Month: November 2020

Creative Barriers (Part 2)

The three main things that can trip us up before we even start are knowledge, fear, and environment. Each has its own traits and sub-barriers, and they also usually combine into bigger monsters that prevent us from acting on our creative pursuits.

Knowledge Barriers

1. You know too much

Sometimes too much information can keep us from starting. If we knew how much time and work we’ll need to put in, we’d likely not do it.

There’s a healthy balance of knowing enough and being naive/reckless. Not a basket of stupidity, just a pinch. Enough to begin. Enough to put aside your doubts and lack of answers and take a leap.

Creativity is about figuring things out as you go. If we knew everything, we would be too bored to start.

2. You don’t think you know enough

Thinking you don’t know enough is also a potential barrier. This is where you’re jumping from one book to another—as well as courses, or YouTube videos—always learning new stuff but never actually using it to build things.

Again, it’s a balance of knowing and unknowing. We’re not faking it—we’re filling in the gaps.

Fear Barriers

Fear can come from within and from others around you. Fear of failure. Fear of success. Fear of wasting time and choosing the wrong direction. Fear comes from scarcity.

What helps me is fearing inaction.

The only thing we should be scared of is never pursuing our dreams because of our fear and the fear that others try to put on us.

Failure sucks—but complacency and dissatisfaction are even worse.

Environmental Barriers

Our internal environment and our external environment can have a massive impact on our confidence and capability.

If you’re constantly telling yourself in your head that you suck or you’ll never amount to anything, then guess what—that’s only what you’re going to get.

But the comforting thing about thoughts is you don’t have to listen to them. If you don’t like what they are saying, then let them go and replace them with something better. Crowd out negativity with optimism.

Our external environment is difficult to change, but it’s possible. We have a say in who we spend our time with and what we spend our time on.

STAY BOLD, Keep Pursuing,
— Josh Waggoner | Daily Blog #1124

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Creative Barriers (Part 1)

Many things can limit us and distract us from creativity and doing what we dream of doing.

There are barriers at every stage:

  • Before
  • Starting
  • Continuing
  • Finishing
  • After

(There’s also a “Meanwhile…” stage. This is a concurrent stage that happening simultaneously with all the other stages. It’s everything that’s happening in the world and your life in addition to where you’re currently at.)

People handle different stages differently. Some of us can breeze through Starting, but have trouble with Continuing.

Someone, for example, who starts on a lot of great ideas, but never finishes anything because they’ve enthusiastically picked up a new idea, just as quickly as they’ve enthusiastically dropped the last one.

But if we want to be artists and entrepreneurs and musicians and designer—creators then we need to learn how to navigate every stage and learn to solve our current barriers to get where we want to go and create at the highest capability.

Once we do that—the doors are open. Or, more accurately, we discover that the doors were open the whole time but we were able to see it that way yet. Difficultly becomes Challenge. Failure becomes Wisdom. Problems become opportunities.

STAY BOLD, Keep Pursuing,
— Josh Waggoner | Daily Blog #1123

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Making Due With What You’ve Got

“You can’t always get what you want
But if you try sometimes, well, you might find
You get what you need.”

The Rolling Stones | Songwriters: Keith Richards / Mick Jagger

A big part of creating is going around lack/scarcity of resources to find clever solutions to problems. But many (if not all) deny this opportunity to innovate and, either never start or quickly abandon our ideas/dreams because we want to be in a better position first.

At the center of this is the experience of needs versus wants and how wants often blur into all or nothing ”needs.”

We want the best tools first. We want more skills and experience first.

For example, I can think of hundreds of music gear, plugins, lessons, etc. i’d like to buy so I can be a professional musician.

Music equipment can be super expensive, especially if we’re talking about high-quality instruments and music production supplies.

But do I really need everything on my music wishlist to create music?

Well, no. Not necessarily.

There’s a lot of things I’d love to have that would help take me to the next level of creativity and expression, but most of those things are nice-to-haves, not needs.

Instead of seeing what you don’t have as a negative or liability, what if you saw it as an opportunity to think outside of the box?

Does it suck that you don’t have the opportunity you want? Yes, but does that mean there’s no opportunity to work with at all? No!

Work with what you have. Get out of your own way and see your ”limitations” as strengths.

STAY BOLD, Keep Pursuing,
— Josh Waggoner | Daily Blog #1122

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Bandwagon

Jumping off the bandwagon happens in a moment.

A moment of weakness or inhibition or pressure.

But so does jumping back on the bandwagon.

All it takes is a moment, a leap, a stance, a willingness to try.

If you fall off the path then you get up and get back to it. One step at a time.

STAY BOLD, Keep Pursuing,
— Josh Waggoner | Daily Blog #1122

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Appetizing Portions

There’s a thought-provoking quote (that you’ve likely heard) by Desmond Tutu that goes,

“There is only one way to eat an elephant, a bite at a time.”

I don’t know why you’d want to eat an elephant… but that’s not the point.

Huge things, be it global problems, problems in our lives, or ideas and dreams we want to build, are all made up of smaller things.

What is a staircase but a series of steps?

What is a book but a layer of ideas turned into words turned into pages turned into chapters and encapsulated in a central theme? “Purple Cow.” “Leaders Eat Last.” “Big Magic.”

What is a computer but decades of innovation layered with design, manufacturing, physics, chemistry, and lots of love and hard work?

Each piece is it’s own and simultaneously adds up to something more.

Any problem that’s too big hasn’t been broken down into smaller pieces yet.

It’s easy to get overwhelmed by a problem and then be unable to handle it, but if you break it down into its smallest components and eat a bite of it, one at a time, then it’s just a matter of time.

STAY BOLD, Keep Pursuing,
— Josh Waggoner | Daily Blog #1121

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Too Much Input

There’s a certain amount of complacency I feel creeping in when I watch too much tv.

Don’t get me wrong—I love film. Great storytelling, cinematography, acting, the exploration of interesting ideas and new worlds. But too much in a row and I turn into a wet pool noodle.

Sometimes its great to follow the rabbit of your curiosity and see where it leads, but there’s a time and place for that.

Even if it’s something educational, like a documentary or online course, too much in, and I don’t have a lot of space left for out.

Too much input, not enough output.

That’s why I have an unspoken rule for myself to not watch anything purely entertaining before lunchtime (which is typically around 1 – 2 PM for me.)

Morning time is for coffee and contemplation, and prioritizing the most important tasks I need to do today.

Because if I don’t, complacency starts to set in.

Too much of anything becomes the opposite of intention.

  • Too much talking and you miss out on listening.
  • Too much learning and you don’t have enough time left to take action.
  • Too many todo’s and each todo suffers.

It’s not even about moderation, but aligning what I’m doing with who I want to be. Particularly, if who I want to be is currently not who I am.

It takes a lot of effort to create the life we dream of. And, of course, nothing is perfect, so it takes a lot of forgiveness and acceptance too.

Which starts with knowing how you feel (complacent), determining whether or not that’s who you want to be / what you want to represent, (no) and deciding what you can do about it if it’s in your control (avoid or reduce things that make me complacent.)

STAY BOLD, Keep Pursuing,
— Josh Waggoner | Daily Blog #1120

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Who will you be today?

It’s not who you should be or want to be.

It’s who you are.

Who you are takes practice. Practice that is continuous, but also always starting over.

If the past is holding you back and keeping you from moving forward, cut it off.

If the future is overwhelming you, then narrow your focus on today.

And if today is overwhelming you, make a list, prioritize, and focus on your immediate next steps.

Forget who you want to be.

Who will you be?

STAY BOLD, Keep Pursuing,
— Josh Waggoner | Daily Blog #1119

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Squats

Books can give us the knowledge, but they can’t do our work for us.

That requires legwork. Anyone can pick up a book, but it takes an extra amount of effort and passion to implement what the author says and test things out in your own life. (“Do or do not. There is no try.” Yoda)

Creativity is a process created through practice. Whatever expression/flavor of creativity it is, we need to put in the reps in order to see results.

On average, it takes a day or two of reading to read a book that took years to write.

When you find a good book, why not invest in it more and see what it can do for you.

STAY BOLD, Keep Pursuing,
— Josh Waggoner | Daily Blog #1118

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Waste of Time

I’ve been thinking a lot about what it means to live a meaningful and intentional lifestyle. The details would look different for each of us (depending on what’s important to us) but there’s gotta be some overarching principles for a meaningful life.

Let’s look at the opposite of a meaningful life—wasted time.

If our life is made up of time (our most valuable resource) then wasting our time leads us down a path of regret and unhappiness.

But what does wasted time look like?

Again, not so easily answered universally. We all value certain things over others.

Here are some questions to reflect on whether or not you are using your time wisely:

Q: Am I spending my time or investing my time?

Entertainment is incredible. But it’s also about balance. Enjoy the things you love, but not let your love of short term pleasure and experience crowd out the long term benefits of investing your time more wisely. Ask yourself, “Am I enjoying this? Am I gaining some value from this experience?”

Q: Will I care about this a month from now? How about a year? 3 years?

If not, then it’s likely a waste of valuable resources. For example, if you’re angry about something critical or hateful someone said to you, are you really going to care about it a year from now? Not really—you likely won’t even remember the mean spirited comment. Then, it’s not worth the time to dwell on it! Easier said than done, of course. But even knowing that it’s a waste of time is a helpful way to reset yourself and give yourself the space to move on from it.

Q: Is this part of my current environment’s lifestyle? Or, put more generally, is this something in my immediate control or not?

If you live in New York, then taking the subway, walking long distances, paying for a taxi or a Lyft, and/or paying top dollar for parking is a way of life. In this case, commuting isn’t a waste of time, because it’s a necessity for living in the city. That’s not easily changeable. But the upsides of living in a thriving city might be worth it for you. Otherwise, why are you there?

If so, then I should either stop stressing or regretting the cost or change my environment that aligns better with what a meaningful life looks like for me.

Q: What can I learn from this experience?

There’s always going to be moments in our lives where we cave or unintentionally waste our time. We aren’t perfect. Mistakes will be made. But failure isn’t a waste of time unless we stubbornly refuse to learn from our mistakes and misfortunes.

Wasted time is only wasted time if we refuse to learn from it.

This requires our ego to take a knee and humble itself enough to be open to change, to moving forward, to emotion, to uncomfortable conversations and hope for a better version of ourselves going forward. But if we loop our wasted time over and over again in our heads, not only are we not learning from the past, we aren’t moving forward (aka we’re wasting even more precious time.)

Am I running on default or am I living intentionally?

Default is:

  • Doing things other people tell you without regard to why.
  • Not making decisions (allow other people to make them for you.

Living intentionally is having an active say in who you want to be and how you want to live.

A meaningful life is a well-invested life.

STAY BOLD, Keep Pursuing,
— Josh Waggoner | Daily Blog #1117

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Willy Nilly

I have a bad tendency to expect too much of myself out of any given day.

The pressure of my own expectations is what does it. The desire to ”accomplish” many things and the stress of anything that blocks me from doing that. Traffic, chores, spontaneous addition to my schedule.

But if I let go of the outcomes and let go of what I should be doing, then the day turns out much better.

This is a great example of how easy it is to get in your own way.

Sometimes you just have to go with the flow of what the day is bringing you.

Otherwise, we’re just stressing ourselves out over things that are ultimately not in our control.

STAY BOLD, Keep Pursuing,
— Josh Waggoner | Daily Blog #1116

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