We all know about the importance of repetition in achieving fitness gains, like this person here.
But these same principles apply to creative work and mastery.
Why Do I Need to Be Creative?
Almost everyone is involved in some kind of creative work.
Wikipedia defines creative professions as writing, art, design, theater, television, radio, motion pictures, related crafts, as well as marketing, strategy, scientific research and development, product development, engineering, teaching, curriculum design, and more.
I would add cooking, parenting, planning a vacation, and selecting a wardrobe as additional examples.
How to Be More Creative?
How do we get better at creative work? Practice.
Put in the reps for the thing that you want to be more creative in. Practice cooking. Or writing poems. Or drawing items on your coffee table. Or planning cool day trips from your house.
“the most important possible thing you could do,” says Ira Glass, the producer of This American Life and the podcast Serial, “is do a lot of work. Do a huge volume of work.” Practice. Put in the reps.
There will be many miscues and misses. It’s part of the process. I read somewhere that “the best photographers have the largest wastebaskets.” That’s the idea. Keep practicing your craft, whatever it is. Learn from and discard your mistakes. Move on.
In other words, creating is not perfection. It is not churning out a steady series of perfect ideas, or products. It’s about quantity of ideas, not the quality of any one specific idea. By having lots of ideas, you’ll be more likely to come up with some really good ones.
David Kadavy explains it this way in his book The Heart to Start
“The Linear Work Distortion is the false belief that creative work is a neat, step-by-step process, wherein the final product steadily reveals itself. In fact, that’s not how creative work really happens. It’s often messy, and iterative .”
“By accepting that your early work won’t meet your standards, you can free yourself up for action. This freedom allows you to do the large volume of work required to get good at something, which, counterintuitively, leads to better and better work”
But isn’t this just a giant waste of time? No. By puttin’ in the reps we can sometimes catch the lightning in a bottle that we are looking for. Scott Adams, the creator of the Dilbert cartoon, says this:
“Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.”
If you are trying to invent a new cookie recipe, at least you can eat your mistakes!
How Does Puttin’ In The Reps Help Us Achieve Mastery?
We all want to get better at what we are doing. Right? How do we do it?
“Try, Fail, Learn, Try Differently”
Experimentation is the key to mastery. At some point you will need to teach yourself. There will not be any more books, mentors, or youtube videos that you can learn much from. You’ll need to setup your own tutorials, or exercises, or things to practice. Observe yourself and identify things that you want to do better.
“Its actually while doing the thing you want to get good at when much of the learning takes place”
Mastery requires continued active learning and continued passive learning. Puttin in the reps.
- Active learning develops skill
- Passive learning creates knowledge
Studying music is a great example. Learning stuff from records and mimicking the sounds that you hear develops skill. Understanding chords, progressions, and music theory creates knowledge.
So, all I need to do is put in the reps? Not quite.
“Don’t just put in your time. You have to make great effort”
Focused effort is required. Focus on your form when improving as a runner. Focus on metaphors and imagery when improving as a poet. Focus on having your ingredients at the right temperature and gently mixing them when improving your pie-making.
Continued improvement means identifying areas for improvement, isolating difficulties, and developing strategies to remove them.
I remember as a young guitar player that I was having trouble transitioning from one chord to another. My technique was slow, and imprecise. My fingers were not landing in the correct places on the fretboard and they were not landing together. I practiced S-L-O-W-L-Y making the chord, starting with my fingers in the air. I imagined my fingers starting to make the correct shape as they were approaching the guitar fretboard. Once they landed, I then strummed all of the strings to make sure that I had a clean sound. I did this over, and over, and over. Focusing on the technique of making the chord shape “in the air” before touching the fretboard. It worked. But it took some time.
Mastery is a journey, not the destination.