Tag / creativity

by yojeanyi

Bulk Creation as a Creative Tool, Not a Trap

Although counterintuitive to creativity, sometimes we need mass output to push ourselves to the next stage.

Have you noticed how something is being sold to us every second of being on the internet? Recipe filled with pop-up ads every 2 seconds, amusing shorts between pseudo-informative videos.
Innocent people broadcast their lives, maybe trying to organically incorporate their sponsor’s products.

We don’t need any of it.

In the crowd of similar personalities there are genuine hobbyists and experts from whom you can actually learn new things. You can tell they are in it for the love, and not for material gratification. 

Some of the people I follow do pottery, farm, sew, and forage wild edibles. Some have a quirky personality or just like to have fun with their viewers—like exercising on a bike machine while painting, making daily cucumber hats to stop suffering, raising rescue opossums as a character (or real?) psychic.

They usually do their thing for years with a small, but loyal, following. They sell some things casually—like paintings, the best fertilizer, a kit. But their existence is not a money-making venture; they don’t care about gaining as many followers and having high paying sponsors. You can tell—the popular entertainment personal brands have similar styles in their presentation, editing, and sounds. 

I used to let my days meander and melt into one another as I experimented– because that’s creativity. Factory like output is for commercial artists. But making doesn’t always have to be sacred. Just because you care deeply about something doesn’t mean you have to manifest that always, immediately, and in every project as proof.

You’ve been told to separate art that you make for you and art that you make for everyone. It is not a betrayal of yourself to create for different audiences. It’s not like it’ll affect your admittance to the pearly gates.

The purpose of this post is that we can learn something from even the popular content creators. I noticed that people will have the same clothes for many videos. They bulk film content in a few days or weeks that they can spread out and publish over the course of months, possibly the whole year.

This has inspired me to try doing this for my work. Writing and painting in mass consolidation. Writing flows best in long dedicated time blocks anyway. Although counterintuitive to creativity, sometimes we need mass output to push ourselves to the next stage.

So for the months that I’m back in my studio, I’m using up my supplies to paint, draw, and film. Painting supplies are abundant, so I’ll do the most simple thing I know how to do– universally humorous animal paintings that I can produce at high output. I’ll edit and post a few videos (to hold myself accountable), scheduling publication as far out as ~2 months. Since the remaining footage can be edited from anywhere (post-production), having all the content already done eliminates the heavy production side.

Then of course there are always days we refuse to do any of it, so reducing friction by reducing steps is good life maintenance.

by yojeanyi

Be dumb: how to struggle, learn, and cross apply strategies

People learn because they want to be competent, independent, discover, and challenge themselves. If something is too hard to learn, why do it?

A boulder might kill you to move, but breaking it into tiny rocks won’t. Without knowing it, what we learn starts to connect with things we know, making our life more interesting and dynamic.

Get comfortable with feeling dumb.

I initially began taking programming classes because I wanted to make my own website and I didn’t like the readymade options out there. I struggled in my first class, barely passing. The content was not only difficult, I was also feeling overwhelmed with how little I didn’t know in the field of Computer Science. That experience prepared me for the next class– I was ready to swim in my cold dumb state. Eventually the body warms up and takes you to the other side.

What does walking and learning have in common? The cross application of different continuity or endurance strategies. Then there’s running, which is just one step further than walking. When running, you create a rhythm between your breathing and body, a metronome for the experience. Thoughts have a hard time thriving. When learning gets difficult, intrusive thoughts insert themselves- observations, feelings, and inner monologue. When in deep concentration or focus, we unconsciously hold our breath. The oxygen deprived brain starts to dislike learning the new material. It hates computer science! It hates baking! When that happens I think about walking or running, just focusing on breathing and moving forward.

When I picked up guitar, my eyes would glaze over the music sheets, so I stuck to playing tab music. The extra effort in reading music was tedious. But to expand the repertoire of songs I could play, I began seriously viewing tutorials. Stripping the outcome from the experience, the tedium went away. Fingers and strings made sounds, and that’s all I needed to think about and enjoy.

Watching foreign TV shows is a great opportunity to write down vocabulary and grammar structures from subtitles. But watching the show takes twice, sometimes three times as long. I just want to find out if Suzy gets her revenge. When does learning hijack leisure? I asked myself, isn’t my recreational time sacred? But like going to a museum or touring a landmark, which I never questioned as both educational and recreational, I realized there were more opportunities to be killing two birds with one stone.

Being a novice at something is the start of growth. Not being a novice at anything is a good way to stay stagnant. People who want safety and comfort– what the learning process threatens– might pick up something and quickly lose interest when it gets difficult. So, to avoid this, enjoy feeling and being dumb.

People are smart, much more than they know.

And only a smart person would knowingly put themselves in situations where they would struggle or feel dumb. Continuously? This phase is just until you pass benchmarks of aptitude, then you get to really enjoy the subject that you’re mastering.