The most important life lessons are the ones that you can’t seem to remember but when you relearn them it’s like you never forgot. Make sense? The example from my life is the lesson that all good creative is iterative and writing is re-writing. As a writer, my first drafts always suck but it had to get out and onto paper. The next days and months consist of mercilessly hacking out unnecessary words, flowery prose and anything that is not absolutely mandatory to move the story forward. I know this creative process and flow but yet I still forgot this lesson when I moved to designing storytelling products.
“Omit needless words. Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts.”
–William Strunk, Jr.
This quote from the godfather of grammar should also be applied to product design. Pretty products are great and so is beautiful prose but if it gets in the way of user-experience cut it out of there. Only ship what is absolutely necessary. Fred Wilson wrote that, “when Jack Dorsey came back to Twitter, he said he was finally going to build Twitter 1.0.” This is Dorsey’s genius.
So I’m not the tech wizard on my team but I do consider myself a hacker. I hack out was is not absolutely necessary to build an amazingly functional and fantastic user-experience.
So it’s still early in the year and people are still making new years resolutions, of which most will never work. Why? Because the resolution is so abstract. Take an exercise goal: I want to get in shape this year. It’s such an abstract goal with no attached measurement. Run a sub 3-hour marathon, blow a VO2 max of 72 or complete 700km in 7 days from Geneva to Nice. That’s a finite goal. Okay so we have a concrete goal, now forget about it and focus on the process to get there. There are many tiny incremental steps that need to happen to get there, focus on those not the goal. If you complete the incremental steps then you’ll surely accomplish the goal.
The real reason I’m talking about this is because I’m experimenting with applying this to the creative process where goals can often be abstract. Pure panic sets in when, as a creative, you focus on the goal. For example if we focus on delivering a website on February 19, or coming up with a great idea for a new campaign then we’ll never get there. We need to focus on the steps that have worked in the past to achieve this goal. The goal needs to become finishing the incremental steps. If we push this concept further then we need to divide up our time based on process not outcome. If we have three hours to come up with a great idea don’t focus on the idea, focus on the steps to get to that idea. So I’ll spend 30 minutes researching, I’ll spend an hour jotting down random ideas, I’ll spend 30 minutes grouping ideas, 30 minutes flushing out one group and 30 minutes honing in on one idea in that group. Developing this process is personal and only comes with experience. Over time creative confidence goes up because there’s a system in place to creating ideas. I’m not just mashing the keyboard praying for inspiration, I’m putting in the time and work and if your truly put in the time and work then you’ll get to the goal.
As a creative director my job is to help creatives refine their process to help them put in the time and work. Also it is good to have a clear goal so they can see success as opposed to a moving target that is only held in the whimsy of the Creative Director.
To bring it back to athletics, I know that I will be able to ride 700km in 7 days through the Swiss and French Alps because I have a training plan in place. I just need to complete two short rides, one interval ride and one long ride a week with core work on off days and I’ll surely be ready for the Haute Route Race in August.
Put in the work, stick to the process and you’ll accomplish your clearly defined goal.
And remember that the brain is a type of muscle to that can grow and strengthen over time through training so it can accept more and more complex creative work if it is continually challenged, pushed and trained. Also wearing spandex helps in any brainstorming session.
It’s great to see that Transmedia made it on to the list. The more I talk with people about what I do, the more I see the audience appetite to “read” stories over multiple platforms. I’m glad to see I’m not drinking my own kool-aid too much.
Also pretty excited about the TinTin movie coming out this year.
Great news! My dad, who’s a university professor, has just been granted his first sabbatical. Bad news, my dad is in his fifties and three years from retirement. One sabbatical, in a 40-year career, three years before retirement just doesn’t add up. Like all good sons my lifelong quest is to not repeat the folly of my father, so I set out to find my own equation that granted me a better solution to continued learning while working.
Stefan Segmeister, the world-renowned designer posits this solution: Given the fact that the first 25 or so years are devoted to learning, the next 40 or so to working, and the final 25 to retirement what if we cut off 5 years from retirement and intersperse them into your working years? By this math we’d take a sabbatical every seven years thus pushing back out retirement by 5 years.
Well this seems like a better solution then that of a single sabbatical right before retirement, it isn’t exactly realistic for us who are not owners of world famous design firms.
Knowing that I didn’t want to walk in the same steps as my father, and that I didn’t have the job security to take a year off every seven I decided to start Sabbatical Saturdays. Okay, okay, I know what you’re thinking and you’re right, this isn’t such a radical move but it does give a focus to my weekend. If I take one day off a week to further educate myself then I’ve taken 52 days a year which adds up to taking a full year off over the course of seven years. Essentially I’ve taken the same time as Sagmeister but just done it as weekly commitment as opposed to checking out for a full year every seven years. The sacrifice is simply that instead of nursing a hangover until noon, then doing laundry, then watching TV, then starting in on creating a Sunday hangover, I decided to devote a whole day to learning and completing a project outside my work discipline.
Let’s make no mistake, this is not a day to hang out drink espressos in the sun and pontificate whilst cogitating, this is a time to execute on a specific project. Any sabbatical has a rigorous set of deliverables. So the first part is to define those deliverables and due date. Knowing that I’m a born flaneur/procrastinator I’ve enlisted the help of a faux academic advisor to keep me on track. I’ll play the same role for them. My “student” is interested in new media’s role in education and the development of critical information age thinkers, so I’ve assigned Peter Drucker, Richard Florida and Neill Postman to compliment the more contemporary authors Daniel Pink and Seth Godin.
Most sabbaticals also involve leaving the nest for a time to get perspective on your surroundings. Well this is a downside to a weekly day commitment as opposed to an extended leave of absence; this doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be followed. Take your Saturday Sabbactical from your local Chinatown or drive to your next neighborhood and work from a café.
So as it stands this is simply a creative experiment with an unknown outcome but worst-case scenario I’ll just wait another 20 years and take a sabbatical like my dad. He turned out okay so I’m fine with that. As it stands I’m kicking around three projects: A portrait cookbook, a book on nutrition and creative output and a film script on the 1968 student revolutions. Sure they’re loose ideas now but hell I got seven years to complete them and all I need to do is devote one day a week.
Good luck. Let me know if you need an advisor and I’ll try to find one for you.
Interesting Vancouver is an unconference that I will be helping to hype and maybe even speak at, if I can get my act together. The premise is to hold a super relaxed conference where speakers are invited to speak for 20 minutes or 3 minutes on any topic they’re interested in, passionate about or super knowledgeable about.
It’ll take place on October 24th at the Vancouver Rowing Club and only cost $25. This will be one of those events that will make you proud to live in the cultural mix of Vancouver.
