…

Solution: I chose a set time to write, everyday. What I wrote didn’t matter, only that I wrote crap…and write crap I did. I started small, only an hour a day. The barrier of not having enough time was eliminated. Instantly. Why? I set aside time. I knew I had to sit down and it, and the barrier of vague ‘other stuff’ was gone. I didn’t make time, the time was already there.

Not having enough time to create stuff is a common excuse problem, but the solution is straightforward: treat your own creative work like actual work. Show up on time, every time. This is the easiest way to remove the barrier of not having enough time.

If you really do have a full, Korean-student-style schedule, either shed some commitments or stop worrying and focus on what you’re already doing.

Examples:

• Start small and set aside an hour or even a half-hour. Everyday is ideal, but two or three times a week can work.
• Write down what you want to accomplish during this time. If you’ve got nothing specific, just plan to spend the time brainstorming.
• Claim your time and eliminate all possibilities of interruptions. Ignore the phone. Turn off the interwebs.
• Treat your creative time like a part-time job. This takes a while to get used to, but the payoffs are better than the lottery.

Have a Good Space

Having a good, dedicated place to create is like putting a houseplant into a bigger pot with better soil. The plant can stretch out its roots and have room to grow. Working in a shared space is like having a pot that’s too small. Yes, the plant may grow a little bit, but eventually it reaches the edges of its confines.

Your workspace is your home base, the place you keep your idea files, tools, materials, etc. Each space, of course, varies by medium. At the bare minimum, you’ll be able to setup in one or two easy physical steps.

Problem: Back in the States, my wife used to make really cool custom picture frames. She would paint the frame then, along the outside, she would glue the bottle caps. I drank the beer, she made the frames. Win-win. Here, though, our apartment is just a bit larger that a shipping container. She simply doesn’t have a space to lay out her tools and materials.

Solution: The easy solution would be another apartment, but that won’t happen until we leave Korea. We made some space on the floor, but that’s not the same; she has to get everything out and arrange them just right. Afterwards she must put things away so bottle caps don’t become glued to our feet. In this case, the solution is suboptimal.

Sometimes you have to work with the space you have. Sadly, in a place this small, there’s not much she can do. On the other hand, she has taken up knitting and cross-stitch (we have some wild Saturday nights); these  activities don’t require much space.

Examples:

• If you need to make room, sell some stuff on craigslist. It’s like having people pay you to take your stuff away.
• Get your own desk and keep it clear of clutter.
• Figure out the minimum amount of space you need to do your thing.
• Get rid of your television. You’ll have more space and more time. Leave the professional gaming to the Koreans.

Over to You:

• What physical barriers have you eliminated to make creating easier?
• Do you have any suggestions for my upcoming post about removing mental barriers?
• How can you apply these ideas to other areas of life? Nutrition, exercise, education, for example?
• Is time physical?

I’d love to hear from you.

Update: This series continues with Removing Barriers Series: How to Mange Your Inner Critic and How to Manage Fear of Failure.

If you enjoyed this post or others, share it! Tweet it, Digg it, Stumble it, email it to friends, or submit it to your favorite online service.

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Journal Writing is one of the best things you can do to improve your memory, clarify your thinking, increase your creativity, and just become a more all-around awesome person. Sometimes, though, keeping a journal can become as stale as the crackers in my cabinet. Here’s a list of tips for better journal writing. Some of my categories overlap, but you’ll get the general idea.

General Techniques for Better Journal Writing

1. Write every day.

2. Aim for a set number of lines or pages everyday.

3. Fire your censors. Mute your internal editor. You’re writing for no one but yourself.

4. Use a trigger phrase to get started. For example, “Good morning,” “Here’s what happened,” etc.

5. Have conversations with famous (and infamous) people, living and dead.

6. Write in different conditions: awake, sleepy, tired, sick, drunk, drugged, etc.

7. Keep writing, even if you think you have nothing to say. Write “I have nothing to write.” You’ll come up with something.

8. Write an entry as if you were ten years older or younger.

9. Make lists of things you like, dislike, things that piss you off, make you want to murder, etc.

The Physical Journal

10. Use a paper journal and a good pen. If you’re really fastidious, aim for good handwriting, but don’t worry about it looking pretty.

11. Tape or glue in scrap papers, ticket stubs, and traffic citations.

12. Record your progress towards completing projects or mastering skills. Maybe a daily status bar or percentage?

13. Note the date, at least. You can also add the time, weather, stock index, number of celebrity arrests, etc.

15. Draw pictures in the margins. Add illustrations, diagrams, manuals, maps, pie charts.

Planning the Future

16. Plan future events, real and imaginary.

17. Elaborate on your goals. If you don’t have any, make some easy ones to get started.

18. Imagine wild success for any project, current or future.

19. Take a different look at a sticky problem. Imagine how someone from a different epoch or culture would approach the problem.

Recording the Past

20. Keep track of books you read, movies you watch, albums you listen to, performances you experience.

21. Recall conversations and details you notice about people.

22. Dig into your past, especially the mundane stuff; this is a great mental workout.

23. Forget your past by committing it to paper.

24. Reread old entries and laugh at yourself.

Understanding People and Place

25. Describe people as you see them and as you think they see themselves.

26. Describe the world around you. Imagine your eyes are microscopes…or satellites.

27. Write in a quiet place. Write in a loud place. Describe these places. Compare the difference.

28. Write in the woods or in nature. Call me a hippie, but writing in an orchard is always fruitful.

Engaging the Outer World

29. If you follow the news, write about your reaction to the big stories of the day.

30. History buffs can add a ‘this day in history’ paragraph. Some sites offer RSS subscriptions for these things.

31. Seek out and record good quotes.

32. Write reviews of  books, movies,  albums, and performances. If nothing else, you’ll have plenty of fodder for cocktail parties.

Further Resources:

For some great prompts, check out Writing Forward’s Journal Prompts

Journal and expressive writing improves your health. Check out this study.

An Ode to Writing By Hand (Plus Tips for Improving your Handwriting): In Defense of Handwriting.

How to Start Keeping a Daily Journal: Master Your Mental Monkey

Over to You: Do you keep a journal? Do you have any tips to share?

photo credit: Lidal-K

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