After listening to the podcast A Beautiful Anarchy for the last year I keep reflecting how basic the rules for being productive in the creative sphere. The author David duChemin have really captured a lifetime of experience from creative work and summarized it in short 15 min talks with illustrative examples from his own career and the history of art.
Beeing both entertaining and spot on regarding what everyone struggles with to keep producing ground breaking work, its a podcast well worth listening to over and over again.
He often circles back to our strive for perfection and mastery without getting our hands dirty first. We tend to often compare the best of what others have achieved with the worst that we ourself have done, and thats never good for motivation or psycological wellbeeing.
One of my favorit references are to something that the artis Chuck Close once should have said about never getting started.
“Inspiration is for Amatures. The rest of us just show up and get to work” – Chuck Close
And equally important to allocate time for the things that matter in your creative live and to find focus during that time.
“What i’ve learned is that our most important work, the deep work, doesn’t happen accidentally in the margins of our lives, but in large chunks”. – David DuChemin
So just do it!