PNTV - Art & Fear by David Bayles and Ted Orland

You're listening to optimize with bryan johnson. More wisdom in less time. Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to Philosopher's Notes tv. Today, another great book. Art and Fear. Art and Fear Subtitle Observations on the Perils and Rewards of Art Making by David Bales and Ted Orland. Awesome book. I got it after reading Black Box Thinking. Matthew Syed referenced a big idea I loved, which we're going to talk about again today. 50 pounds of clay. But it's a great book. 122 pages, quick reading, super practical guide to navigating the perils and rewards of making art. And of course, my emphasis is always on the greatest art project we're ever going to have, which is our lives. So I translate these ideas into practical wisdom we can apply to our lives. Philosopher's Note Bunch of big ideas. Six page PDF, 20 minute MP3. To complement this little chat, let's look at five of my favorite big ideas. Quitting versus stopping is the first one. Quitting versus stopping. The authors share a funny story about the fact that there's a big difference between stopping, which all artists do. Working artists stop. They stop again and again and again. There's a big difference between that and quitting. When you stop, which is you hit a wall, you don't know what you're going to do. The pen has run dry, right? Kind of writer's block sort of deal. You don't have inspiration for your next project, right? Oh man, what do I do? Well, the working artist who has a healthy relationship with fear knows they just need to start again. Start again. In the note, I talk about the fact that whenever I hear this idea that you need to start again, I can't help but hear Sn Gwenka in my head. If you've ever done a Vipassana meditation retreat with Sn Gwenko or his recording, which is what Alexandra and I did. 10 Day Silent Vipassana meditation retreat. No words, no talking, no eye contact with anybody other than your teacher. And you listen to lectures from Sn Guenka. As you meditate, one of the things he says again and again and again that is burned into my mind, he would say, if your attention slips, you're meditating, right? So the focus is on your anchor or whatever the practice is. And when your attention slips, which of course it will, he would say, start again. He has this great Burmese accent, which I'm not doing justice to, but start again, start again. And it would take him like two minutes to say that three times, right? Start again, reminding you that it's not about slipping. It's about bringing your attention back, noticing when you slip, bringing it back. Noticing when you slip, bringing it back. We talked about this in Procrastination as well. Tim Pischel. He said, don't just do it. That can overwhelm you and lead to you wanting to quit. What you need to do is to just get started, start again and again and again. So when you're dealing with fear in art or your life or relationships or whatever and you want to quit, think about the fact that that's a natural part of the creative process. You just need to re engage, you need to recommit, you commit initially. That's not enough. We're going to talk about it in this discussion on passion. Naive passion versus informed passion. You've got to know there are going to be obstacles and move through them. You do that by starting again and again and again. Doesn't matter how many times you need to do that. You in a 30 minute period of time, just do it, start again. That's our first idea. Otherwise you may quit. And then 30 years later, the authors say, you might remember or you might be in a conversation over coffee and say, yeah, one day I was really passionate about making art. And then, you know, 30 years went by. That's what happens when you quit versus stopping and then starting again. Second big idea is 50 pounds. Now this is the big idea from Black Box thinking that Matthew Syed referenced in that book to this book that made me buy it. Here's the story again. It's worth repeating £50. A ceramics teacher once came into a classroom and told the students, hey, I'm going to split you into two groups. This group on the left, I want you to create a high level of quantity. I'm going to grade you on quantity. At the end of the semester, I'm going to bring in my bathroom scale and I'm going to weigh how much art you created, how many pots you made. £50, you get an A. £40, you're going to get a B, et cetera. You, over here on this side of the room, you. I just want you to focus on creating one perfect pot. You create an awesome pot, right? I'm going to give you an A and then you're going to get a B or C or D depending on how awesome your pot is. Right? That's it. Get to work. Fast forward to the end of the semester and every single piece of art that was worth noting was from the group that was challenged to create the highest quantity, not the group that was challenged to create the perfect piece of art. Little weird, right? This group wasn't focused on, of course, they wanted to do good work, but they weren't saying to themselves, I got to create something perfect. They were saying, I've got to keep on creating 50 pounds. Gosh, I got to keep on cranking out X pounds a week if I want to get to 50 pounds and get my A. And what did they do? They were in the game. They were getting a little bit better, A little bit better engaged in the work, which allowed them to master their craft. This other group sat there theorizing and thinking about what the perfect piece of art would do, but they didn't take action and their work kind of sucked. So notice how you orient. Are you always trying to do the perfect work and then never really getting into action? Well, you want to think about 50 pounds of art. I have this written on my whiteboard. I think about it all the time these days. £50 repetitions. It's the only way we're going to get good at anything is being willing to stretch that 4% out of our comfort zone and get a little bit better. Not sit in our bedrooms or offices or ivory towers and imagine the perfect scenario. Engage in life. The next episode we're going to do is on little bets, iterating your way to ultimate extraordinary success. It's a huge idea. We're going to come back to. We do come back to all the time and get to work. Which is tied to the third big idea. Progress. We talk about this all the time. Process versus product. The question that we need to be asking ourselves is not, did I create the results that I wanted to see? Did I do something perfect? The question we want to ask in every aspect of our lives. Are we making progress? Am I making progress? How can I make progress today? How can I get 5% better today? Sentence, stem, completion, style. I can get 5% better in this particular thing today by doing 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Think about progress. Paradoxically, when you focus on progress rather than results, you accelerate the path to getting the results you want. But if all you're thinking about is results, you're going to stress yourself out. Like the students who had to create the perfect piece of clay or pot and not do anything worth talking about. Focus on progress. Fourth big idea is naive versus informed passion. Naive versus informed passion. Naive passion. We've all had fired up beginning of the project. Yes, I've got this deep inspiration. I'm ready to rock, right? But it's naive passion. The moment I hit an obstacle that naive passion for bumps up against it and gives up. Informed passion, on the other hand, knows via a level of maturity and courage that obstacles are going to arise, period. That's inherently part of the creative process, Right? So rather than quit when we hit that first obstacle with naive passion, we've matured to the point where we know that's going to happen. We have informed passion. We're fired up in the beginning of a project and we know, as Todd Henry says, that we're going to go through a U shape. Fired up here. I can see the horizon and it's awesome. Oh, wait. I get to work and my work actually kind of sucks. I can't even see the trees are here and blocking my view of awesome. You need to know that that's how it works. Informed passion. That's just the way life works. And again, not just art, but business and relationships and everything we want to do. Exercise programs, meditation programs, nutrition, whatever. We need to have informed passion. Otherwise, we're going to be that hero in the beginning that Eknath Eswaran told us about. Rambashura, I believe, is the Sanskrit word for being a hero in the beginning. Fired up, naive passion. The moment something gets hard, I tiptoe out the back door. We don't want to be a hero in the beginning. Cultivate informed passion. Fifth big idea is over and over and over and over again. I've got over to the infinite power on the chalkboard. That's what an artist does. They figure out how to structure their lives such they can consistently create over and over and over again. This is Scott Adams, who's created something like 10,000 Dilbert comic stripes. It was 8,000 years ago when he wrote his book, right? So it's around 10,000 now. Think about that. Approaching 10,000 comic strips. That's. I can't even wrap my brain around that, right? Well, I can, and it's inspiring. He produces over and over and over and over again. And what does he say? He says goals are for losers. He didn't focus on producing 10,000 comic strips. He focused on systems that would allow him to consistently produce again and again and again. So you can't read a book on creativity and art or whatever, business, etcetera, without reading about rituals. Well, unfortunately, this isn't in business books as much as it should be, but it is consistently in art books and creativity books. You need to have rituals, need to have routines. All great performers do. That's what we want to focus on and master and make progress on I get fired up every single day. Can I make my systems a little bit better? This morning I made a distinction. I finished a book in the amount of. I immediately went to create the note. Now that doesn't sound like a big deal, but sometimes I go on to read a different book because I got a little time or I'll then check online or whatever. But I just made that connection of, you know what, I'm just going to take the energy and run with it. Had a little bit of time. Didn't think I had enough to finish the note before the family got up. Right. But I worked on it and then checked in with the family, came back, finished it and it was awesome. Little distinction. I made a tiny bit of progress, 4% better in the systems, which is going to allow me to continue to create the way that I want to create. That's where we want to focus such that we can create over and over again. Austin Kleon said be boring in your normal life so you can be interesting in your creative life. Create the guardrails, the systems, the pre commitments such that we can do great things consistently. Rituals and routines. So the first big idea, quitting versus stopping. Right? Big difference. Start again. Every time your detention wanders, in meditation, start again. Same thing with your creative work or your relationships or whatever. £50. That's what we want to create. Focus on your £50. How do you show up and put in the reps rather than stress yourself out about being perfect? Make progress. How can you make progress today? How are you making progress in your life? Celebrate that focus there. Get informed passion and over to the infinite power. Great rituals and routines. I hope you enjoyed it was a quick look at art and fear. If you dug it. I think you'll enjoy the book and I look forward to sharing more. Have another awesome day. See you. Hi, this is Brian. I hope you enjoyed that Philosopher's Notes TV episode. If so, I think you'll enjoy everything else we offer at BrianJohnson me two basic things. 11 our free newsletter. It's called the Optimizer. Over 50,000 people start their day with it and they tell us it's pretty awesome. And 2 our optimal living membership program. This is where I put all my best stuff. 10 bucks a month for a ton of wisdom. Two primary things in there philosopher's notes plus optimal living 101 classes. When you sign up, you'll get instant access to 250 philosopher's notes which are basically 6 page PDFs and 20 minute MP3s where I capture my favorite big ideas from great books. The PNTV episodes are kind of a mini version of all that goodness. You'll also get instant access to all my optimal living classes. 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