I’ve been practicing underthinking lately. As a way of minimising overthinking and maximising creative output. Maximising output is key. It’s about quantity over quality.
Some of the output—let me be honest—most of the output is shit. But some of it might turn out good. Who am I to judge?
The whole point of it is to get past the shit, and on to the actual work. Get past the overthinking and inaction, and on to the creative practice. And sharing the—at times agonising—results with the World.
Overthinking things is a big culprit in choking creativity. Lately I’ve been challenging myself to underthink and focus on quantity in my output.
I’ve made a simple dogmatic setup for myself:
Quickly put the first thing that pops into mind on paper…
Snap a photo with the phone and airdrop it to the computer…
Adjust levels in Photoshop, paste into Illustrator, image trace, quick edit…
Paste back into Photoshop (Smart Obj., new artboard), layout, tweak, fix…
Auto-export .png with File > Generate > Image Assets = Done!
To me, the key is to minimise the distance and amount of work I need to do from “idea” to “finished product”. I’ve set a very low barrier for what constitutes an idea, and a very low barrier for what a finished product is.
Best case is, that—given enough repetitions—I’ll come up with some design that’ll be good, or that I’ll end up with a body of work that as a whole will amount to.. well, something.
A big empty sheet of paper is intimidating.
Make the canvas smaller.
Subdivide the area to release tension.
Subdivide and conquer, bit by bit.
The antidote to insecurity is to allow yourself to be vulnerable and take action. To be vulnerable means allowing yourself to ask “stupid” questions, to seek answers, ask for help and to be coachable.
Being vulnerable, asking questions and having a learning mindset is something many people need to practice deliberately. I know I do.
Ask yourself:
“Why do I feel insecure right now?”
“What is the underlying question/uncertainty/challenge that make me feel insecure?”
“What are some questions I can ask, to mitigate, learn about or solve this?”
“Who can I ask?”
Phrasing questions without feeling too exposed can be hard. Here are some starting points:
“Would it be OK if I ….?”
“How would you approach [the challenge]?”
“Do you have any ideas for how to ….?”
“I’m thinking of [the challenge]. Do you have any thoughts on that?”
“I’m feeling insecure about … “
That last one is not a question. But simply stating our insecurity to someone else most often unlocks a comment, a conversation or a moment of sparring that can help us through. And often stating the fact deflate the feeling.
I often feel insecure about sharing what I made.
But today, I’m sharing my course The Value Playbook publicly for the first time. One of the things I wanted to address with the course, is first time founders’ secret insecurities.
You’ve probably come across some variation of the cliché above. It’s funny cause it’s true.
What if, we took the cliché seriously in a group or organisational creativity context?
Let’s try breaking the various stages of a creative ideation process in a group down into the mind states that the cliché offers, taking them as face value truths.
The cliché indicates that 80% of the actual process is various stages of frustration, and the remaining 20% is flow, or getting shit done. The bits where we’re in the green.
Starting a new thing with a notion of “This is AWESOME” is fine. It is important to acknowledge that even though we tend to fall in love with the first “good” idea we see, the real creative process haven’t started yet.
Looking at each of the stages in the cliché as an expression of participant mind state or the group mind state as a whole, we can identify a number of symptoms, risks, causes and mitigations.
Some of the mind states are unavoidable, many are undesirable, but the potential negative side effects can be mitigated, if we stick to some fairly simple best practices.
Get the full version of this document in a hi-res PDF for future reference. It’s free.
We can have intentions with our work, and opinions that we try to express. The best we can do, is to produce our work. We can try our best to transmit what we want to put out there.
But how the transmission is received is out of our control. How the work is perceived and judged is not for us to decide. We cannot judge our work.
We can — at a safe distance — look back and evaluate if we are content with it. If we like what we made.
Is it any good? Is it good? Or great even? There is no way for us to tell.
Same goes for our inner critic. They are no better than us. They don’t know anything either. They’re not competent. So why should we listen?
Figure out what is clogging your drive. To me it is the shed. If the shed is a mess, I can’t get anything started. Step one to anything is to clear out the shed.
The shed gets clogged during the short, dark days of winter. It’s like I spend the dark building a dam over a creek. As light returns I notice the flooding, and I must try to muster the energy to break through the clutter dam.
Then, one day — after weeks of procrastination — I pile all the junk on the trailer, and the energy flows freely again. I can literally feel how I get renewed energy to do something. To make something.
What is clogging your drive? What are the things that tap your energy when left to decay?
When making something, plan to make it smaller than you even thought possible. If the core is good enough it will be fine - better even - with being smaller. And then you can build from there.
Years ago we had a conversation with a game design celebrity about a game we wanted to make. We loved the idea we had. We had spent so much time in our heads with it, and had everything thought through.
The game would take the player to a variety of locations around the World and involve intricate sceneries. The celebrity designer listened to our pitch. He didn’t comment much on the idea or the gameplay, nor did he go into platforms, sales, marketing and strategy.
“That sounds fun. How can you make it smaller?” he said.
“Why go around the World, when you can go around the block?”
By making the product smaller we increase our chance of not failing. We increase our chance of completing, and then, our chance of succeeding.
We made the game smaller. But not at all small enough. We ended up never shipping it.
The creative mind vividly imagines the future. Future realities, works and outcomes. That ability is the strength and — if we are not careful — the potential downfall of creators.
What we produce to begin with does not compare to what we imagine. Our limited ability as beginners does not deliver the imagined outcome. Our creative mind is disappointed with our results. Worst case we leave the new thing before we get any good.
We are not meant to be good to begin with. We need to lower our expectations. Strive to suck less today than yesterday. And then keep at it until we don’t suck.
We are meant to suck. We are meant to practice. And gradually to suck less.
Let us change our mindset to look at anything we do as a work in progress.
Trying something new is difficult. It feels safe to stay within our comfort zone so we are sure that we can do what we and others expect us to.
Our fear of change and uncertainty, our insecurities, make us hold on tight to what feels familiar and safe. That makes us go stale.
The mere-exposure effect means that people like that which is most familiar to them. Think of advertising as an example. People prefer the brand of detergent or soft drink that they are most familiar with, or rather, has been exposed the to the most.
The more we have been exposed to our safe and well-known everyday rut, the harder it is to imagine trying something else. The more risky the new thing feels. The more change averse we become.
If what we do doesn’t work, don’t worry, we can change it — After all, it’s just a work in progress.
Creators, artists, makers of all kinds face periods of self-doubt. Admit it or not.
The person and the work are knit so tightly together it is difficult to tell one from the other. Separation of the work and the person is not possible. Any doubt in the work, show itself as self-doubt.
Avoiding self-doubt is utopia. Self-doubt is there for a reason. It is there to protect you against potential failure. It is there because circumstances have somehow taught you that you might not be good enough.
A pragmatic approach is to familiarise oneself with the self-doubt.
Get to know it. Acknowledge that it is there. Invite it inside. Listen to it. Examine its motives. Seek to understand what your self doubt cycle looks like. What part of your process does the self-doubt prefer? What type of opinions does it have?
Give it a name even.
And then, finally, thank it for caring, and ask it kindly to sit down and shut up, while you get back to work.
Imagine you are like a satellite orbiting the Earth. Every time you pass over your home, you do the work for as long as your home is in sight.
The creative process can make you feel anxious, exposed and vulnerable. And you may not notice it. Maybe you procrastinate. Or you shy away from process. Maybe you do so, to protect yourself from exposure, from being looked at and judged, by yourself or others.
It can be very difficult to see why you are cautious to enter the creative space. Don’t worry too much about why.
But change your process.
Try not to push yourself to work too hard. Instead try to set limits to the time you stay in the creative process — the vulnerable space.
There, your home is coming into sight. Work a quick pass. Then, relax, until next time you pass again. Keep in motion, but move away from the work.
Do quick passes. In and out. Continuous motion.
Faced with the choice of two products, you pick the one that resonate with you. If your product resonates with your audience, practical relevance is …irrelevant.
When does something resonate? When your body reacts to it before your intellect does. You breathing gets faster. You get warmer. Your emotional apparatus reacts.
Follow the white rabbit. Follow what resonates with you. Spend your time on something that resonate with you on an emotional level, and you’ll be much better off in the long run.
Emotional resonance leads. Even if practical relevance spurred the initial need.
It’s good to set goals for oneself. But beware of goals like:
“I want to become a succesful writer!” or..
“I’ll make a magnificent work of art!”
They focus on the end, maybe years in the future. You have little direct agency over goals like that. You get little sense of progress from them. Odds are against you from the beginning. You set yourself up to fail.
“Write for 15 minutes every day.”
— Focus on the time and frequency dedicated to writing. No focus on the quality of what is written. Takes the pressure off writing “good content”.
“Draw 5 quick sketches, every day.”
— Focus on quantity instead of quality. Building a habit of producing something, every day.
“Always sketch with a permanent marker.”
— Focus on the method, instead of quality or quantity. ‘Forcing’ yourself to do something that might feel intimidating.
Also, think about making a jar of rules that may support your process goals…
We’re given at least 4 creative personal freedoms at birth:
Fun, play, joy and love.
Most of us experience reduction — or even loss — of those as we grow up. That’s life. As adults, it’s up to us, to reacquire those freedoms. It’s on us to reconnect.
Creativity is a way to find back to our freedoms. Allowing creativity into our lives, brings us closer to the freedoms. At the same time, the freedoms help unlock our creativity.
Few activities hold the key to all of the 4 freedoms as dancing. Not dancing pretty, not dancing “like you’re supposed to” — but dancing just as we feel like. Even ‘foolish’, ‘wrong’ or ‘ugly’.
Any creative journey will have a few clear before-and-after-points. It can be a significant turn, when we first allow ourselves to dance like nobody is watching, and we regain our birthright.
We’re dancing. It is fun, we’re playing, we’re floating on the joy of music, we’re intoxicated with love and we feel truly free.
The thing that holds us back, is a construction inside our heads. We get to choose what to do with it.
Use this mental exercise to warm up and to get a fresh perspective on things. Good for getting unstuck.
What’s the opposite of a fork? Don’t think ‘knife’!
This is how we’re used to think about opposites. Similar but different objects. Or paired adjectives. That leads to nothing new. It’s like night and day — Very familiar:
Big - little
Cheap - expensive
Clean - dirty
Yawn…
Instead, challenge yourself (and a friend) to come up with really-really opposites.
What’s the really-really opposite? What are the defining properties of a fork? What is its purpose? What object can you think of that is the most opposite? Gather your thoughts, and build a convincing argumentation. There is no right or wrong — Only ridiculous opposites and illogical reasoning.
Do you know what the opposite of a blue whale 🐋is? No? It’s a die 🎲
Yes, it is. Here is why:
It’s not alive ✅
It has many eyes 👀
You can play with it ✅
It doesn’t swim well ✅
It’s real easy to throw ✅
You can put it in your pocket ✅
Think of more… 💡
Completing product cycles teach you things you can’t learn except through experience.
What is a product cycle?
Getting from initial idea 💡…
to finished product 📦 …
… in the hands of the intended audience
You’ll get answers to things like; When is it really done ✅? How long does this thing take? How do I react to the different stages of the process? What do I find easy, and what am I struggling to get done?
You’'ll experience a long tail of unforeseen issues. Solving those issues — following through — will bolster you with experience, and — maybe most importantly — self-esteem.
Completing full product cycles is all about following through. That’s easier said than done. Here is a few pointers:
Lower your ambitions and expectations
Lower your standards for what a product is
Start with the smallest imaginable product — if in doubt, make it smaller
Follow through, all the way to serving a live audience
Repeat with a new product cycle ♻️
Apply this to both personal creative work, and product development in a business context.
Striving for perfection is good when approaching a new plateau of mastery. But stiffling when you are in the beginning of the climb to a new level.
Whether you are drawing, writing, or painting or any other kind of creative work, the desire for perfection will at some point hold you back.
It can be difficult to identify when you’re “doing it wrong”. Instead, try to sense when you’re getting frustrated.
If you feel stuck where you are, or scared of starting, try to mix up things:
Set rules that are deliberately destructive. Draw over your own drawing, again and again. Break your sculpture, and rebuild it again and again.
Focus on quantity instead of quality. Maximise your output. Minimise your thinking and judgement.
Know that what you are doing — in spite of the destructive surface value — is an act of self-love ❤️
Beginnings can be intimidating. A blank canvas, or an empty white screen staring back at you. Laughing in your face. Rattling to your fear of failure.
The cure is simple: Start by breaking the paper.
Break the whiteness before you start working. Breaking comes before working. They are two very different things. The sequence is important. You want to break the emptyness in order to take the pressure off the first bit of the real work.
Type nonsense, pour random colour, drag the pen, spill ink. Physically or digitally, same deal. Then leave it to cure for a bit. Do something else.
Then — and only then — start working on your newly broken paper.
Creative work without limitations is intimidating and stiffling. If every option ever is available to you, how on Earth would you choose what to go with? Fear of choosing, fear of making wrong choices.
You need to keep the endless options in check. You need to make — sometimes arbitrary — choices, that limit you. That limit the playing field and the scope of options.
Introduce a few rules, and obey them, blindly, whitout question.
Make it a habit to collect rules. Write a simple rule down on a slip of paper. Put it in a jar. Consult the jar, when you feel lost.
Here are some to get your jar started:
Two colours, one tone
Approach inside out
Starting to think? Turn the page
Repeat yourself 3 times
Only white hairline on black
Awkwardly holding the pen
