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The Necessity of Frustration

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Paintbrushes
Without doubt, no breakthrough

by Ric Dragon

Big Doubt, Little Doubt

Beginnings are typically joyous, euphoric occasions. Whether it’s a software project, a barn-raising, a romance, or a painting, the earliest stages are exciting, not yet informed by the difficulties that lie ahead.

The art of making paintings is remarkable. It doesn’t matter if the painter is portraying mountains and streams, or is creating an abstraction. Taking the three-dimensional world and portraying it on a flat surface is abstraction, and creating shapes and color is quite concrete and real. So it follows that a lot of the distinctions that are made about painting – whether it’s realism, abstraction, or some other genre – are somewhat moot. But what all painting shares is that there is no guidebook. Each painter is on their own in trying to figure out what it is all about.

Over the years, I’ve noticed that I look forward to starting paintings. The canvas, newly tacked over the stretcher bars, presents a vast area of whiteness. A brush loaded with paint is picked up – and that first mark is made. It’s exhilarating.

I also know what to expect about a third of the way into the painting: frustration. In those early years, it was unnerving: I’d be wracked with feelings of doubt and inability. Like an arctic explorer without a compass, I’d look around and realize that I didn’t have a clue as to where I was or why I was there. These aren’t the little niggling doubts that sometimes come to haunt us, but the big doubts. What does my existence mean?

For hundreds of years, practitioners of Zen Buddhism have been using doubt as a key to their practice. In the various approaches to Zen, the feeling of doubt is considered to be critical to finding awareness. In fact, koans, those baffling stories used in zen, seem designed to help bring about that total frustration. As one teacher exhorted, “let all of you become one mass of doubt and questioning.” Without this doubt, you can’t have breakthrough.

Self-doubt can be totally debilitating, too. If you understand, though, the importance of doubt in the creative process, you can more easily say to yourself, “heh, this is all part of the process – let’s just go with it.”

Happy break-through!

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Author’s Bio: Ric Dragon is the founder and CEO of DragonSearch, a digital marketing agency with offices in Manhattan and Kingston, NY. Dragon is the author of the “DragonSearch Online Marketing Manual” and “Social Marketology” (McGraw Hill; June 2012), and has been a featured speaker at SMX East, Conversion Conf, CMS Expo, and BlogWorld, on the convergence of process, information architecture, SEO, and Social Media. You can find Ric on Twitter as @RicDragon.

 

Image: John-Morgan, Flickr Creative Commons License.

3 Ways to Recharge Your Business Creativity

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Stephen Key

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Why Letting Your Inner Child Out Can Benefit Your Business

How many times have you watched your son or daughter’s imagination shine as they play with their friends or by themselves? Children are incredible dreamers and creators who have no inhibitions about letting creativity dictate their actions. To me, entrepreneurship is synonymous with creativity. People often talk about business and art as if the two couldn’t be more separate, but both celebrate the value of looking at the world a little differently than everyone else. The best entrepreneurs see possibility and opportunity where others have failed to, because they’re able to spot unique and powerful ideas that will resonate with consumers. Developing and celebrating your creative energy can benefit your business in countless ways.

I’ve spent the past twenty years bringing my product ideas to life. Thinking creatively has helped me invent and innovate, but even more importantly, I’d argue, it has helped me problem solve. Business owners are constantly surprised by new and different conflicts to overcome. You’ll never be able to predict them all. The more comfortable you become with quickly brainstorming solutions, the better your business will be. There’s never just one answer. And that’s why being able to think outside the box when your business is faced with a seemingly impenetrable roadblock is important. Somewhere along the way most of lose the ability to dream and imagine as easily as we did as children; being able rekindle these skills will help your business.

3 Ways to Recharge Your Business Creativity

I don’t believe that certain individuals are inherently more creative than others. The belief that ‘you’re just not creative’ is an excuse. We’re all creative! As children, we’re all able to dream and imagine with abandon. But like any other skill, creativity requires practice, commitment, and inspiration. I’ve found that playing games helps recharge my creativity.

The first one is, ‘What If?’ When I try to imagine new product ideas or encounter a problem in my daily life, I allow myself to ask any question I want to. What if we lived in a world that __? What if I were able to __? There are no right or wrong questions (nor answers!). I remember my own three children asking me question after question when they were little. Questions lead to answers, answers lead to more questions, and creative juices flow during the process!

The second game I play I call, ‘Mix and Match’. I combine several ideas together, even if they don’t seem to make immediate sense. Someone really hit the nail on the head when they matched a camera and phone, after all…. Some of the best ideas actually combine existing concepts or products in interesting ways. Think about all the times you’ve watched your son or daughter play with their toys in unique ways. They are no strangers to mixing and matching to make things new and exciting.


The third creative game I use is called ‘Solve It’. What do you wish was made better? What would you do to change it? Some products and services have been around for so long, we no longer even think about what it would be like if they were different. Don’t take any assumptions for granted, and stop subconsciously assuming what is and isn’t possible.


And finally, don’t forget to get inspired. Seek out friends, family, and peers who, like loved and empowered children, believe that anything’s possible and embrace the alternative. Some people are more receptive to new ideas than others. At the least, find someone whose first word isn’t always ‘no’.

Break out of your normal mold and schedule. How can you imagine something different and unique if you always do and see the exact same things? Change your route to work. Try a new restaurant instead of your neighborhood favorite. I know your schedule is hectic, but make time to read a new book or magazine, or watch an interesting film. Exposing yourself to new ideas and ways of thinking will jumpstart your own creativity.

Above all, allow your creative inner child to emerge to help bring your business to new heights.

What do you do to inspire your creativity?

Author’s Bio:
Stephen Key writes about licensing and small business at www.inventornotes.com. He is also author of One Simple Idea and One Simple Idea for Startups and Entrepreneurs. You can find Stephen on Twitter as @inventright ()

Thank you, Steven. Love your thoughts on inspiring creativity!

–Me “Liz” Strauss

How Artists’ Games Can Help Our Work

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Ric Dragon

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The Games Artists Play

In his earlier days, the artist Chuck Close was a painter of gestural abstractions. After a personal crisis, he decided to take photographs, and square inch by square inch, make a large painting of the photograph. The process, to Close, was a game of sorts. If you get the opportunity to see one of his large scale paintings in a museum, the results are quite staggering.

Artists like to play games within their work. After all, there is no rule book on how to make a piece of art. Instead, you have total and absolute freedom. You can do anything you want – a freedom which can actually be paralyzing. Thus, by creating little games, the artist has a self-imposed framework in which to work.

My own game is to paint alla prima – which means at first attempt, and to paint all wet-into-wet; never onto dry paint. While I’ve found a way to keep my own paintings wet for weeks, and thus to sustain the game over a longer period of time, the historical idea of an alla prima painting, like those of the impressionists, was to create a painting in one sitting.

This is hardly a constraint taken on by all painters. In fact, Monet said something to the effect that you’re not worth your salt as a painter if you couldn’t put a painting away for a couple of months, come back to it, and not see what it needed. Bonnard was said to sneak into museums with a brush and colors under his coat to touch up his own paintings.

How Artists’ Games Can Help Our Work

Reworking a piece over a long period of time can certainly bring richness to any work. It’s over time that we are able to reinforce subtle patterns, or refine smaller ideas within the larger piece. But sometimes, it’s difficult to let go of a piece. Our anxiety about getting it right takes over.

The idea, though, of saying that a painting, or even a piece of writing, is going to be done in one period of time – that I’ll do the best I can NOW, and that I’ll do this and move on to the next – can mitigate compulsiveness. We can bring this idea to writing too – I’ll write a piece – but after I’m done, I’m done. No going back and improving. Blogging is ideal for this – after all, changing a post after it’s been published, and after people have participated in the piece by commenting just doesn’t feel right.

If you find yourself stuck in your endeavors, and unable to break through some invisible barrier, try creating your own parameters and games. After all, it’s your game, and there’s not a person in the world who can say that it’s wrong.

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Author’s Bio:
Ric Dragon is the founder and CEO of DragonSearch, a digital marketing agency with offices in Manhattan and Kingston, NY. Dragon is the author of the “DragonSearch Online Marketing Manual” and “Social Marketology” (McGraw Hill; June 2012), and has been a featured speaker at SMX East, Conversion Conf, CMS Expo, and BlogWorld, on the convergence of process, information architecture, SEO, and Social Media. You can find Ric on Twitter as @RicDragon.

Great Graphic Ideas: crowdSPRING

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Looking for a Little Creativity or Maybe a LOT?

If you know an outstanding design site, email me a link and tell me why you think it’s important to share. Then I can pass it along.

This week at the Feast for Smart Marketers I met Pete Burgeson of crowdSPRING. We had quite the conversation about this Chicago-based business that calls itself a “marketplace for creative services.”

Great Find: crowdSPRING
Permalink: http://www.crowdspring.com/
Target Audience: Design clients, creatives

Content: When Pete I started talking I asked how crowdSpring worked. He described the basic model as they do on the website.

I questioned a model based on work done on spec, but after a closer look I’m quite taken by what’s happening at crowdSPRING. Their model is intelligent and built to grow with their community.

  • crowdSPRING serves the new guys. Small businesses just launching need a professional presence that won’t cost them out of the market. Talented creatives starting out need to build visibility and a portfolio of clients.
  • It also serves who’ve been “around the block.” I’m fully confident that buyers looking for serious design work can find it here because there seems to be no requirement to participate in the “projects.”

    • I was able to browse projects, portfolios, profiles, and forums. Personal messages and forum conversations make it easy to connect with creative suppliers.

  • Creatives can upload portfolios next to their profiles. Profiles include a record of performance on projects completed through the site.
  • It’s community for learning and thinking, as well as a marketplace. The forums are filled with insightful discussion of design and of the projects on the site.

crowdSPRING is using social media in the best way . . . by making it easy for people to connect around ideas that they care about.

Go on, have a look. See how easy it looks when it’s done well.

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!

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What Determines a Creative Life? What Determines Success?

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Determination

“Square peg in a round hole.” That’s what people used to call it.

Even as a kid I knew it was a silly waste of time to put a square peg in a round hole. That was just plain common sense To make the peg fit, it wouldn’t be a square peg anymore. It would hurt the peg, and the hole wouldn’t like it.

What makes some people grow up to live highly creative lives? Is it in their genes — “the way the tree was bent”? Is a creative life determined by their experience?

Yet, what is astonishing is the great variety of paths that led to eminence. Csikszentmihalyi

Though the 91 creative people in the study that became the book, Creativity, had unique characteristics and traits that made them stand out. The life paths that led to their creative contribution were not particularly different from what you might find any group of 91 citizens.

  • Some were precocious. Some were prodigies. Some didn’t seem to stand out as children.
  • Some had serious hardship growing up. Some suffered the death of parents. Others had happy childhoods without incident.
  • Some were ignored. Some had guides and teachers who helped their development. Some had devastating experiences with mentors.
  • Some seemed to always know their calling. Some searched for years to find their path.
  • Some were noticed early. Some struggled for years to gain recognition.

Those same circumstances describe the people I call my friends, none of whom yet have changed the world through Creativity with a capital C.

 

It seems that the men and women we studied were not shaped once and for all, either by their genes or by the events of early life. . . . Instead of being shaped by events, they shaped events to suit their purposes. . . .

According to this view, a creative life is still determined, but what determines it is a will moving across time — the fierce determination to succeed, to make sense of the world, to use whatever means to unravel some of the mysteries of the universe. Csikszentmihalyi

 

Fierce determination to succeed.

Success doesn’t happen without giving ourselves over fully to what we’re pursuing. It’s not the barriers that stop us, it’s the way we respond to them.

If we’re determined, we maneuver over, under, around, or through them. It doesn’t matter how difficult the problem we stick with it until we innovate, create, or cobble together a solution that solves it.

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Determination removes options other than success: We refuse to define our outcomes as:

  • the fault of our parents.
  • an imperfection in our environment.
  • the result of bad timing.
  • bad luck or bad karma.
  • something outside of us.

As determination to succeed is key to world-changing creativity, it seems to follow that determination and creativity are key to success.

How have determination and creativity contributed in your past success? What are you determined to accomplish now?

–ME “Liz” Strauss