Any time you feel like you are grinding it out, you can stop and remember – there’s an opportunity to elevate what you’re doing to an art.
This is even true of art itself. Whatever we are engaged in, we can do it in a toiling, transactional way - or we can do it in a way that’s connected to and inspired by vision.
Hard work is inescapable, but too much of it drains vitality and leaves us tired or bored. It has a place - when you make a fence you have to dig holes and bang the poles into the ground. But first you have to conceive the fence, visualise its form and then design and craft it. Likewise, when you’re growing a business you need to make calls and attend meetings, but first you need to know what you’re aiming for, and why. ‘Why’ includes the feeling of joy and energy the plan inspires.
Elevating the artist in your life means putting spirit first, which means practicing motivation as a discipline - so your work is nourished and doesn’t make you want to give up and die.
Finding your sources of motivation and timing your tasks to fit the quirks and rhythms of your mind/body clock is a complex, worthwhile quest to engage with. In the realm of complexity theory it is what is known as a ‘wicked’ problem, an area with no obvious solution involving multiple interdependencies. It doesn’t answer to quick fixes or ready made life hacks. Instead it’s a zone of experimentation: testing out ways to nudge your system towards productivity without insulting the feelings of your inner millennial.
It also means trusting in and holding out for inspiration.
Committing to this practice elevates your experience of work, elevates its value to others and (in the long run) elevates your position and brand relative to the rest of the universe, including whatever version of your job AI is likely to destroy or reinvent.
In that sense, motivating yourself is the real work. Not hard, but smart - the System 2 brain space of Thinking Fast and Slow. Deliberate, reflective and extremely easy to put off or avoid altogether.
Here are some of the ways I’ve found to help it along:
Making time to think. I start my day when possible by intentionally doing nothing except waiting for my body to relax, my mind to settle and my thoughts to loosen up and expand. Sometimes with a notebook and a cup of strong coffee, sometimes at dawn sitting on my chair and staring at the light breaking on the trees outside my office.
Interacting with the physical world: by walking into a field, an art gallery or an unfamiliar shop, I engage with the is-ness of things and step for a moment out of the confines of my mind-laptop axis. Level 2 of this practice is to choose an object (familiar or unfamiliar) to observe, touch or sketch. Jedi level 3 is to climb a tree.
Using culture ~ every now and then I turn around in my office and remember that I have more ideas and information on my bookshelves than the average medieval king. Browsing our books, magazines (or online articles) can nourish us with ideas, art, music and different languages for describing the world.
Go right brain ~ use paper and pen to write, doodle or sketch; listen to music, watch a short film, lie down on the floor, jot down phrases as quickly as you can without stopping (a secular version of Yeat’s breakthrough with automatic writing), make something with your hands, try Street Wisdom. Tap the vast and mysterious reserves of your imagination.
Stopping ~ if time allows for only one artistic discipline, make it this one: Any time you notice you’re not enjoying yourself, stop. Pause and ask yourself what you really, really want right now. Down your tools, take a few breaths, stretch, stand up. What do you most need?
These are suggestions rather than prescriptions. It’s up to you to figure out what your inner artist needs.
Part of the answer is doing the right things to slow down, become reflective, attuned and receptive. Part of it is about reconnecting with your senses and the physical world. Part of it is knowing what you are looking for:
Art - in its broadest sense - is always inspired by an idea. Artists (by which I mean anyone doing good work: writers, inventors, builders, entrepreneurs, consultants, parents, engineers….) rarely do anything without at least a hint of inspiration. Those inspirations lead to the experiments that lead to effective action. And inspiration always comes as an image, metaphor or idea.
So what you’re looking for is an idea… a spark.
A quick read through Mason Currey’s Daily Rituals (one of the books I most often recommend) reveals just how many thinkers, painters, inventors and creatives used habits of disciplined indulgence to forge that connection and find that spark.
It is no less important for us.
Without art you’re in a race to the bottom, pitting yourself against cheaper human capital and/or AI. As an artist you can be part of recasting our civilisation in a more lustrous and splendid form. Or you can just have a slightly better time than you would grinding it out.
There is always something that comes first. Make sure to keep returning to the source from which your value springs.
And if you’d like to talk this through with me - in exchange for an honest email and some background - I’d be happy to make time for a conversation about how to started on creating your own elevated practice.
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On the theme of daily rituals, let’s close with Philip Larkin:
Days (1953)
What are days for?
Days are where we live.
They come, they wake us
Time and time over.
They are to be happy in:
Where can we live but days?
Ah, solving that question
Brings the priest and the doctor
In their long coats
Running over the fields.
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Thanks for reading,
Laurence
ps - more of Lucas Almeida’s weird and wonderful art can be found on lucasmalucas. Piet Mondrian can be enjoyed in person (alongside Hilma af Klimt) at London’s Tate Modern until Sept ‘23.