Creativity

Let me tell you a little story about an #entrepreneur. 

We’ll call him Bob. 

Bob’s grandpa started a cookie company long before Bob was even born. Grandpa worked his tail off—nights, weekends, just scraping by. There were a few times when the business almost failed and a few breaks (which Grandpa always said were pure luck) that kept the business alive. Slowly but surely, the business grew. 

Grandpa had a son (Bob’s dad), who started out at the bottom of the business. You know—sweeping floors, early mornings baking cookies, late nights making deliveries… that sort of thing. Dad was basically the corporate janitor, doing whatever had to be done because that’s what you did back then. But Dad sticks with it a while, works his way to the top, and has a son, Bob. 

By this point, the cookie company is really successful. Bob coasts through high school, never goes to college, in fact, never has a real job in his life. One day, he starts working at the cookie company. Nobody even knows his title or what he does, but eventually, Dad gets old and retires, and Bob takes over. 

A year later, Bob sells the company for more than $10M. It won’t surprise you to learn that now Bob walks around like he’s got an “S” painted on his chest, drives a Tesla with “DSRUPTR” on the license plate, and talks about entrepreneurship (he’s a #publicspeaker, of course) as if all you have to do is plug some numbers into a formula and be really smart. And, oh yeah, hire Bob to be your coach. 

The funny thing about the way Bob tells the story is he doesn’t talk about the lucky breaks, the late nights, and the early mornings. Sure, he talks about #hustle and #crushingit and #hardwork… but there’s nothing about the four times the business almost went bankrupt and somebody stepped in at the last minute to help them out. To hear Bob tell the story, the business’ growth was all up and to the right… like a hockey stick. 

Cool story, right? 

That’s the myth of entrepreneurship… Bob and the Hockey Stick. 

The reality is that building a successful business is messy and unpredictable, and entrepreneurship is anything but linear. You have good breaks and bad breaks. Anyone who says there isn’t luck involved is a liar. Sometimes it feels like you take 10 steps backward for every step forward. You hit walls, challenges arise, and people disappoint you. Things never go as planned… it doesn’t matter what your license plate says. 

These cute stories we make up after the fact are nothing more than narratives. And it’s fine. It’s not a problem. Bob can go tell that story all he wants. 

But that doesn’t mean you have to listen. 

Eventually, I just had to learn to tune out all the Bobs of the world… and there are lots of them. I know by now that another Bob story won’t make me feel inspired, it will just make me feel upset and depressed. Like I’m doing something wrong. 

Instead of fighting against the reality of entrepreneurship and constantly wondering what I’m doing wrong, I’m trying to learn to revel in the mystery of what comes next. 

That has made a world of difference when it comes to how I feel about the business I’ve started. 

So stop listening to Bob’s cute story and start surfing. 

Hang ten, my friend.

-Carl

P.S. As always, if you want to use this sketch, you can buy it here.

You’re fired.

No, seriously. Pack up your stuff and get out.

But let me be clear: The job you’re fired from is one you never should have had in the first place — being a critic of your own work.

Done, finished, not your job anymore. When you finish creating something and you start to wonder if it’s any good… nope! Don’t try to answer. You no longer get to decide.

If you need me to fire you, awesome, consider it done. But in fact, what would be even better is if you fire yourself.

Let me tell you why.

Five or six years ago, when I first started writing the weekly Sketch Guy column, I would have pieces I was certain would go viral. I said to myself, “I nailed it, everyone’s going to love it, a million people are going to share it!” And then, I would hear nothing. For some reason, it just didn’t get the play — no comments, no feedback, nothing.

Then there were times when I was completely surprised in the opposite way. I’d be running late for a deadline, have something I wasn’t sure of or that excited about, but it was all I had. So, I would send it in expecting some sort of reprimand. And next thing I knew, it had made the sitewide most-emailed list.

I had this experience enough times to realize that I was simply terrible at judging whether my work was good or not. And guess what? So are you. You’re just too close to it.

Fortunately, it doesn’t have to matter, as your job now officially has nothing to do with deciding if the work is good. Your job is to do the work, put it out there, and let the world decide.

Now, I know that sounds scary. But let’s be dead clear about something: You’re not John Steinbeck (and neither was he, at the start). You have to get there first. And the only way to do that is through practice and criticism. But the only way to get practice and criticism is to make and share your work.

This isn’t just about writing. It’s about anything meaningful you do. Singing, painting, entrepreneurship, giving financial advice, museum curating, boat building, skiing, whatever. No matter what it is, your job is to do the work, to become the best you can be.

Not long ago, a reader from Florida named Chip Scanlan sent me an email on this very subject. He turned me on to a great quote from “Writing the Australian Crawl: Views on the Writer’s Vocation,” by William Stafford: “The so-called ‘writing block’ is a product of some kind of disproportion between your standards and your performance.”

But Chip’s words about self-criticism were even more apropos. “Whenever I’m blocked… I lower my standards. Correction, I do my best to not have any standards at all. I abandon my standards. I urge myself to write badly, and once I do that my fingers begin to fly, and the inner critic is powerless.”

Think of how liberating it would be to free yourself from the role of being your own harshest critic. What might you achieve? What work would you put out there for the world to see?

What might happen if you took all the energy that goes in to judging your work and put it right back into the wellspring of creating the work instead?

This column, titled Free Yourself of Your Harshest Critic, and Plow Ahead, originally appeared in The New York Times on June 13, 2017.

On paper, your investments in stocks, real estate, or even cash may look like your greatest assets. While all those things are super-important, you have something else that’s even more valuable. It’s the investment called “you.” 

Finding ways to increase your value while doing the things you love may be the most important thing you do. Maybe you pursue more training to qualify for a raise. Maybe you find a way to sell the photography you did as a hobby. Maybe you find a way to turn your freelance writing into full-time work. 

They all involve doing something new for you, but when you head down this path, you are probably going to run into this thing, this fear that you’re bumping up against the limits of your ability. Then, the voice inside your head may start saying things like:

• “Who gave you permission to do that?”
• “Do you have a license to be an artist?”
• “Who said you could draw on cardstock with a Sharpie in Park City, Utah, and send those sketches to The New York Times?” 

I think you get the idea. It’s at the moment when you’re most vulnerable that all your doubts come crashing in around you. When I first heard that voice in my own head, I didn’t know what to make of it. The fear was paralyzing. Every time I sent a sketch or something else into the world, I worried the world would say, “You’re a fraud.” 

During a session with a business coach, I shared my fear. I was shocked when she told me this thing had a name. As you’ve tried new things or done anything outside of your comfort zone, you’ve probably felt that fear, too. The first step to dealing with this fear is knowing what to call it. 

Two American psychologists, Pauline Clance and Suzanne Imes, gave it a name in 1978: the impostor syndrome. They described it as a feeling of “phoniness in people who believe that they are not intelligent, capable or creative despite evidence of high achievement.” While these people “are highly motivated to achieve,” they also, “live in fear of being ‘found out’ or exposed as frauds.” Sound familiar? 

Once we know what to call this fear, the second step that I’ve found really valuable is knowing we’re not alone. Once I learned this thing had a name, I was curious to learn who else suffered from it. One of my favorite discoveries involved the amazing American author and poet Maya Angelou. She shared that, “I have written 11 books, but each time I think, ‘Uh oh, they’re going to find out now. I’ve run a game on everybody, and they’re going to find me out.’”  

Think about that for a minute. Despite winning three Grammys and being nominated for a Pulitzer Prize and a Tony Award, this huge talent still questioned her success. 

I’m also a big fan of the marketing expert Seth Godin, and even after publishing a dozen best sellers, he wrote in “The Icarus Deception” that he still feels like a fraud. I’ve heard that American presidents can feel this thing, too. The first time they find themselves alone in the Oval Office, they think to themselves, “I hope nobody finds out I’m in here.” 

So now that we know its name and that other people deal with it too, our third step is to understand why we feel this way. I think part of the impostor syndrome comes from a natural sense of humility about our work. That’s healthy, but it can easily cross the line into paralyzing fear. When we have a skill or talent that has come naturally we tend to discount its value. 

Why is that? Well, we often hesitate to believe that what’s natural, maybe even easy for us, can offer any value to the world. In fact, the very act of being really good at something can lead us to discount its value. But after spending a lot of time fine-tuning our ability, isn’t it sort of the point for our skill to look and feel natural? 

All of this leads to the final and most important step: learning how to live with the impostor syndrome. I recently listened to Tim Ferriss interview the clinical psychologist and author Tara Brach. In her book “Radical Acceptance,” she shared a really cool story about Buddha and the demon Mara. 

One day, Buddha was teaching a large group, and Mara was moving around the edges, looking for a way into the group. I envision Mara rushing frantically back and forth in the bushes and trees, making plans to wreak havoc. One of Buddha’s attendants saw Mara, ran to Buddha and warned him of Mara’s presence. Hearing his attendant’s frantic warning, the Buddha simply replied, “Oh good, invite her in for tea.” 

This story captures beautifully how we should respond to the impostor syndrome. We know what the feeling is called. We know others suffer from it. We know a little bit about why we feel this way. And we now know how to handle it: Invite it in and remind ourselves why it’s here and what it means. 

For me, even after six years of sharing these simple sketches with the world and speaking all over the world, you’d think I’d be used to it. In fact, the impostor syndrome has not gone away, but I’ve learned to think of it as a friend. So now when I start to hear that voice in my head, I take a deep breath, pause for a minute, put a smile on my face and say, “Welcome back old friend. I’m glad you’re here. Now, let’s get to work.”

This column, titled Learning to Deal With the Impostor Syndrome, originally appeared in The New York Times on October 26, 2015.

What if you don’t have to be “creative” to create? 

We all know the archetype of the creatives, right? Eccentric, weird, scattered, messy. The creatives are plagued perpetually by writer’s block (or sculptor’s block, or painter’s block, or whatever block). They spend most of their time lazing about gloomily, smoking cigarettes and cursing this cruel world. But then, every once in a while, the creatives are so touched by the muse that they are forced to immediately drop everything, go into a trance and become a funnel for the beauty of the world. 

Personally, I think that’s a bit too precious. This notion to wait around in the rain until you get struck by lightning to make art (or anything) doesn’t mesh with my experience at all. What comes much closer is the famous Chuck Close quotation: “Inspiration is for amateurs. The rest of us just show up and get to work.” 

The major implication of Mr. Close’s quotation is that you don’t have to be creative to create. So here’s a secret ninja trick that will help: Don’t wait around for creativity to strike. Strike creativity! Invent an obligation for yourself so you have to be creative on purpose. 

I once heard a story about a guy who wanted to write a book. But he was too overwhelmed by the enormity of the process, so for a decade, he didn’t do it. One day, he decided to create a 5,000-word monthly magazine and offer a two-year subscription to everyone he knew. A bunch of people signed up, and all of a sudden, he had to do it. At the end of two years, he had 120,000 words to work with to create this book. 

There’s another guy I know who for 10-plus years made a commitment to sit down every day and write something. That’s exactly the opposite of waiting for inspiration to strike. Every day. Nobody’s creative every day for 10 years! Now this guy didn’t start out as a creative, but I don’t think anyone would bat an eye if you called him that today. In fact, you may have heard of him. His name is Seth Godin. Check out his blog and decide for yourself. 

Of course, I can relate. I’m no Seth Godin, but every week for seven years now, I’ve had a deadline to produce this column and draw something. I have never seen myself as an artist or an illustrator. But for about 400 weeks, I’ve created a sketch to go in The New York Times. So I engaged in the process, and, as Mr. Close puts it, I went to work. 

All my best work happens this way. Not through luck of the draw, but through persistence and dedication. And I’m not saying luck has nothing to do with it. In fact, I love luck! I’m just saying it’s important to put yourself in the position to get lucky. Don’t wait around for creativity to come to you on accident. Be creative on purpose.

This column, titled Want to Be Creative on Purpose? Schedule It, originally appeared in The New York Times on May 15, 2017.