S1 E4 | Smell The Progress

So I always thought art was that. Art was things that were very well done, that represented something. And I could never do that. I can't draw, could never really draw. I doodle. But that's to think. That's not for art. Right. That's the thing to express.

And I think of art as expressing. Do you think of it as expressing things or is it more just about creating things?

Well, we'll get to that. So for me to appreciate art is.

The seeing it, but to do it is the thing of fixing, of making mistakes and fixing it. So the creative process is different than art. Art is the outcome, not what I'm trying to get done. Right. Right.

Welcome to the Circuit Breaker podcast, where we challenge the status quo of innovation and new product development. We'll talk about tools and skills and methodologies used to build better products and make you a better consumer. I'm Bob Mesta and I'm the co founder of the Rewired group and I'm one of your co hosts and we're joined by Greg Engel, who is my co founder and chief, Bob Interpreter. Join us now as we trip the circuit and give you time to reset, reorganize, and recharge your brain to build better products.

Hey, Bob. Today I want to talk about something that I've recently started doing. And most people would look at my behavior and look at the things I'm doing and saying, hey, that was random.

Just randomly came up.

Just randomly came up.

Okay, one, you're pushing a button and you know it. Which is nothing is random. Everything is caused. So the reality is like, how do we understand the causality behind why you did what you did? As opposed to just think it's random and wait for random shit to happen.

So about a month ago, I started doing what some people call art. I call painting or I call dabbling. It's a new thing. I've never done it before.

Never done it before. You've never done a painting in grade school.

Yes, but that's crafts, not painting or art. So there's different things.

Oh, my gosh. We're gonna have to go game on. Game off on this one. Cause it's like, okay, game off. We have to unpack half of those words. What's a craft? What's an art? But so you picked up this thing of.

Painting.

Painting. And we're saying very loosely, we're doing.

Air quotes from both our sides. Or like, painting, because. So tell me, when did you actually start? When did you do your first painting?

So it was in July July.

Okay. What was going on?

Well, I know it was July because the Olympics were going on.

Okay.

And it was a weird year. It was the 20 Olympics and 21. So it was kind of a weird thing. So we kind of remember.

Were you watching them or was it like, oh my God, I didn't want to watch that, so I'm going to do something else.

No. So it wasn't anything to do with that. It's just. That's how I remember when I started. Right. So let me give a little background. Okay. And then we can ask questions and we kind of talk about the forces of progress I went through. Yep. How the light bulb actually got started, all those types of things. Right.

And is it, is it really a new job or not? Is it something that you're just having to replace?

Correct. So I've always had this desire to be creative. Right.

What does that mean, to be creative?

The desire of creative to me was my mom, when I was very young, was a plaster craft artist. So she would make plaster craft.

And that's how your mom and dad met, by the way?

No, not at all.

And so she had a business in her house. So one of my earliest memories is me watching Sesame street right upstairs and her being downstairs and not this is a great thing, but me being able to smell the, the paint, the thinners, all those things that go into it. Right. But that's one of the memories I have.

It also explains a lot too, and.

People coming into the house and doing that stuff. And so. And I would always go to art. Art shows with her as a. As before I went to school and all that kind of stuff. Right. So that's always been there. My aunt is also in plaster craft and then my dad, who is a house painter. And most people say, well, that's not artistic or that's not, you know, that's not creative. But I've seen my dad do things like, you know, take. Take a cement floor and make it look like a wood floor. Right. Or take a wall and do texture to it and then paint it different things to give it different effects. Right. So. And I can never do that stuff. Right. That was never my thing. Like in art, you said, did you do art in school? Sure. Like everybody, it was a blob of brown, but it was art. Right. Because it was a five year old.

Did it and everybody was happy about it.

Right. So I've always had this thing and I've watched different things. I've had the, you know, I've had the thought of doing It. I've watched, like, everybody. Like everybody watched Bob Ross, right? And I look at it and I define art kind of that way. It's artistic because to me, it's. It's something. It's a picture. He did landscapes, or you see someone do pictures of people, portraits, right? So I always thought art was that, right? Art was things that were very well done, that represented something. Right? So. And I could never do that. I can't draw. Could never really draw. I doodle. But that's to think. That's not for art, right? That's to think to express.

And I think of art as expressing. Do you think of it as expressing things, or is it more just about creating things?

Well, we'll get to that. So for me, to appreciate art is.

The seeing it, but to do it is the thing of fixing. Of making mistakes and fixing it. So the creative process is different than art. Art is the outcome, not what I'm trying to get done, right? So I'm going through this all the time, and I pick up different things every once in a while. Wood burning at one point.

Wait, when did you start doing wood burning?

I've done that off and on for years.

What is wood burning?

Well, I've actually done where you just. You take a tool and you actually carve stuff into it. Was never really good at that because you have to design something, right. And to other things of just like taking a piece of wood and burning it or stenciling something out and burning it with a blowtorch to create different things and then varnishing it different ways. Right? So different things. Trying to get that thing done, but never really had a passion.

And have you been doing it for. For all that stuff for a long time, or is this one of those things that, like, was also recent?

I'll pick things up, but not, like, for years. I pick things up, but not really like it. Right? Like. Like, even, like, coloring, to me, is a foreign thing. I don't know why people do that. Like, it's not relaxing for me. It's not artistic for me. It's not any of those things for me. Right, so different things you'll try, right? You always try things off and on, and they don't work, or they work and you keep going. But so around that July timeframe, I have this thing. And our work has changed, right? We used to be all in person and now we're virtual. So our time has changed. So there's a little bit more. I wouldn't say free time, but there's more Flexibility in our schedules. So that's a context that's kind of different than what was in the past.

So, yeah, one is you have a little bit more time.

I don't know if I have more time. I have time in different places because of the way it has to work. We're not with somebody for seven straight days anymore. It's different things. So there's different time areas available. And then also there's things going on that I have the push of people around me being artistic. I have people in my family that can sing, which is artistic to me. I have people that can play instruments, which is artistic, and I can't do any of those. I have this desire, this outcome, to say, hey, I want some creative outlet.

And is this that you have it, you just need to find it, or is this the fact that you want to develop it? It's like, who knows? Who knows? So it's literally like blind going in.

Trying to say, like, until you find it, who knows? Right.

Yep. So isn't that random?

It's not. Because you're trying things. Right, Right. So I'm trying to fulfill this thing of creativity.

So there's a struggle around basically filling the need of being creative in your definition. Which is. Which is what?

What is? Art was never it. Right. Art was never it because I couldn't do it. But what is creative for me? Creative for me is the work we do. Right. I'm able to talk to people, figure out what their demand and supply is, and then create new ideas, create new ways. So that was my creativity.

Right. But in the moment.

In the moment.

Very improv in the moment.

And.

And being able to integrate and pull.

Things together, back and forth, trying to figure it out. And when Covid happened, that didn't go away, but it changed.

In what way?

So when we were in person, we could be very improv. We could talk about a million ideas. With people.

It didn't have to be as rigid or complete. But now with COVID happening and us being remote, you have to be more. We have to be a little more.

Concrete on what we're giving people.

The time together is way more purposed, and there's no space between.

But the ideas have to be a little more vetted because we don't have the time of exchange. For one reason is if you're over zoom, one person can only talk at a time. When you're in person, multiple people can.

Talk or you can have sidebars. And there's that whole aspect of being in the room and having A little small sidebar and then going to the board and that kind of stuff. There's that dynamic of making it linear and very one person at a time talking.

So the thing that was my creative outlet is still there, but not there as much as it was. So I have to find another way to do it. Right.

So were you feeling unfulfilled in the terms of like, I wasn't creative. Like, you knew you were being creative before, but it's like, God.

I need something else.

I don't think it was. I wasn't in search of necessarily. I was maybe passive looking and probably actually even active looking. Right. Trying a little more wood burning, trying this, trying that, but not anything that I'm saying, hey, I gotta go solve this problem.

Right? But you've gone deep into, like in the last month, month and a half, you've gone deep into this painting.

Well, let's dive into kind of what happened. Right. So there's no. There was really no light bulb, right? There was really no light bulb. I knew I wanted creativity. I have a little bit of it. I'm still doing it. Some can argue what we're doing now is actually better for our customer. But wasn't my outlet for me. Right. But I'm still looking. But there's no real light bulb for me because I can't go paint. Because painting to me means you have to actually be able to design something, paint it. It has to look like something real. It has to have that emotion. It has to have all these things. That was my definition, right. Which is very rigid, which shouldn't be for art, but it was, right? That was my definition. So.

One morning, and I don't remember. I know it was a weekend. I don't know what day it was or anything like that, but I go and do my peloton routine, come upstairs. And part of my thing is I don't go take a shower right away because I let my body cool down because of the shock of water temperature and stuff. And you don't want to do that to your heart and things like that. So I'm watching morning tv, local tv. And we all know what that is. It's all fluff, right? All ridiculous fluff crap.

No, it fills a void.

It's fluff crap. But anyway, the fluff crap that was on happened to be there was a art fair coming up in one of the art studios that was going to be there was doing a demonstration.

Okay.

And their demonstration was what they call fluid art or paint pouring. Oh, right. And fluid art or paint pouring, for those that don't know. And I'm going to be probably way too elementary in describing because you can do a ton of stuff, a lot.

Of derivatives off of you, but what.

They showed was you dumped a bunch of paint in a cup, you threw it upside down on the. On the canvas, and then you tilt it around and lo and behold, it's abstract, it's not a thing, but it's a painting. And I'm like, well, shit, I could do that.

I can pour paint in a cup. I can pour them in the right sequence, I can turn it upside down and literally I can tilt the thing. You can do all that?

I can do all that. Got it. That skill set, I mean, I've been spilling milk from the day I was born. So I can do that, right?

Yep.

So I'm thinking about it. So that's the light bulb popped, right? Oh, well, if that's art and that's going to be in an art fair and this is an art studio doing it, then maybe my definition, I have to change my definition. Light bulb goes off.

Got it.

Right. Still have anxieties, right?

Tell me some of them.

Is it going to be good? Am I going to be disappointed in what I do? What's it going to look like? Yeah, she was. She did it. But was there really other things she was doing that she's not telling me? All those things come up, Right. So I start watching videos.

Videos?

Yeah, you just go on YouTube, type in, you know, like any good YouTube, YouTube searcher. Just type in anything and something pops up. Right. So pop it up. See?

Different tips. What did you type in?

Paint pour, I think paint pour.

And a few videos. A lot of videos.

I think there's like millions.

Millions. So how long did you end up down this rabbit hole?

Oh, that day. Probably not long in the weeks or. I don't think it was weeks. I think it was days that I just picked up some stuff and dumped stuff on it.

So when did you buy paint?

Probably three or four days after that.

And did you buy canvases? Did you have paint there?

No, I had nothing. So I go to the store. I just buy a bunch of crap.

You go to the store? Why do you go to the store? Why don't you just order it online?

Well, you gotta wait for that.

Okay.

Why do I want to wait?

Yeah, why didn't you want to wait?

Why. Why should I?

Oh, you had time. Because you had time.

Why should I wait?

Okay, so what store did you go to?

I'm not like you that have. You know, everything's Amazon. Right? That's. That's not me. Right. Go to the store, because you can get it now.

Yeah, right.

How'd you know what to buy you?

I just bought stuff. Right. You saw what they had. Paint stuff. Get it. Great.

But there's so many. Your dad's a painter, you know, there's so many different kinds of paint. How did you know? Was there. Is there pouring paint there?

There is pouring paint. There is pouring paint. There's already mixed pouring paint. And then you can mix your own.

Oh, that sounds like a lot of chemistry at some point here.

No, not really, but anyway, so I think that's getting kind of drawn into the story a bit. But anyway, so light bulbs formed. Understand that you can do something.

Yep.

And it doesn't have to be perfect.

Yep.

Right. And this form is forgiving. And I watch some people do it on. On YouTube. And there are what I would call real artists that understand color wheel, understand.

Composition, understand those things. And there's people that don't. Yep. And even the people that didn't, that you kind of see, they didn't. It still looked okay.

Yep.

And was I trying to. Am I trying to sell my art? No.

What does look okay?

Bad.

Is it more about what didn't look bad, or is it about acceptable? Acceptable.

Just acceptable. So they. So, you know, you're like, okay, well, I can do that. I can get that done. So you start doing it. And what you find when you. When I start doing it, what I really found was, okay, yeah, creativity is it. But it's more about, for me, is I needed that creativity. I need those things. But it's fixing mistakes. It's being human. It's allowing things to happen and figuring out how to make it look okay. Because I'm not. I'm not. You know, I'm not building. As much as we joke around, I'm not building an Etsy store. Yeah. I'm not going to art fairs.

Not yet.

I'm not doing those things. Right. I'm. I'm just trying to get. I'm just trying to get something that will allow me to express myself to myself and not do some of the other things. I mean, there's other hobbies I have that I could do. Like, I could watch tv, but how much TV can you really watch?

We've watched a lot over the last 18 months, for sure.

How much can you really watch? And are you really watching TV or are you just doing other things? Right.

But there's still a Void.

You go to the casino. Right. But the casino actually doesn't help me with creativity or anything. It actually shuts my brain down. So do I really want that? Don't really want any more of that. Right. So you have to find this thing that allows you to do that. And a lot of people would say, okay, so it wasn't random, because I've been looking for it for years. Right. So it's not random, if you will.

It randomly appeared by seeing this person. But the fact is, it's actually. You had the space for it to fall into.

If I wasn't cognizant somewhere in my brain about wanting to do art and knowing I wanted to do some kind of creativity, seeing that segment would have just been more fluff crap.

And why now? The creativity from the work we were doing has changed. So it's almost like you got fulfilled from that before. But because of the way Covid is laid out, the fact is that that wasn't getting fulfilled. And so it's grow.

Yeah. And I don't want to. I don't want to say that like, oh, our work isn't fulfilling. That's not what I'm saying. No, no, no, no, no. What I'm saying is it's different.

Yep, yep.

Right. We used to do games like, what are the three things we would do? And we would argue about it for hours and iterate around it. And all these very creative, by the way, very creative work. And, you know, someone would throw an objection, and you have to fix it. And that's what I mean with painting as well. I throw it out, you know, I throw it on the canvas. I do whatever I'm doing on the canvas.

You pour it on the canvas.

Well, there's other things you're doing now, too. So there's variations now, Right. Because there's a lot of things going.

On, a lot of variables.

But you put it on there, and it doesn't look quite right. And you try to do something, you swipe it with a piece of paper, you take a palette knife to it, you change the color around. Whatever you can do, you try doing that. Which is the same type of prototyping we would do with People Live. So it's just a different way to express that.

Right. So in some cases, it's the process of creating something and also the process of prototyping to learn. And at the end of the day, you're not doing it for anybody but yourself. There's no intent to sell it. You're not looking for other people. To judge it at some point in time. It's about the. The act as opposed to the output.

It's about being in the moment instead of. Instead of the actual doing something with it.

Yep.

Later.

Yep. So how many paintings have you done?

Probably about 40.

40 paintings?

Probably about 40.

And.

So, you know, let's ask this. How much have you spent on all this just to date?

Probably somewhere in the neighborhood of 1,000 to $1,500.

And so let me ask this. What progress have you made by doing this?

Well, again, it gives me that, though it's not with people. And I'm still lacking that part of it. Right. The creativity with people. It's allowing me to have that creativity, that prototyping. And I don't even. There's difference. Prototyping, Right. There's prototyping to learn, and we use that word. But some people say prototyping to learn means I'm learning new techniques, which I am.

No, but you're prototyping Express.

But I'm prototyping. Really? How do I change what I see to make it acceptable to me? Right. And then whoever else judges it, judges it.

But. But you've gotten over the fact of whoever sees it says, oh, my God, It's. It's. It's either awesome or it's horrible. Or has anybody. Have you shared it with anybody?

The only people that have seen it is family and then people here. That's it. And no one else has seen it. Don't know if anybody else will see it. Right. But there's only people that see it. And look, no one here is going to tell me, oh, my God, that's horrible. I'm going to be. I'm going to be the worst critic of it. Right. And the best part of paint pouring, or probably any painting, I just don't know is if I don't like it, you just scrape this sucker right off the canvas, let the canvas dry, and redo something later. Got it.

So are you recycling right now or are they piling up?

Right now I'm piling. And it's. The next problem is going to be, what do you do with them next? Struggling.

I was going to say the next struggling moment.

That's what you do with them.

You say, no Etsy store. But my belief is the Etsy store is not about making money, it's about clearing out the space.

Yes. Or Bob Mustin might get a lot of paintings.

That's fine. Or the office might have every open space of paintings.

But I think the key takeaways of this is, you know, it's not random, though. If, if, if someone had just asked me, when did you start it? Why did you start it? I'd be like, oh, you know, I just. I want to do something. Right. And they'd say, oh, well, then it was random. But it wasn't random. It was something that's been building up and actually was being fulfilled by something else.

Yes, that went.

Just change.

That went away.

Well, just change.

Yep.

And then also people would say, oh, well, you said you had a lot of time, you had more time or time shifted, so it was just. You had more time to fill. Well, no, that's not really it either. It's all of those things together. Together.

Well, and I would say a little bit of the family history, that there's creativity in the family and the fact is you don't necessarily possess it. And the thing is, you could also say.

I need a way in which to express myself. There's all those kinds of things that kind of compile on top of it. And then the anxiety of judgment. And at some point you got over the judgment part. Right, right.

So I think it's. I think it's those things of we have to slow ourselves down and actually understand. And we. I went through forces of progress kind of really quickly and some of the anxieties, the habits we really didn't go through because there's really no new habits to that. But the habits are the other things I was doing. Right. Well, the time of. Right, right.

So what, so what are you doing?

Lasting a little bit into the exercise. A little bit. Okay, right. So it's carving a little time out of that. It's carving time out of being in front of the tv, but there's multiple things going on there, so I don't know what that's really taking time from. I also used to be a thing, you know, you go through and slide that. But that's kind of. That kind of went away for years because of the.

Divisiveness and things like that going on in that.

I think the other thing, though is you're, to be honest, you're going home, if you will, earlier, because you want to make sure that you have time at the night to do it. And so it's like we're not hanging out, just talking anymore as much.

Yeah, I don't think I see that part, but I don't think I see that part because we're still here to 8 o' clock at night. So I don't know if that's it right?

Not as often, that's for sure.

But being remote, it's more flexible and.

You can do it between things. How long does it take to do a paint pour, by the way?

Set up, set up from start to finish? Because I have everything out and destroyed my basement basically, you know, 20, 30 minutes. It's not long, you know, it's not a long drawn out process. But what is the long drawn out process and what is actually probably more important than the painting itself is the thinking about it. Because when can you think about it? You think about it when there's spare time, like, or when I'm double processing or when something is very. I can't figure out what to do at work. And I take the five minutes to think about that. So like a blog I'm trying to write right, of this notion of product development should be a team sport. But we just put a bunch of individuals and expect them to be a team. So thinking about what that painting is, what is that painting? What is that? And like I said, it's different than just paint pouring now. Now I'm using different drywall, mud or gesso, clay and different or medium and stuff to do different textures, right? So now do I create a painting that has more of a swirl to it and then straight lines to say, hey, here's the individuals and here's the team, right? So those types of things that help me, that I can think about that, but it's actually helping me think about the other stuff as well.

This is where I always talk about the notion of contrast to create meaning. And it's one of those things where when you can do I always say process, take a step back and see something and see it in a different light. I feel like those are the things that allow us to then come back and focus. It's that ability to zoom in, zoom out on other problems and literally be able to reflect.

So I'm telling the story kind of to let people know, to stop. You know the old saying, stop and smell the roses? Well, stop and smell your progress, right? Stop and understand why you did what you did. And stop saying everything was impulse or happenstance, because it's not. You're actually doing all this thinking. We just don't take the time to understand why we're doing it. And that's why we make a lot of mistakes sometimes, and we all will. I mean, you're always going to prototype and pick the wrong thing and then start over.

But that's where you learn. You learn from those things and that's where most people, because they don't reflect, they don't actually understand 1 their motivation or 2 why something didn't work, to know what else to pick next. So they just say, well, let's just keep trying to. Let's try something else. And it's that the notion is you're never really going to end until you take the time to unpack what progress you're really trying to make.

So as you go through your day or your week in this upcoming week and you change behavior, stop and take a few minutes to figure out what your forces are, why did you do it? And is what you're doing satisfying what you're really trying to get done?

And what what are the real other things to look at?

Great.

All right, thanks for sharing.

Thank you everybody.

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