What I've Learned So Far

For a certain kind of smart person (*points to self*), overthinking is a real problem. You could call it “analysis paralysis,” “getting lost in the weeds,” or simply “neurosis.” Whatever you call it, the effects are the same:

• Too much time spent thinking things over.
• Mulling that doesn’t lead to action.
• Angst.
• Stuck-ness.

So, here in 2013, what say we give the overthinking a miss?

I have some ideas on how to avoid it — or curtail it when it does arise — but what are your best methods for dealing with overthinking?

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Lately I’ve been soaking in a lot of the material from the Future of Storytelling site. I particularly enjoyed this 12-minute feature on Damian Kulash of the band OK Go.

OK Go has been successful with a 21st-century approach to making music — focusing on their overall creative output and financial returns, rather than obsessing on record sales. In fact, as Kulash explains, they parted ways amicably with their former record label for precisely that reason.

Instead of pursuing chart-topping hits, the band derives revenue from a mix of music sales, touring, and — distinctively — their YouTube-sensation collaborations with car companies and other commercial entities. For Kulash, this isn’t a case of selling out, but rather of pursuing opportunities to do intriguing creative projects that are also financially rewarding.

I especially like what he says toward the end of the video about completing a lot of creative projects — some of which are successful enough to subsidize the others. It’s a portfolio approach to creative endeavor, and it’s not fundamentally different from:

• Graham Greene alternating between writing the novels he saw as “serious” and those he thought of as “entertainments”
• Orson Welles and other filmmakers doing the same thing, making crowd-pleasers to give themselves the financing and credibility to make passion projects
• Farrar Straus and Giroux banking on the success of Tom Wolfe to make it easier to keep books in print for the likes of John McPhee

Since I first watched the Kulash video a couple of days ago, I’ve been thinking about this applies to my own mix of creative and commercial work. I’ll share more results as I have them.

Meanwhile, how might the OK Go approach work for you?

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Links:

• Artistic Integrity, Corporate Collaborations, and Making a Living at the Future of Storytelling
• OK Go, “This Too Shall Pass” on YouTube

Tell the world to go away.

Focus on the most important thing. Don’t debate with yourself overly about what that is — it’s the one you’ve been putting off, the vital one, the first domino in the row, the big beating heart of your dreams.

For an hour, or a Sunday afternoon, set everything else aside. Turn off the television, ignore your inbox, and block out the noise. Beg off from life’s minutiae. Someone else can be on diaper duty, at least for an afternoon.

Then do that thing. Screw up your courage and do that thing.

Never apologize for doing the most important thing.

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It’s time for me to take in less and crank out more. To that end, I’m weaning myself off of media — at least to a degree — for a little while.

Given what I do for a living, I can’t go on a complete media fast. And I don’t mean to cut myself off from the world. But I’ve found that my ratio of output to intake has been poor. I need to clear my head so that I have more space to think about the work I really need to do — the things that only I can do. (This includes my own writing and my corporate duties.)

It’s also a good time for me to do it, given that the election season is heating up. The more media I consume, the more I have to deal with annoying commercials and tendentious opinions from all sides.

I’m still deciding what I will keep on the menu — and please rest assured that if you contact me (via e-mail, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.) I will respond quickly. But I won’t be doing all the free-range grazing that I usually do. It’s not sustainable, at least in this season of my life.

I’ll keep you posted on my results.

Do you ever go on a media fast? What do you cut out — or what would you?

“When you make music or write or create, it’s really your job to have mind-blowing, irresponsible, condomless sex with whatever idea it is you’re writing about at the time.”

–Lady Gaga, quoted in the August 2012 Esquire

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She’s right. After you’ve gone on that remorseless bender, then you can let your critical-thinking faculties take over and refine the work, polish it, give it more structure (or less). But at first: go crazy. You can’t get an STD from an idea.

“…those who take solemnly the words of other men as absolute are, in the deepest sense, maiming their own sensibility and controverting the evidence of their own senses in a fashion which may be comforting to a terrified man but is disastrous for an artist.”

—Gore Vidal, on Norman Mailer

. . . about how you’re writing the book of your life. How this day is another paragraph, this month is another chapter, blah blah blah.

But you know this, right? It beats in on your consciousness, anytime you’re not burying your head in the sand?

This is it. This is your life.

You know this. You know that whatever you’re going to create needs to happen, happen, happen, happen — and it needs to be now.

Enough with the whatever-else-ing. Make your art. Make your contribution.

Life is short.

One of the problems I see for creative people working in the business world is that they feel that they’re “just visiting.” I think this tends to work one of two ways:

1. They think of themselves primarily as creators: “I’m really a painter.” “My real love is music, but it doesn’t pay the bills.” “I’m a writer first.” So they see the corporate work / day job as a big distraction that’s holding them back from being what they “really” are.

2. They identify themselves primarily with their moneymaking profession, such that the creative outlet is never more than a sideline. “Oh, I write poems on the side.” “I have a pottery shed in my backyard, but it’s just a hobby.” So they’re “really” librarians or marketers or programmers or whatever, and the creative part is just a sideline.

Live in Both Cultures

What I’m trying to do for myself — and what I’m recommending to you — is to adopt the approach that you’re BOTH of these things. Just because most people don’t combine the two doesn’t mean that my being a marketer must detract from my fiction writing. And vice versa.

In other words, I don’t have to treat myself like a creative refugee who REALLY belongs in Novelist-land but who finds himself for an extended period in Corporate-land, stumbling over the dialect and never really feeling at home. Similarly, I can immerse myself in deep reading, conversations about art, and especially my own artistic process, without feeling like that has to alienate me from those of my fellow corporate citizens who are more interested in other things.

In other words, I can be fluent in both languages and at home in both cultures, no matter how small the overlap is between the readership of Forbes and that of The Rumpus. And maybe I can help other biculturals navigate their own way, while better translating the artistic process for the more strictly corporate types and business processes for the more strictly artistic types.

See also:

• William Carlos Williams
• Wallace Stevens
• Anthony Trollope

Does this make sense? What do you think?

Yesterday I made a mistake and didn’t work on the novel I’m drafting. That went against Jerry Seinfeld’s wise advice to artists: “Don’t break the chain.”

I’ll get over it, but I don’t want to be too quick to say “Ah, it’s okay — I’m really busy” and move on. In my experience, it’s the breaking of chains of work that leads to so many problems for creators who have to balance the process of creation with a job, family, and other responsibilities.

Artists of all sorts need continuity in their creative work so that it can flow. They need many links in the chain to produce meaningful art. That challenge is magnified when much of the day is claimed by the job that pays the bills or family duties.

There are other chains that deserve continuity. Some examples:

• Taking care of your health.
• Connecting with your loved ones.
• Good housekeeping to keep your life in order.
• Enough rest.
• Quiet time for yourself.

But we can only keep so many chains going, because doing that requires focus and concentration — traits that can be strengthened, but that always hit a limit at some point.

My advice to myself, and to you: Choose just a few chains that you will forge daily, and then forge them diligently. Don’t let the sun go down without having added a link. Do that work first, whenever possible, or carve out some sacred time of the day when only that work has your attention. Let other things fall by the wayside, when need be . . . but don’t break those chains.

Today I start a new chain of work on my novel. What chain are you making?

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The world is full of material. Endlessly. Every hour of the day.

If you’re a writer or a painter or a poet (or an entrepreneur or a scholar), never complain that there’s a lack of things to work on.

There is always something. Many somethings. Many problems that could deserve your attention.

The real challenge is to choose among them.