Procrastination
I’m really good at procrastinating. I’m actually writing this newsletter less than 12 hours before it’s supposed to go out, but I’m still confident that I’ll end up with a write-up that I’m semi-satisfied with! A long history of procrastinating has prepared me well for this type of situation, and I generally make little effort to prevent this situation from happening.
Today in class, my Visual Design Thinking professor told me that it’s hard to be creative when you’re short on time, but I can’t say I agree at all. I’ve found that time limits (and constraints in general) are incredibly good for creating things. A deadline forces you to stop bouncing from idea to idea, silences the inner critic and helps you focus on whatever you need to be working on. Instead of me thinking about 100 different topics to write about for several days, I can start writing the first thought that comes to my head. From there, there’s tons of room to improve and iterate. As Anne Lamott said, “Almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts. You need to start somewhere.” Without this constraint, without this self-imposed deadline, I’d probably just never actually make anything.
This is why I do so many 100-day projects - the deadlineof creating something every day is an incredible force that forces me to push a lot of content out. Of course, a lot of what I produce might be disgusting garbage, but that doesn’t matter. In fact, it’s important that I make that disgusting garbage in order to make some presentable garbage later on. There’s a common anecdote about how quantity leads to quality and it frankly makes sense. I assume this is the norm - I know that some musical artists make hundreds of songs for each album and only publish 10-12 songs. However, I choose to publish nearly everything I make to have a public record of the progress I make.
Though this is my current process, I think it definitely needs work, because it risks diluting the value each individual piece has, preventing me from spending too much time on any particular one. Perhaps my deadlines should only apply for first drafts, and I create separate, much later deadlines for the final product, or just keep iterating until I reach something that satisfies me. However, that method is much harder to achieve, especially for close, recurring deadlines. I plan to experiment with these deadlines and report back!
Drops of the Week
where I *drop* recommendations of cool things this week
Longread
“Improving Ourselves to Death” by Alexandra Schwartz - fascinating piece dissecting the self-help industry, its complements, why it emerged and what it’s doing to us.
Playlist
Songs of the Year - 2017 - I’m in a facebook group of people that share their songs of the day. Each year, we share our favorite songs of the year and put into a playlist.
Web Project
Favorite Albums 2017 - dope way that a design studio showcased their favorite albums of the year.
Thanks so much for reading! If you have any comments/concerns or fan/hate mail for me, you know how to reach me (links below). Feel free to forward this newsletter to your friends too! :~)
Love,
Nikhil