Wasted Work
One of the most agonizing and baffling phenomena of the creative professional is this:
Wasted work.
If your Comcast service professional is scheduled from 4–6, and closes those hours with no result, you will be upset.
If your doctor says she wants to run an “experiment” to treat your common cold, you will be panicked.
If your accountant says he plans to take a risk on your taxes with the IRS, you will be… well, looking for a new accountant.
Yet with your writing, your photography, your design — entire chapters are cut, thousands of photos rot on a hard drive, and concepts are never used. This graveyard is implied.
The problem? Too often potential creatives have ONLY wasted work.
A strange paradox of life: The playfulness of art must exist to counteract the precision of business. Similarly, the demand of industry must churn to spur the dawdle of the artist.
How then, is one to manage a profession where the dawdle IS the business?
A couple of thoughts:
One — Idea generation. The more ideas you come up with up front, the more picky you are able to be on the back end.
Two — Constant pursuit. The more you practice, the more quickly you can identify bad ideas (and good ones).
Three — Reliable processes. The more you can start with an idea and end with a product, the more you understand what clients want.
“Should I experiment with new ideas or should I do what pays the bills??”
This is a world of abundance.
You should do both.
Much love as always ❤
— TB
Infinite Ideas
If I am elite in any area it is because of my ideas, both the quality and the quantity.
I finally got my idea-generating process down in an ebook: The Ultimate Guide to Infinite Ideas, which I’m giving away for the price of an email address.
