I was poking around on Matt Zeigler’s website Cultish Creative and this post grabbed my attention:
Process Saves Us From The Poverty Of Our Intentions (1 min read)
A few excerpts:
The quote comes from sculptor Elizabeth King. It’s the idea that process and the act of doing are how progress is made. The poverty of our intentions, or the obsession over only accepting narrowly defined outcomes, is the toughest obstacle we face. Fortunately and unfortunately, it’s self-imposed…When we make the decision to just act, when we do so with vulnerability and take the risk, we embrace process. If we only accept perfection, if we think we need more confidence or we convince ourselves we don’t belong, we‘re stuck in the poverty of our intentions.
The quote inspired Seth Godin’s The Practice: Shipping Creative Work. Godin paraphrasing: “Doing what you love is for amateurs. Loving what you do is for professionals.” Eventually, we have to stop brainstorming, stop negotiating with ourselves, and start working.
I’m sharing it because it echoes a message from Jack White who I’ve found to be inspiring ever since I discovered the White Stripes 20 years ago. Jack pushes back against the cartoon of an artist waiting for inspiration. He treats making music like a job.
The attitude is captured in another quote, this one by writer W. Somerset Maugham:
“I write only when inspiration strikes. Fortunately it strikes every morning at nine o’clock sharp.”
I went looking for that quote because I’ve heard it before but I didn’t know who Maugham is. I went to the heading of his Wikipedia entry called “Reputation”. He died in 1965 at age 91. He was an active writer for about 65 years. Six. Five. And still he gets dealt this:
The critic Philip Holden wrote in 2006 that Maugham occupies a paradoxical position in twentieth-century British literature. Although he was an important influence on many well-known writers, “Maugham’s critical stock has remained low”. Maugham outsold, and outlived, contemporaries such as James Joyce, Virginia Woolf and D. H. Lawrence, but, in Holden’s view, “he could not match them in terms of stylistic innovation or thematic complexity”.
And he doesn’t seem inclined to object.
Maugham himself, although he never used the terms “second rate” or “mediocre” about his work, was modest about his status. He said that lacking any great powers of imagination he wrote about what he saw, and that although he could see more than most people could, “the greatest writers can see through a brick wall – my vision is not so penetrating”.
I just find all of this comforting. I think the greatest battle we face when it comes to what we do is just doing it. It’s like the timeboxing thing. Don’t judge the day’s effectiveness by the outcome but by whether or not you actually focused on the task you said you were going to focus on for 4 hours or whatever.
It’s possible that someone is just consistently wrong on what they choose to work on but I doubt being Costanza makes up the bulk of disappointing outcomes. I’d bet it’s just not doing what you said you were going to do.
I don’t know. The world feels complicated but I think truth disguises itself as simple and boring.
Maybe it’s a Detroit thing. Here’s 60 seconds of Akon stunned by how Eminem works.
I guess if you write for 65 years, you’d blind pig yourself into a few banger quotes. 2 more from Maugham that slap:
We are not the same persons this year as last; nor are those we love. It is a happy chance if we, changing, continue to love a changed person.
My wife and I never take it for granted that we have grown together. You are naive about those odds when you get married and whether that naivety was useful or not is only known retroactively. Getting older teaches that there is no front in life in which entropy rests.
And one last one from Maugham tells me he was inured to his reputation:
“I began to meditate upon the writer’s life. It is full of tribulation. First, he must endure poverty and the world’s indifference.”
At least he did not endure the poverty of intention.