I read Sam Bennett’s Get It Done: From Procrastination to Creative Genius last May when I really needed a kick in the pants to release some of the backlog of content I had accumulated over the preceding semester. Here are some of the key takeaways I took from it:
Procrastination is pressure that’s relieved by action: “The pain caused by procrastination reminds you that your projects are important to you… Breaking your project down into manageable, bite-size bits makes it something you can actually do, as opposed to leaving it a big, overwhelming, untouchable vision that leaves you stuck… As much as procrastination hurts your heart, moving forward - even just a little, tiny bit - makes your heart sing.”
Pursuing perfection stops pursuing good: “The best lessons are going to come from your actually diving in and making your own mistakes and compassionately analyzing your successes and your failures… If you put enough good work out into the world, maybe someday someone will be researching you.”
Deadlines inspire action: “There is beauty and magic to deadlines… they set our wheels spinning and they let us know when we’re slacking off. Nothing gets anything done until the last minute. Now, the ‘last minute’ is earlier for some people than it is for others… but for those people the pressure of their internal clock makes ‘early’ or ‘on time’ feel like ‘late.’”
There’s no cap on success: “There is no shortage of success in the world. They didn’t get your success. They got their success. So bless them and dismiss them and bring that attention back to you… We look inside ourselves and all we see are the seed. You must trust that your seeds, with proper tending, will grow and flourish and serve to impress and inspire… You don’t know how another artist works and slaves and worries and gives up and starts again - all you see are the results.”
Fear signals greatness is on the horizon: “I’ve noticed that the more daring the creative area, the more vicious and violent those critical inner voices can become. So over time, I’ve learned that the louder and meaner the voices in my head are, the greater the probability that I’ve just had a really great idea… The voices in your head are trying to keep you safe. They don’t want you to make yourself vulnerable. They try to scare you into in action by telling you that no one will care about your work is that people will judge you harshly. But art is about making yourself vulnerable… The world needs you art.”
Here are some other recommendations from around the internet:
An announcement: I’ll be reacting to the Pokemon Direct live on Twitch tomorrow (Jan 9) at 9:30am ET/6:30am PT/2:30pm GMT. The replay will be posted to my YouTube channel soon after the event ends.
Watch this: You’re insane if you don’t want to work at Pixar after watching this time-lapse of a day in the life of the studio.
Read this: The New York Times’Kimiko de Freytas-Tamura reports on Seke, an endangered language from Nepal’s Mustang region that has one-fourteenth of its speakers hailing from one Brooklyn apartment building.
Watch this: I love absolutely everything about Oscar Enestad’s performance from last year’s Melodifestivalen, Sweden’s national selection for the Eurovision Song Contest.
Tweet of the day: Just watch and enjoy.
Listen to this: Kotori & Synthion have an epic remix of Madeon’s All My Friends that bangs in every sense of the word.
That’s all for now, see you Friday.