Sir Isaac was right:  “An object at rest will remain at rest unless acted on by an unbalanced

force.” This isn’t only the first law of motion, but also the first law of freelance – that is to say, chiefly self accountable creative professionals.

It’s how you know you’re freelance. At least until that project you’ve been chasing lands with both feet on a due date, you hear yourself saying things like (feel free to use these):

• This freelance life is so stressful I deserve a break.
• Getting out of the office will be good for me.
• I need inspiration; all I’m doing today is read at the coffee shop.
• Play is good for my head; I’ll come back refreshed.

These bullets are actually dead on true, so why after completing all four has the unbalanced force eluded?

No definite deadlines. No particular accountability; no tangibly urgent “do this or else” – hence, there appears to be little procrastination if you have no goal other than: “if you don’t you’re career will eventually die a slow, lingering death.”

Cool definition: “motivation is the psychological feature that arouses an organism to action toward a desired goal.”

We ADD professionals know about arousal; with the right provocation we’ll work till we drop from exhaustion, but where does that stimulation live exactly? I want to drill successfully like the Deepwater Horizon for oil. I’d rather struggle to cap it than frequently hunting it.

An amateur’s motivation is uncomplicated. I do it because I love it; I have a passion for ____________ (insert “X” hobby here).  Pay for play and things change. Suddenly my time for passion has a posted value beyond self satisfaction. Motives morph – however slowly – from intrinsic to extrinsic, and extrinsic is deadly for creatives.

“I don’t leave the couch for under $10K”

So it goes like this: We’re passionate about hobby X. We practice with enthusiasm creating great skill for X. We quit our day job to create a business out of our passion for X. Creative businesses can take years to develop profitability – a recession hits – and we find our passion for X waning as our fiscal liabilities intensify.

You’re freelance, you know about cash flow; some months are easier than others. Like passion – sometimes you have it and sometimes you don’t. Your number one job is keeping a strong grip on passion’s handle, however, with passion driven businesses your credit line is self discipline.

Consider using these principles:

The passion path: Objectives > Goals > Strategy > Tactics – in that order. Design your path. Once your path is designed, reverse the order, head-down, looking up occasionally to keep track of progress and results. Ride whatever passion you’ve rallied down the path; keep a map if you must.

Self discipline: Your path design needs to be well defined. Imagine walking through a forest, if the path isn’t well defined you feel confused and stop to look for clearing. What looks vaguely like a path may turn into a big waste of time. The more efficient paths will have few obstacles and distractions; automate as much as possible.

The carrot: Know your rewards but avoid extrinsic motivations whenever possible. I remind all my artist friends (and myself) that if their passion was money they’d be rich. Seriously, the rich aren’t rich because of any extrinsic motivation. They love money; dare I say the more they love it the more they have? So it’s a bummer; your passion is for X; suck it up – money won’t drive you. Maybe you’ll get lucky and get rich off your passion, but the moment you pursue someone else’s money, your driving  south.

Nothing Like Success: The magic in doing is that completion feels like success regardless of outcome.  If your out of shape no one tries to run a marathon straight out of the blocks.  Do I even have to write “set realistic goals“? Try making promises if you need deadlines, collaborate if you need accountability.  Giving it away is good if in return you actually get something you need done. i.e. portfolio pieces, new songs practiced, new techniques learned, articles published, etc.

Permission To Suck Manifesto Laws Applied:

6.    Your creativity is about your heart, not their surface. Creativity is your world view filtered through your talent. It’s your passion, experience, expertise, inspiration and your rules that drive you to create wonderful things that you’re destined to hate because they’re not good enough, and others are open to admire because they couldn’t do it.
11.    Find a way to turn your weaknesses into strengths, but don’t tell anyone you’re doing it.
15.    Lose the habit of being successful.  Success can doom your career to mediocrity. Embrace the fact that you’re never going to make it and find comfort in other things.  Once success becomes your work, it’s over and if you’re a creative professional, success looks an awful lot like cash and cheering crowds.

For more on motivation try:

Clay Shirky
Dan Pink
Dan Heath

Here are a few works on the subject from Scott Belsky – Founder & CEO, Behance – yet another great knowledge resource.

Creativity X Organization = Impact

Originally Published on Nov. 2009 – try it

While interviewing Will McFarlane I was reminded how critically important it is to avoid getting caught up in the nuance of our creative fields.  “Music can be math without feel or tone” is one of my take away quotes in part II.  Extending that, any field can be dry when devoid of feel or tone”.

It’s way more about what we do with what we know, than what we know.  How extraordinarily remedial is that?  Yet, how much time do we all spend in the pursuit of technique at the sacrifice of feel and tone?  Some players get more feeling out of 3 major chords than others do with a full knowledge of music theory.  Some photographers have an intangible spirit to their work that leads others to a fruitless study of lighting technique.

Technique is great.  Lack of it is limiting.  Then again, tone and feel is worth a constant reminder of its importance to great work.

Biography:

It’s hard to imagine how many 12 year old young men watched the Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1963 and were inspired to pick up the guitar saying, “I want to do that”. Many, I’m sure. Voice lessons at six years old and piano a year later, young Will was clearly better primed than most.

Motown’s R&B captured Will’s imagination in High School while

growing up on Long Island, which helped him develop as a fine rhythm guitarist.

Bonnie Raitt enlisted the 23 year old college escapee McFarlane as a member of her band one night when she heard him play at a Cambridge, MA night club. He toured with her band from 1974 – 1980 before leaving the road to move into the studio.

While with The Bonnie Raitt band, Will shared stages with living blues and folk legends. That’ll do wonders for your playing but more importantly, Will learned to listen for what guitar licks to leave out to best play up the band.

In 1980 Will McFarlane joined the famed “Swampers”; He moved to Muscle Shoals, Alabama to play and learn from Jimmy Johnson and the boys. Bobby Blue Bland, Little Milton, Etta James and Johnnie Taylor are a few that get off hand mention as clients of Muscle Shoals Sound.

Since 2001, Will McFarlane, his Wife Janet, their three children, and five grand kids all live in North Carolina’s Triangle Region. The Will McFarlane Band plays regionally but Will continues his studio work in Nashville and Muscle Shoals as well as live gigs both nationally and abroad.

Frank Stasio, WUNC Radio interview of Will McFarlane

I must have had ½ dozen conversations with musicians, photographers and designers in the last week about artistic soul searching. Perhaps we’re looking for meaning, or overcoming creative block, or simply have too much free time, yet my wager is on the speed of which our cultural environment is changing.  We simply can’t keep up so we are gradually choosing an alternative: finding a place to plant our flag.

When asked about including fret tapping in his playing, one of my guitar heroes answered, “I don’t like the sound enough to spend the time necessary to master it”. To help me out, immediately following my question, I watch as he fret tapped a solo only to abandon the sound in seconds.  Message received: “I’m willing to try anything but I’ve got to have it inside me if it’s going to have meaning”.

The choices are so vast; the horizon is expanding at such a rate it’s as though we are pioneers racing west to find the most fertile land to which we can lay claim. We can only sprint for so long before every square mile passes in hopes of something better around the corner.  At the end of the day, we’re still homeless and looking.

We, the more experienced folks (please accept my generosity), get fooled into thinking our legacy habits are getting in the way of younger seemingly more agile talents.  I’ve watched vigilantly with the wisdom that human capacities don’t change all that much; human is human, look for the patterns they’re consistent through history.

Probing for artistic soul can make an agile impression but experience easily keeps pace with enthusiasm by avoiding needless wholesale experimentation. Edginess is commonly a dormant tradition, like 80’s fashion, tweaked then labeled fresh.

What I see is an increasingly large group of creatives probing deeper inside to find what they own; what unique individual value can inform their work. In spite of that, we make comparisons to a growing creative class: we see things, hear things, and witness ideas that shake our confidence.

“I would never have thought of doing that.”

The Truth:

Of course not, because it’s not you; why do you expect any “other” to be something you could have done? Look inside, plant the flag and do what’s authentic.

Permission To Suck Manifesto Law #2

The boss is the problem; the puzzle to solve, the idea to create, the crowd to excite, or your soul to satisfy.  Don’t piss off the boss.

Seth Godin had a great post last week about adding value, avoiding factory work, and staying true to your art:

A small island grows sugar cane. Many people harvest it, and one guy owns the machine that can process the cane and turn it into juice.

Who wins?

Go Here for more: Seth Godin – The Sugar Cane Machine

Something well designed is compelling; we are drawn to its efficiency, effectiveness, elegance, beauty, and often it’s cleverness and humor. You’re a designer when you arrange your clothes in an order that gets you out the door faster in the morning, or when you plan a route to the office.

Then why is “design thinking” so hard for so many to understand?

In my view it’s because we have a tendency to think things more complicated than they are; the enigmatic isn’t routinely unpacked but rather labeled something else or believed to be something we understand easier or perhaps ignored completely. Maybe we find the easiest remedy for complexity is to go to the end result and call it design: an iPod, Ferrari, or the elegant kitchen utensil.

Great designers design great things from information architecture to artifacts for living, but the truly great designer finds the right problem to solve that makes a difference and connects emotionally to the end user. They advance humanity by forward thinking with the support of observation and research, empathy for the end user and serendipity in the process.

I put together this 13 minute video with the help of 5 great design thinkers; Matt Munoz, David Burney, John Loftin, Jonathan Opp and Todd Coats.  In it they help us to understand design thinking.

To paraphrase David Burney in this video: Design is a way of life. Designers find solutions to the right problems through the balance of science, analytics, and math + art, spirit and intuition.

[Via Wikipedia:]

Design thinking is a process for practical, creative resolution of problems or issues that looks for an improved future result.^[1] It is the essential ability to combine empathy, creativity and rationality to meet user needs and drive business success. Unlike analytical thinking, design thinking is a creative process based around the “building up” of ideas. There are no judgments early on in design thinking. This eliminates the fear of failure and encourages maximum input and participation in the ideation and prototype phases.

If you’re a creativity supplier be very proud of your steady revenue in the face of change. Either you’re a positioning genius in an unstable market or it just may be the quiet before a bigger storm.

Scott Anthony for the Harvard Business Review writes how flat yet steady revenue might, in the face of disruption, help category leaders ignore even the most obvious need for change. CD sales in the mid 90’s, Newspaper Revenues, or photographic film sales are solid examples of change snubbing categories.  Another example of an organization disregarding change – yet much less surprising – is the USPS sited in an article in the Economist titled: Hoping for Deliverance.

Market positioning is difficult under the best of circumstances and the sole proprietor may have neither the time nor inclination to react even if they’re trend aware. Professional photographers are an especially hard hit group. It was nearly impossible to avoid flat footing the need for dramatic change.  As a group they’re finally mostly aware yet a large number remain bemused about how deep the change will go and its affects, same goes for the advertising industry.

For the last couple years I’ve been thinking about my work in terms of big “D” and little “d” where big “D” is discovery and little “d” is delivery.  Discover your motivation, your unique blend of expertise, and the problems to be solved.  Delivery is the how your discovery fits onto a business model. Sound like “design thinking” – yeah, it should.

It’s been an ongoing process that, thus far, pivots on motivation and passion.  I’ve been taking inventory with questions like these:

1.  Where is my work passion rooted; What do I find exciting?

2.  What are the relevant experiences and skills bordering the excitement?

3.  Among my collected experience / skill inventory, what is uniquely mine?

4.  What value can I offer based on my inventory?

5.  What values are uniquely mine that will not change?

6.  What is the value proposition of my work?

Basic ? Remedial? Yes but it’s easy to lose track of #1 and if you do, #6 will eventually  suck.  It’s a process that was probably switched to auto pilot in early career but certainly if I stayed more cognoscente it would have lead to fewer wrong turns.

What’s at the core of your offering?  You’re a musician but aren’t you also a performer? I’m a commercial photographer but I’m also a visual artist.  If you’re an auto maker aren’t you also a transportation company?  I make these distinctions because they are roots oriented.  Buggy whip manufacturers were in the in the motivation business.  Photographic trends lose relevance but visual art will always move people.

Get the point? Find passion’s root, get back in touch with what you offer, hold onto what won’t change and rappel from there. Good advice for the USPS don’t you think?

Reference Permission To Suck Manifesto:

Law #6.    Your creativity is about your heart, not their surface. Creativity is your world view filtered through your talent. It’s your passion, experience, expertise, inspiration and your rules that drive you to create wonderful things that you’re destined to hate because they’re not good enough, and others are open to admire because they couldn’t do it.



Nate Sheaffer - Neon Sculptor / Author

Ten years ago, my life changed forever. Early in 1999, I lost my glassblowing business to offshore competition, followed eight months later by the suicide of my closest brother – my own Y2K meltdown. Losing the brother, some who knew him would say, was every bit as inevitable as having the company disappear in the ever-flattening world of labor distribution. In odd and very different ways, both losses eventually improved my life, also inserting an interesting speed bump, rather – a detour – in my creative life.

I’d been working myself sick – meeting deadlines for production neon sign orders and managing two dozen employees did nothing for my health, which I had been neglecting ever since graduating college. The first half dozen years, I pulled many more all-nighters bending glass than I’d ever done studying. The company grew into something so unrecognizable from the small sculpture studio and boutique glass shop I’d started thirteen years earlier, morphing into a hungry, ugly albatross with monthly overhead twice the size of the first year’s gross revenues – so much more a greedy burden than creative passion. Four months after shutting down production, friends told me I looked ten years younger. I certainly felt at least ten years less burdened.

The loss of the brother, well…what can I say in less than a hundred million words that might adequately convey my sense of loss? I grew up idolizing him the way younger siblings often do. Eventually, we worked together; in fact, he was employee number one when time came to hire someone, and so the two things – neon company and brother – are inextricably tangled in both glorious memory and flaming demise.

Garth was my brother’s name, and when he died, my creative energies turned to writing about him and the many adventures we shared. The cathartic aspects of the process – getting it all out, onto paper – put his life and death into a kind of manageable perspective allowing me to remember without breaking down every day into a puddle of sorrow.

During ten years, learning to express feelings and ideas on paper, a gnawing gap widened in my soul’s creative core, quite literally in the motor memory of my creative soul. Before the losses, I’d spent thirteen years making things with my hands, creating neon and steel sculptures, neon signs, animated displays, advertising prototypes – things. I value the creative process governing writing – constructing sentences and developing plots and characters – but my arms and hands ache to make things.

Not long after Garth died, I moved out of a space specifically designed to enable creation of sculpture. Then I moved again into another home with no workspace whatsoever, and then again and then once more this past year, making it difficult for me to even imagine assembling any of the dozens of sculptures for which I’ve carried drawings and parts longer than a decade. This spring, I put it out of my head that I needed to have a bona fide shop to create sculpture; lack of a perfect work environment had become my best excuse.

Though no one but myself had been keeping me from working, I actually said, aloud, inside a small storage shed, “You’re allowed to do this again.” In the corner, the only witness, a black and white illustration of a woman stared at me through ten years of dirt and grime. She was the last thing Garth created – an image he’d incorporated into a neon wall hanging modeled after the graphic on his favorite t-shirt. Her odd smile looked angry through the decade of schmutz; angry that I’d let her neon tubing become broken and paid her no attention since Garth died.

I organized the shed and began assembling neon and aluminum bits and pieces into my first thing in a long, long time. Between taking care of my children full-time and writing, I spent the next month working in two-hour bursts – every third day or so – until the magic moment arrived when I plugged the piece into a drop cord draped seventy-five feet across the yard to the shed.

In terms of the sculpture itself, the result was what I expected; one or two elements not exactly as intended, but mostly it represented a fully fleshed-out version of my ten-year-old sketch. What caught me off guard was how allowing myself to create (even in a less-than-ideal space) flipped a maniacal switch whose contacts had rusted years ago. Within days, I repaired Garth’s last neon piece, hung it in my home, and began a daily routine of gathering and sorting materials for the next projects.

It’s been a difficult, long decade, living with the idea of creating sculpture relegated to memory and imagination and now, suddenly – thankfully, it’s just as difficult to imagine stopping.

Permission To Suck Manifesto – Law #2: The boss is the problem; the puzzle to solve, the idea to create, the crowd to excite, or your soul to satisfy.  Don’t piss off the boss.

I think maybe we are fortunate to be living a global transformation.  You’re trying to find solid ground and if you’re lucky you won’t find it too soon or if you’re Raghava KK you move on as soon as the ground stops shifting.

I am convinced that those creatives whom greatness finds, find a way to tell a personal truth through whatever medium they choose: comedy, teaching, cartoons, painting, music, writing, film or whatever.  This is the meaningful challenge especially as the meaning of our truth changes.  If you’re standing here, it moves over there.

Not everyone is equipped to succeed early or late, and by succeed, my characterization is to discover your personal truth and to be fearless enough to consent transformation as your truth evolves.  Those who appear successful – by my description – may in reality be dismal failures.  Conventional success can be found regardless.

Raghava KK – at least for now – appears to be in sync with his truth as he follows it where ever it talks him.  He has an inspiring story.

Raghava KK writing about living in NYC: Brooklyn Bound R Train

Akin to my own recent past, this city, I came to learn, is the epicenter of change. Its transformative powers are so subtle and so strong that one lives and dies several deaths here. The rigor that this city demands is a ritual that, only through participation, allows one to experience transformation. Personal transformation thus becomes the subject of my exploration.

Raghava KK – Fine Art Website

Meet Adam. He’s determined to unite talent – his own. A first-class writer and a first-rate illustrator equals a great cartoonist. A great cartoonist makes an exceptional ad man, screen writer and film director.

Here’s an example when livelihood obligates creative talent to flow. Resembling a creative anthropologist, skills are exhumed with the unrelenting exploration, tweaking and deadlines. There is nothing like the demands of a professional creative career; this is no do it when you feel like it hobby.

The fortunate survive the first third, navigate the second third and finish a maturing prodigy with an inspiring future. Talent is a given – find it or go home – nevertheless wisdom keeps talent relevant.

Biography via Capstrat.com

Some of Americas best known brands gained advantage from Adam’s multipurpose communications talent. An art director, illustrator, writer and strategic thinker, Adam is an advertising quadruple threat.

With nearly 20 years in advertising and now a V.P. Creative Director at Capstrat in N.C., Adam has a national reputation that’s prized locally. Distill, his North Carolina creative ad boutique, boasted a roster of Clients including Kingsdown Mattresses, IntraHealth International, Dey Pharmaceuticals and Mother Earth Brewing.

Before launching Distill, Adam devoted valuable message shaping years to San Francisco agency Ketchum Advertising for Bank of America, Hunt-Wesson Foods (Orville Redenbacher, Knott’s Berry Farm, Peter Pan), Pacific Bell and Novartis Crop Protection.

Prior to relocating North Carolina’s Triangle, Adam freelanced with nearly all major Bay Area agencies: Goodby, Silverstein & Partners; Foote, Cone & Belding; TBWA\Chiat\Day; McCann-Erickson; Butler, Shine & Stern. His work included advertising and strategic planning for among many: Charles Schwab, Microsoft, Levi’s, McDonald’s, Taco Bell, Apple and the San Francisco Giants.

So as not to be accused of creative slacking, Adam’s daily comic strip, “Herschel,” was chosen for syndication by Creators Syndicate. He co-created a Cartoon Network animated pilot called “Major Flake” and his short film, “Love Scene,” won Best Narrative Short at the Ohio Independent Film Festival.

Some awards needing persistent dusting came from The New York Art Directors Show, The Clios, Graphis, Creativity Magazine, The San Francisco Show, PRINT, The AIGA Boom! Awards and ADDYS.

Adam earned a Bachelor’s degree from UNC-Chapel Hill in interdisciplinary studies with concentrations in art and speech communication from, and an MFA in illustration from the Savannah College of Art and Design.

What I find absorbing about imagination and creativity are the unlimited ways to frame it, yet at its core is the essence of being human. If you ask me, it’s the meaning of life and just as slippery.

To be creative is to develop intuition, shut down what makes sense and follow the feeling. Feeding the hunger we’ll look, listen, study and practice, but if we try to follow information to a commonsensical conclusion, there are no surprises only boredom.

[via The Woodstock Channel] Bob Dylan talks about how creativity happens, in this case, the writing of “Stardust” by Hoagy Carmichael. Part of David McDonald’s series, “The Mystery of Creativity,” about the connections between creativity and spirituality.  Mr. McDonald is also the director of a film called “Woodstock Revisited” which features several Dylan and The Band-related chapters.

Just for a moment act as though all the creative works you’ve ever done are gone and untraceable.  They cease to be.  There is no memory of your body of work except for what you own; friends, family, colleagues, students, peers – all have no recollection of your work or your reputation.  There is no longer a creative history to foster your pride.

Assuming your passion is not make-believe and your ability to produce remains, now what?  Your beautifully clever, well crafted, richly toned works are disposable.  a.k.a – You’re free.

It’s important that we know our best work is yet to be produced.  Our best is what is in us now, not what we – or others – admire about the past.  The current creative paradox or those conflicts that remain unresolved are in front of us and are what needs examining.

Maria Schneider has a story to illustrate this point.

Maria Scheider Biography (via Wikipedia)

Schneider was born in Windom, Minnesota. She moved to New York City in 1985 after attending college at the University of Minnesota, the University of Miami and the Eastman School of Music. She studied under Bob Brookmeyer and Gil Evans, working on various projects with Evans, including the film The Color of Money and Absolute Beginners. Her works share many characteristics with other jazz composers influenced by Gil Evans, including Lou Marini, and Grammy Award winning composer Bob Belden.

Schneider formed The Maria Schneider Jazz Orchestra in 1993, appearing weekly at Visiones in Greenwich Village for five years. Her orchestra performed at many jazz festivals and toured Europe.

Schneider was one of the first artists to use ArtistShare to produce an album. Her 2004 album, Concert in the Garden, became the first Grammy Award-winning recording sold exclusively via the Internet. It was named Jazz Album of the Year by the Jazz Journalists Association, which also named Schneider Composer of the Year and Arranger of the Year and named her group Large Jazz Ensemble of the Year.

Schneider’s ensemble is now titled “The Maria Schneider Orchestra”. Their new album, Sky Blue, was released in July 2007, also via ArtistShare. Schneider’s composition “Cerulean Skies,” from Sky Blue, won a Grammy Award for Best Instrumental Composition in 2008. Schneider is an avid birdwatcher and enlisted band members to contribute bird calls on “Cerulean Skies.”