Episode 3 : Process
Structuring Practice
The common tragedy of being a beginner is that the beauty of being a beginner is often lost on the beginner himself. We often fail at being generous with ourselves enough to enjoy being ignorant. That is a shame because its a joy that doesn’t last long. Agency’s approach to process is about milking the excitement of beginner’s mind rather than being afraid of it.
A practice is formed by taking positive actions that generate results. And judging the results is unimportant. Instead of getting lost imagining the many ways you have failed to achieve your original plan, im here to convince you to focus solely on what can be achieved with the tools (and skill level) at hand, right now.
Accumulated experience is where learning comes from, even if these experiences feel to the creator like absolute failures — one should always embrace the failures that are available today and look forward to the failures of tomorrow.
Doesn’t matter how many excuses we have, an un-shot arrow can’t hit anything, aimed for or not. And most people spend more time worrying about failing than actually accumulating delightful failures that will one day form the essence and uniqueness of the craft they are pursuing. When I was learning how to juggle, my instructor said “We judge the student not on the juggling but on the enthusiasm with which they pick the balls up from the floor”.
And now thinking about, ain’t that the truth? Show me not where you’ve end up but rather the TENACITY with which you’ve trodden your way there.
And if you are lacking the energy to be tenacious is often caused by the excess of attention given to anything that is not the act of doing the deed that needs to be done. Often as beginners we wind up being too zealous and careful due to insecurity or desire to prove ourselves. We take less risks, missing out on the numerous learnings that come with embracing uncertainty. Or on the other hand we might end up overwhelmed, acting too carelessly to the point of not being tense enough to truly experience what’s happening in front of us, going through the motions in an attempt to avoid feeling hurt and eventually giving up on the limp practice that has no meaning to us. So lets take a deepeer look at how to be good at being a beginner.
Once learned, beginners mind becomes important to all masters — after all, one cannot master all practices. If After mastering one thing you cannot tolerate being a beginner again you are as good as done, painted yourself into a corner of likely impending irrelevance, forever outdated — the human version of a stagnant cesspool. You’re likely not a master at all.
Masters become masters by mastering growth and growth always means finding new points of ignorance. Masters learn (and never forget) beginners mind. Therefore if masterhood is to be had, one must learn how to begin, and beginners mind is all about sucking at something and being happy enough to do it until you stop sucking so much.
Those who become masters at being beginners learn to balance caring and getting on with it by accepting their mastery level and being who they are, all the while pushing the envelope enough to pile on more results than before. (Whining as little as possible). And I want us to take a look at how to do this everyday.
In a nutshell, it is much harder to do something than have an opinion about it. As you start practicing something new — be it coding, writing, or carpentry, it’s much easier to judge it and develop a good taste in it than to do it. You are most likely an educated individual. If you decided to become a maker — it’s also very likely that you are a consumer in the topic/field you are creating in — and accumulated some knowledge about it. There in lies the pain of being a beginner. You’re likely able to tell that you suck. And I’m here to tell you that you should not let this deter you at all.
It gets worse if you are super into the topic or technique. The more you love, respect and cherish the type of work, all the more likely you are to be super hard on yourself about your own results. It’s likely and expected that as you switch to creator, your taste as a consumer is more refined than your skill. The stuff you create doesn’t stand a chance against your connoisseur taste and to be honest, you’d be a freak of nature if it did!
And although freaks of nature do exist, they’re extremely rare — and even for them, it still takes equal parts luck and work to get anything good going. Add to that: even if you are good — even if you are truly special right off the bat — of all people you’re the least likely to be able to tell — because we tend to take for granted all that is abundant. And you, if anything, live in an absolut abundance of… you.
So let’s leave the opinions about your work for others. I recommend this for the first 200 hours of any new practice you take up. Get to that hour 200 to earn the right to fashion an opinion. Maybe it should be 1000 hours? Maybe you shouldn’t count hours — but just make sure you keep doing it even when the going gets rough.
Now that you’ve hopefully abandoned the self importance of judging the final result of your work there is still another trap to avoid: Getting caught up on judging each little part while you work and forgetting the whole of the work. You know, when you get obsessed and zeroed in on one aspect of a problem to the point of spending a disproportionate amount of time and energy on it only to realise that the result does not fit the overall structure or you’ve spent way too much time, that it took so much energy you can’t even dream of a do-over — and barely feel like finishing what you are doing in the first place. The piece loses momentum, the process is emptied and finishing feels like a chore. That, in my experience, is the trap that claims the ambitions of the creators most often. By binding you in loops of repeating the same mistakes over and over again — or worse — Turns you into a one trick pony with a collection of incomplete processes in a drawer.
And don’t get me wrong — we cherish mistakes, but just as long as we don’t make the same one everyday. I deploy a little mantra to deal with this. By far the sentence I’ve repeated the most times in my entire life — to students and to myself. This should truly become second nature to all in my opinion.
You should wake up repeating it, you should sleep repeating it. I do not exaggerate when I say that sticking to this maxim is your ticket to masterhood and perhaps happiness. It’s super important, so whatever you do, don’t forget this sentence. You know what? You should write this down. I hope you have a pen to write this down. Here it goes: Ready? Ok: The Mantra is:
From the General to the Particular, always.
From the general to the particular always.
One… more… time:
From the General to the Particular always.
This is a lot harder than it sounds and it demands a some situational awareness in the creation process that only comes from experience, but experience will only be gained by trying, so… try. Always ask yourself: Am I working at the biggest problem possible for this project / work / process at the moment? In other words: Does the problem that I am solving right now help me solve the biggest possible number of other problems ahead. Does it help support all the decisions that will come from here? Or have I gone off on a tangent that does not define the future of the project at all?
Or to put it the other way around, ask yourself: Am I working directly from the discoveries and decisions I’ve made or am I out on a limb, guestimating on a small part of the whole without ever being able to be sure how this action relates to everything else and therefore I am overworking it trying to assuage my unjustified insecurity?
Even with the slightest intuition that this might be happening: It’s probably happening. Take a step back and ask yourself: Am I working at the biggest issue available for me to do work on or am I burning myself out at the particular before having a vision for the general? The whole? The Bigger picture?
This is so important that in my humble opinion, the capacity to execute this all of the time is the only thing that distinguishes a master from the rest of us. In the sense that the master always progresses from the general to the particular, which means — keeping the whole in mind, at all times. Because he has done it enough that the broad brushstroke is enough. So what could feel like a failure for the inexperienced practitioner, is for the one who knows the path, an elegant stepping stone. It’s a part of the process.
Instead of redoing and redoing, the master tends to the whole in growing levels of resolution and trusting that whatever navigation that will be necessary will be best performed this way: By having the work at a similar level of sophistication at all times. This approach ensures that at all stages the work maintains a sensation of wholeness — and if disaster ensues, it always happens at the lowest possible cost to take a step back and reacess, redo or partially destroy aspects of the work that are breaking with the whole. Which is equally relevant for a piece of art as it is to a business model. This is a way to respect chaos and turbulence and allow the inner vision of the creators to adjust themselves to the territory instead of brute-forcing a plan into existence.
Lets formalise this a bit:
The master is at the service of the relationships between the work, the concept, the general form and the impact on the perceivers — NOT at the service of his perception of his own skill.
A masterpiece is never about how hard it was to make! Effort disappears in the effect caused by masterhood — The master has nothing to prove. Having nothing to prove is ALL that makes a master. Being a master is almost free — the only price is to work as if you have nothing to prove, but with absolute dedication and service to the relationships between: work, concept, form and impact.
This is only possible once we learn that there’s nothing to be afraid off — or even if there is, General to the Particular is the only to tackle it effectively. And it allows us to cherish our apparent failures and quirks enough to play with them for longer, to allow them to talk to us. Which is our…
Ideas ALWAYS sound beautiful and amazing. In the realm of the platonic everything is blemishless — but why so few of them resist the process of implementation? This mismatch often drive creators off track in many different ways and always with the same outcome: A sketch in a drawer that brought no good to no one.
Your ideas are born in the limitless space of the mind, but once work starts, compromise comes on horse back! Limitations of skill, time, budget, space, comfort and all other things!
These limitations are best seen as friends. Where you’ll get is the direct consequence of all the places you couldn’t go. How elegant can you make this journey? Who can you take with you? The experienced creator knows that the idea can become the tyrant of the creation process! Creating has nothing to do with the ideas in our heads — or it does only to the point where they turn into something through action — To build a healthy relationship with ideas give yourself to action, to creation within the limitations one currently has while at the same time trying to expand that horizon! Yes, ideas are the guiding star, but the path is made on the ground. Just because you can never get to a star, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t climb a mountain and grazed knees and elbows are to be expected.
What is meditation?
Someone intelligent once said: “Well, Meditation is the way the Buddha sits” — meaning that the essence of “Meditation” is the meditator — and not the specific practice that is chosen. At the core of any meditative practice lies a set of constraints and a focus of attention. The discipline often consists of sticking to it for a period of time to see what happens. If you’re a Buddha and achieved absolute awareness, I guess all is meditation.
Could we somehow turn our processes into meditative states, then? Enjoy protected moments of work where we are in a trance of exploration, always trying to flow to the biggest decision available at a given moment, taking a decent shot at solving it but completely forbidden to indulge in second guessing ourselves? Keeping within our channel of “flow” between too much anxiety and the flaccid boredom of just going through the motions?
Yes we can.
It’s all about separating Synthesis from Analysis.
Synthesis is the process of putting things together — or even more precisely: ‘Poiesis’ — “the activity in which a person brings something into being that did not exist before” — and of course, nothing is created in a vacuum — what the creator does is associate parts of preexisting elements be it materials, tools, concepts or sampling something directly to create new relationships in form and meaning or just to see what happens. This is a rude definition of a Formative process. Notice that from this direction, there is no explicit difference between what’s “artistic”, “creative” disciplines or anything else — as long as it involves solving a problem in a somewhat novel direction the principle exposed here applies.
The polar opposite of this exploratory state is Analysis. Where we cut things apart to understand how the relationships were formed. It’s a process of judgement and seeks understanding of the whole by looking at the parts. It’s not exactly a life affirming process, this vivisection. You can’t study the parts of the bird in mid-air. Autopsy is only possible once the bird is dead and cut open on the operating table.
These states don’t mix very well. Yet when working we often insist in trying to be the bird and analyse it at the same time and end up failing at both. So that’s why these states need to be protected from each other.
And this is the process episode — so we clearly have a favourite at this stage. If one thing is guaranteed to destroy any creative process is the attempt to accrue final judgement on a process whose heart is still beating. When in process our job lies in ‘Poiesis’, and that is reached through ‘Praxis’ — or — Practice. Process. Leave the analysis for others at this point, especially if you’re a beginner: Remember — Analysis powers can be learned in a book or in class or something. And are forged through social convention. Synthesis powers need to be earned and are absolutely individual.
Episode 3 assignment:
Here we become designers of process meditations by defining constraints, a tool set, a type of practice and a focus of attention.
Our goal is to allow ourselves to accumulate action after action, suspending judgement. And to do that for predetermined amounts of time.
Even the biggest monuments where created 25 minutes at a time. Use an alarm clock if necessary: Repeat to yourself — Now it’s process time, no mind allowed, let’s dance — You will be absolutely surprised what can be achieved with 1h of focused creative work without letting your MIND get in the way too much.
In research we were focused and searching for something — but now, the game has changed:
You only become a good meditator when you’re not looking for anything.
And you realise how good it is to sit, which is a highly sophisticated form of doing! You can play with the parameters as much as you want — but now I’ll suggest a defined way of setting this practice:
This exercise will also take about at least 1h to perform. Start by answering these 4 questions on paper, with about 1 paragraph each!
List your Support(s) / Format(s): What are available to you in the room where you decided to work? Paper? Canvas? Clay? Your body? Cameras, Recorders? Sources of Light? Spices? Anything on which you can make formative decisions on works! Be it the DAO Canvas or an actual Canvas. Voice memos on a recorder. A camera. A written document. All of these are formats and supports where decisions can be made.
Tool(s): Now we want to find out what are the things we can make decisions WITH! Watercolours? Your body? Camera? Voice Recorder? Computer — SPICES, sometimes supports and tools can overlap!
Limitations: Take the time to become aware of the limitations you want to impose on yourself OR that are imposed by outside forces. How much time each stage can take? How many tools? What feelings guide the decisions? What are you wearing while you work? All limitations, logical or not can be used to form a particular praxis. You can even use ritual and cerimony — whatever helps. Think about the obvious ones like the place in the office or apartment — list it as well. It might be useful for when it comes time to shake things up later.
Themes: informed by your observations and researches so far, pick a theme. Or just a general sensation of a theme that is feeling specially alive or potent for you. Process is your opportunity to sit with it and it will help tie it all together — maybe you can feel the theme wanting to influence tool choices, support choices and limitations. That’s when things get interesting. Let it.
WORK for 40 min non stop. That means no bathroom, no water, no nothing. Force it — this might be necessary in the beginning, just to make you aware of how many times we try to escape the task at hand when faced with doubt. Once the 40 minutes are up, rest for at least 15 min. DON’T get back to work until the break is done — and also don’t do anything else except indulging and resting. When these 15 min are up, repeat as needed.
Do share your results on our collective Miro and Agency weekly call. If you don’t know how to do it just go to www.agencydao.com/howtosendadream — Very much looking forward to what you are gonna create. Separating my processes from my doubts has done wonder for my creative life. Thank you for listening and see you in the next one.
If you need any help to become a dreamer give us a shout in any of the community channels.
