VISUALISATION BEFORE IMPLEMENTATION
A practise of visualisation is critical for success. Make it a ritual. Be intentional with every send, and every creative decision. Give your thoughts volume and weight; see them playing out in the theatre of the mind, THEN make them actionable. This is not always easy to do in our fast-paced whiz-bang digital world, with goldfish level attention spans, but it is essential for getting one's work out into the world. Study visualisation techniques from the great masters like the Hermeticists or the Golden Dawn. Ritual is baked into our DNA as a species, and ritual is about intention and visualisation.
KNOWING = RESPONSIBILITY
Know your craft, yes. Even more importantly, know when you know just enough about something to be dangerous to yourself, or to others; It is far better to know nothing about a thing at all than to know just a little about something, or know just enough to make bad assumptions. We live in an era where information and expertise is peddled for clicks, likes and follows—status. Regardless of wether the project succeeds or fails, the more you know, the more you’re responsible.
The more you claim to know, the more you’re responsible.
SEEK FEEDBACK, FROM THOSE IN THE ARENA
Teddy Roosevelt once said, “It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena... because there is no effort without error and shortcoming.”
He or she who doesn't actively seek feedback has no business being in a position of leadership, when hundreds of thousands of others' dollars are on the line, be hungry for feedback. Pursue it like cheesecake. Make it an addiction. But there's a catch: Only take feedback from those who are in the arena—those who are doing what you are doing, or who have done what you've done. And, wether you take the feedback on-board, or not, be grateful. and credit those who cared enough to weigh-in. None of us make it to the finish line alone.
UNDERSTAND YOUR INSTINCTS
Understanding and embracing your instincts is an important skill to build creatively, but perhaps even more importantly than blindly trusting one's instinct, is the ability to deconstruct how our instincts are operating and develop systems and formulae for directly applying those instincts to a given situation. Your instincts can be used against you. It's better to be conscious and intentional in the application of our instincts than it is to be passively manoeuvred by them! Don't let it "just happen" to you! Know the internal calculus of why you are inclined towards a certain approach and be fully conscious of how you deploy that calculus on the task in front of you.
OBSESSION IS THE COST OF EXCELLENCE
There are plenty of studios who will put out a good film. There are plenty of publishers who will put out a good book; there’s nothing wrong with producing good work. However, if you want to produce great work, then the cost is nothing short of obsession. Great work requires complete and total mental presence, an immersion in the details, and constant iteration. You will have to live in this immersion 24/7. You will have to say “no” while your friends go out to the hot new restaurants. You will have to say “no” when your spouse asks if you’re coming to bed. You will have to say “no” to the dopamine-distractions that promise satisfaction and lead only to procrastination.
Excellence demands obsession.