Creativity

Ralph Waldo Emerson said personal energy “resides in the moment of transition from the past to a new state.” It resides in the creative process. The finished product, he said, is dead in its completion. But the process of creating? That’s ripe with growth and opportunity.

There’s a word for something done solely for the end result: chore. This theme has come up again and again in recent books I’ve read, and I want to share two of my favorite takeaways.

How to Reduce Intrinsic Interest
There’s a classic psychology experiment involving children who liked to draw. They were given pens and paper and split into two groups. The children in the first group were given a reward for their drawings, which they were told about beforehand. The children in the second group received no rewards nor mention of them. After a few weeks, the children in the first group (those rewarded for their drawings) were less interested in drawing than those in the second group. The first group’s drawings were also judged to be of lower quality. The second group not only produced better work, but showed continued enjoyment in the activity. “The hypothesis,” says Matthew B. Crawford, “is that the child begins to attribute his interest, which previously needed no justification, to the external reward, and this has the effect of reducing his intrinsic interest in it.”

Being Isn’t as Real as Doing
In How to Write One Song, Jeff Tweedy says the question is not, Who do I want to be? It’s, What do I want to do? “Do you want to be a “star”? Don’t bother. You’re going to lose,” he says. “Even if you make it, you’ll lose. Because you’re never going to be exactly what you’re picturing.” Let’s say you want to be a rockstar. If by rockstar you mean you want to play music in front of people, you can do that. You can probably gradually play to larger groups of people too. You can experiment with new musical forms. You can dye your hair and create your own persona. Basically, you can do nearly everything “rockstars” do. Rockstar is a title. It’s not real. Doing something is real. Creating is real. You can be someone or you can do something.

Just That You Do the Right Thing
Stoicism is built around doing. Its goal is not to make you sound smart or help you debate abstract theories. It aims to solve problems in the real world. It doesn’t matter that you know Seneca’s letters by heart if you’re still worried about things you don’t control. 

Epictetus said don’t talk about your philosophy, embody it. “If your choices are beautiful, so too will you be.” And anything that is beautiful, said Marcus Aurelius, is beautiful by itself; beauty needs no title or recognition. “Does an emerald lose its quality if it is not praised?”

Doing the right thing—that’s what matters. That someone notices? Not your concern. That you’re given a reward because of it? Yawn. “Just that you do the right thing,” Marcus said, “the rest doesn’t matter. Cold or warm. Tired or well-rested. Despised or honored. Dying…or busy with other assignments. . . . There as well: ‘To do what needs doing’.”

(If you want to learn more about Stoic philosophy, these are the best books to start with: The Daily Stoic, Meditations, Letters From a Stoic, Discourses, Enchiridion, On the Shortness of Life.)

Books Read This Month

I needed a distraction this month, and John Grisham’s The Reckoning did the trick. Jake Brown’s Rick Rubin: In the Studio was a fascinating look at the why behind Rubin’s creative decisions, and how these decisions created and revolutionized multiple music genres. (I’m eager to read his new book The Creative Act: A Way of Being.) I’m also slowly making my way through Gary Provost’s 100 Ways to Improve Your Writing, which is short but rich. And I’ve just started reading The Gift of Fear by Gavin de Becker which I’m really enjoying so far. He uses real-life crime stories (which read like thrillers) to explain the psychology of human violence, and how to recognize the warning signs that can keep you safe.

We feel lousy when we think other people are doing better than us. We feel superior when we think we are doing better than other people. Basically, as Ryan Holiday put it, there are only two ways that comparing yourself to others can make you feel: crappy or egotistical.

Comparing ourselves to others is the gateway to competing with them. And if we’re not careful, we end up competing for the sake of competing. Instead of a means to an end, it becomes an end in itself. We end up playing a game we don’t actually care about—and dulling our shine to stay in it.

Lamborghini’s Refusal To Compete

Before becoming one of the world’s best carmakers, mechanic Ferruccio Lamborghini built tractors. He also drove and modified Ferraris. Souping up his red Ferrari 250 GTE Pinin Farina Coupe, he would speed past the best drivers in the world—Ferrari test drivers—and leave them in disbelief. But, as Luke Burgis writes in Wanting, Lamborghini had been having mechanical problems with his Ferrari. One of those problems was the clutch. It didn’t feel right. Upon inspection, he realized the clutch in his $87,000 luxury car was the same clutch he used in his $650 tractors. When he brought this to the attention of Ferrari founder, Enzo Ferrari, he would hear nothing of it. So, Lamborghini decided he would make his own luxury car.

He founded Automobili Lamborghini in 1963 and made his first car in 1964. Four years later, in 1968, he released the Miura P400s—an iconic car that both Frank Sinatra and Miles Davis bought. With the success of the Miura, Lamborghini’s engineers pleaded with him to make a car that could hold its own in a race against a Ferrari. But Lamborghini refused. While he knew that, to a point, competition could be good (after all, Lamborghini used Ferrari’s inadequate clutch as fuel to start his own company), he also knew the dangers of rivalries and how quickly competition could devolve into one. So he didn’t give in. (Future leaders of Automobili Lamborghini were eventually lured into the race car business, but not while Lamborghini was still alive and running things.) Rivalries, he knew, had no end. Lamborghini invested his energy into opportunities and craftsmanship. The result was that he built not only a successful business but also, on his property, a barn that he filled with his favorite models of Lamborghini automobiles. And he was able to spend the last twenty years of his life in peace, giving fun tours of his favorite cars to visitors.

How To Have a Good Shot at Building the Best

Builder of the world’s best racing shells for crew teams, George Pocock was “all but born with an oar in his hand.” Both his paternal and maternal grandfathers were competitive boatbuilders. His father built competitive racing shells for Eton College. George followed in his family’s footsteps by combining his boat knowledge with his peerless love of craftsmanship. At the height of his career, he was building and supplying racing shells to almost every top crew university in the country (including Washington University, whose crew team won a stunning victory at the 1936 Berlin Olympics). His racing shells were superior to others. Each shell was built with care and patience—possibly because of the advice his father had given him when he was younger: “No one will ask you how long it took to build; they will only ask who built it.”

Pocock, like Lamborghini, would not compromise his craftsmanship for competition. When a crew coach all but demanded Pocock reduce his $1,150 per-shell price, arguing that other racing shells weren’t nearly as expensive, Pocock wouldn’t budge. He flatly refused to lower his price to compete with other suppliers. “I cannot build all of them,” he said, “but I can still have a good shot at building the best.”

Pocock, like Lamborghini, would not compromise his craftsmanship for competition. When a crew coach all but demanded Pocock reduce his $1,150 per-shell price, arguing that other racing shells weren’t nearly as expensive, Pocock wouldn’t budge. He flatly refused to lower his price to compete with other suppliers. “I cannot build all of them,” he said, “but I can still have a good shot at building the best.”

False Desires are Limitless

Seneca said that natural desires are limited, but false ones are limitless. Vanity, pleasure-seeking, rivalries—all these are limitless. How, then, are nature’s desires satisfied? By sticking to your own reasoned principles. “When you would know whether that which you seek is based upon a natural or upon a misleading desire, consider whether it can stop at any definite point,” Seneca said. “If you find, after having traveled far, that there is a more distant goal always in view, you may be sure that this condition is contrary to nature.”