The Creative Habit

Powerful.

What are YOUR rituals?

Mine? As I’ve mentioned a number of times, I’m all about rising with the sun, meditating for 30 minutes, journaling, moving, eating by 8 A.M. and creating!!

For the record: Although I haven’t missed a day of meditation in 2 1/2+ years (or a day of exercise in months), the rest of these fundamentals have been way less consistent than I like over the last couple of weeks—and my overall mojo (creative and otherwise) reflects it!

I’d like to blame this issue on our move from Ecuador back to LA but, alas, it really has nothing to do with that! D’oh.

* Writes note to self: Get on it, yo! *

The Mozart Myth.

We’ve talked about it in a few of our Notes on creative genius and I think it’s a very good idea to keep on coming back to it given the fact Mozart is often believed to be the poster-child for “natural” and “born” geniuses.

Uh, yah right. Not so much.

I love the way Carol Dweck (one of the world’s leading researchers on motivation) puts it in her genius book Mindset (see Notes) where she asks: “Is it ability or mindset? Was it Mozart’s musical ability or the fact that he worked till his hands were deformed? Was it Darwin’s scientific ability or the fact that he collected specimens non-stop from early childhood?”

(In case you’re wondering, the correct answers are: It was Mozart’s incredible work ethic and it was Darwin’s lifelong commitment to collecting specimens. ;)

In his equally awesome book, Talent Is Overrated (see Notes), Geoff Colvin tells us: “Mozart’s first work regarded today as a masterpiece, with its status confirmed by the number of recordings available, is his Piano Concerto No. 9, composed when he was twenty-one. That’s certainly an early age, but we must remember that by then Wolfgang had been through eighteen years of extremely hard, expert training.”

Colvin offers this tip for parents as well: “The New Yorker’s music critic, Alex Ross, sums up much of the recent scholarship on the Miracle of Salzburg: “Ambitious parents who are currently playing the ‘Baby Mozart’ video for their toddlers may be disappointed to learn that Mozart became Mozart by working furiously hard.”” :)

And, Michelangelo’s perspective on this seems appropriate here: “If people knew how hard I had to work to gain my mastery, it would not seem so wonderful at all.”

So, let’s remember that the equation for Mozart’s genius was *not*: Birth → Genius.

It was: Birth → Decades of extremely hard work leading to mangled hands → Genius.

P.S. How ‘bout one more blurb from Tharp: “Even Mozart, with all his innate gifts, his passion for music, and his father’s devoted tutelage, needed to get twenty-four youthful symphonies under his belt before he composed something enduring with number twenty-five. If art is the bridge between what you see in your mind and what the world sees, then skill is how you build that bridge.”

Love it.

Tharp suggests a range of distractions from which we can choose to diet including: mirrors, watches, newspapers, TV, the coffee shop, etc.

I’m personally dieting from ESPN (2+ months in… go me! :) and the news (I had swapped my fasting from ESPN with feasting on general news… d’oh! :).

How ‘bout you?

What could you afford to trim back from your life for awhile?

Copying the greats.

Tharp goes off on the power of copying masters and gives a number of examples of great writers who, early in their careers, copied artists *they* thought were great.

Reminds me of Bruce Lee and Kobe Bryant.

Before Bruce Lee developed his own style, he mastered a number of arts. (Didn’t dabble with but *mastered.*) While Kobe Bryant, arguably one of the greatest basketball players ever, often describes how he’s always loved to watch tapes of the old greats and try to copy their signature moves.

Laughing at the fact that this is, obviously, essentially what I’m doing with these Notes: literally copying quote after quote and getting a deeper and deeper feel for what the greats have said across the ages as I develop my own approach to life.

How about you?

What masters can you get busy copying?!

Get on that. :)

Reminds me of Confucius’ quip (see Notes on The Analects) that “Those who do not study are only cattle dressed up in men’s clothes.”

Also reminds me of Joseph Campbell’s brilliant line from Pathways to Bliss (see Notes): “For myself, well, Alan Watts once asked me what spiritual practice I followed. I told him, ‘I underline books.’ It’s all in how you approach it.”

And, how about a little love from Twyla on *how* she reads? She tells us: “When I’m reading archeologically, I’m not reading for pleasure. I read the way I scratch for an idea, digging down deep so I can get something out of it and use it in my work. I read transactionally: How can I use this? It’s not enough for me to read a book. I have to “own” it. I scribble in the margins. I circle sentences I like and connect them with arrows to other useful sentences. I draw stars and exclamation points on every good page, to the point where the book is almost unreadable. By writing all over the pages, I transform the author’s work into my book—and mine alone.”

Genius.

That’s pretty much how I read—literally hunting for Big Ideas I can share with you in these Notes as I asterisk and exclamation point and underline the heck out of the great parts.

On that note, you might dig a little YouTube video I did on how I read a book. Click here or Google “PhilosophersNotes + YouTube + How I read a book”!

Back to you again. Are you reading/studying?

Get on that! :)

As you know if you’ve ready many of these Notes, I’m a HUGE fan of movement/exercise to aid both creativity and overall well-being.

I’ll repeat: NOT exercising is like taking a depressant. (As per Tal Ben-Shahar!)

John Ratey, M.D. puts it brilliantly in his GREAT (!!!) book Spark (see the Notes, please! :) where he tells us: “To keep our brains at peak performance, our bodies need to work hard. In Spark, I’ll demonstrate how and why physical activity is crucial to the way we think and feel. I’ll explain the science of how exercise cues the building blocks of learning in the brain; how it affects mood, anxiety, and attention; how it guards against stress and reverses some of the effects of aging in the brain; and how in women it can help stave off the sometimes tumultuous effects of hormonal changes. I’m not talking about the fuzzy notion of runner’s high. I’m not talking about a notion at all. These are tangible changes, measured in lab rats and identified in people.”

This isn’t a “maybe it helps” kinda thing. It’s a scientific FACT.

As Sonja Lyubomirsky tells us in The How of Happiness (see Notes): “No one in our society needs to be told that exercise is good for us. Whether you are overweight or have a chronic illness or are a slim couch potato, you’ve probably heard or read this dictum countless times throughout your life. But has anyone told you— indeed, guaranteed you—that regular physical activity will make you happier? I swear by it.”

You exercising enough?

If so, SWEET!

If not, get on that!! :)

Luck.

That wonderful location at the crossroads of preparation and good fortune.

I can’t think of the word without thinking of Thomas Jefferson’s mojo: “I find that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have.”

You working hard and preparing to be lucky? Or just buying lottery tickets? :)

P.S. Twyla adds: “Being prepared for luck is like getting a voice message that tells you, “Something good may happen to you between 9:00 A.M. and 5:00 P.M. today. Make sure you’re at your desk (or in your studio or office or at your laboratory bench) working. And keep your eyes open for it.”

Plus: “Woody Allen said that eighty percent of success in show business is showing up. It’s the same thing with luck: eighty percent of it is showing up to see it.”

Lots of goodness there!

First, the poetic: “Art is a vast democracy of habit.”

Ah. Love that.

And, reminds me of Eric Butterworth’s genius goodness on practice from his brilliant Spiritual Economics (see Notes) where he tells us: “Ask the great athlete or the concert pianist or the successful actor if they arrived at the place where they need no further practice. They will tell you that the higher you climb in proficiency and public acceptance, the greater the need for practice.”

In his great book The Talent Code (see Notes), Daniel Coyle takes it all a step further and tells us: “To sum up: it’s time to rewrite the maxim that practice makes perfect. The truth is, practice makes myelin, and myelin makes perfect.”

Check out the Notes for more goodness on the myelin that’s formed in your brain when you practice and know that, again, it’s not any kind of practice. It’s what he calls “deep practice.”

In Coyle’s words: “Deep practice is built on a paradox: struggling in certain targeted ways—operating at the edges of your ability, where you make mistakes—makes you smarter. Or to put it a slightly different way, experiences where you’re forced to slow down, make errors, and correct them—as you would if you were walking up an ice-covered hill, slipping and stumbling as you go—end up making you swift and graceful without you realizing it.”

You practicing deeply and perfectly? :)

Amen to that.

And, as it turns out, that’s pretty much *exactly* what Sir Ken Robinson tells us in his great book The Element (see Notes) where he tells us: “My aim in writing [this book] is to offer a richer version of human ability and creativity and of the benefits to us all of connecting properly with our individual talents and passions. This book is about issues that are of fundamental importance in our lives and in the lives of our children, our students, and the people we work with. I use the term the Element to describe the place where the things we love to do and the things we are good at come together. I believe it is essential that each of us find his or her Element, not simply because it will make us more fulfilled but because, as the world evolves, the very future of our communities and institutions will depend on it.”

Where do YOUR passion and skill meet?

How can you rock your Element a little (or perhaps a lot?) more?!