Indispensable Day Dreaming

đź’­ INDISPENSABLE DAY DREAMING

I Cried On My Turkey Club

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Published On Oct 7, 2023 (Updated On Apr 21, 2025) · 194 Views
Your creativity is needed now more than ever, but you weren’t taught how to create.
Everyone I admire has one thing in common. They share their creative insights, and they have a lot of them.
Foremost examples of inspiring creative people are easy to find. Beyonce, Elon Musk, Zendaya - we idolize them, simplify their stories into parables, and categorize them as super-human. Phil Collins can’t help but write music so inspiring that we make memes about him 30 years later.
 
notion image
So, how am I, the Average Joe, supposed to be as creative and inspiring as the man who wrote Two Worlds, Two Worlds Reprise, Two Worlds Radio Version, and Two Worlds Finale?
The bad news is that you won’t be the next Phil Collins. The good news is that this is the most opportune moment in history to explore and exploit your creative insights.
Learning to approach life as an artist is the key to creating self purpose and indispensable value.

What Does It Mean to Be An Artist?

Rick Rubin defines art as “To bring something into existence that wasn’t there before.”
Seth Godin’s definition is “A personal gift that changes the recipient.”
I define art as a vulnerable expression made available for others to receive. My definition has two parts:
Vulnerable - the art includes a piece of yourself.
Available - it is only art if others can receive it. There is a chance that no one else sees your work, but the bravery to publish your work to a public forum is critical in the creative process.

Remy - Anyone Can Cook

Most of us don’t consider ourselves artists. The term is reserved for traditional forms of creation: art, music, literature. I don’t believe this is true. Traditional artists may create a higher volume of art or distribute it more widely, but we are all artists.
You can be an artist as a Starbucks barista, a construction worker, a musician, or a software engineer. We all create art every day without knowing it. A new way of communicating a technical concept to a co-worker is art. A child-like fart joke that makes your partner laugh is art. A sick 🤙 new strategy to win a game of Fortnite is art.
 

🎭 Why You Should Be An Artist

Artists are Indispensable

My primary craft is Software Engineering. Many job descriptions for software engineers will discuss the need to be good at “debugging.” To become a senior engineer at my last company, you had to “master the art of debugging.”
 
“Troubleshooting is never part of a job description because if you could describe the steps needed to shoot trouble, there wouldn't be trouble in the first place, right? Troubleshooting is an art, and it's a gift from the troubleshooter to the person in trouble. The troubleshooter steps in when everyone else has given up, puts themself on the line, and donates the energy and the risk to the cause.”
Seth Godin
 
The ability to combine technical skills, focused and diffuse thinking, and creative awareness to solve problems is the most valuable skill you can develop.
 

Art Is Deeply Satisfying

Shipping (completing and sharing) your creative work is incredibly satisfying.
I once played a game of Codenames (a game where you give clues to your teammates so they can guess one of many cards in a set). It was the final turn of the game, and I had the seemingly impossible task of connecting three items with a one-word hint: A hospital, Saturn, and a record player. In a moment of unique creativity, I realized that my partner, who was a nurse, would recognize that the word “rotation” applies to shifts at a hospital and also describes how a planet and record player move. I gave the hint, my partner connected the dots, and to the shock of our opponents, we won the game.
This is the silliest and most insignificant example of my creative efforts. Even so, this brief glimpse of creativity was so satisfying that I vividly remember it five years later.
 

You Will Do Aristotle Proud

Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.
Aristotle
We all have unique art to create. Finding out what that art is a highly challenging endeavor. Art is a skill that requires diligent practice and substantial effort. The artist is constantly at battle with a myriad of enemies: self-doubt, comparison to others, financial pressure, and information overload. Overcoming these fears is a skill that takes training. The more you train, the more you learn about your natural talents and motivations. The more you create, the more purpose you derive.
 

Cover Bands Aren’t Famous

Rule followers don’t win big.
In an interview, Bob Dylan once said, “My records were never perfect… I am no mainstream artist”. The interviewer reminded Dylan, “But you’ve sold over one hundred million records?”
“Yeah, I know. It’s a mystery to me, too.”
Creating art does not guarantee success, nor should you use external success as a measurement of your art, but being an artist is the only chance to decouple your work from a stagnant hourly rate.
 

We Were Not Taught To Create

Technology is accelerating. Quickly.
There have been five technical revolutions in the modern era.
Agricultural: 1600-1740.
Industrial: 1780-1840
Technical: 1870-1920
Scientific: 1940-1970
Information: 1975-2021
 
Each revolution has come faster than the last and brings even more change.
The Technical Revolution (or the Second Industrial Revolution) occurred between 1870 and 1920. The modern US school system was developed at the same time (all states had tax-subsidized subsidized elementary schools by 1870 ). During the Technical Revolution, we got really good at building machines and mass-producing goods. Inventing machines is difficult. Working with them is easy once you get past the initial learning curve.
Our earliest machines all required humans in the loop. Thus, the need for cheap factory labor was born, and the greedy claws of capitalism stepped in to do its job.
 
We want one class of persons to have a liberal education, and we want another class of persons, a very much larger class of necessity, in every society, to forgo the privileges of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks.
Woodrow Wilson
 
The 28th president of the United States made it very clear that the modern education system was not designed to leverage our creativity. Schools were created to teach us how to be a cog in a machine. Be here on time, don’t speak out of turn, learn what I say, and you’ll get a good grade. Turn this piece of metal as fast as possible, and we’ll give you a steady paycheck, provide you with modern comforts, guarantee your retirement, and cap your downside.
Although Wilson’s quote feels like one of the more evil statements ever read, this plan worked well to help progress the world forward. Sure, working in a factory may not sound great, but relative to life before the technical revolution, the ability to have a steady job, resources to support your family, and some free time to engage in leisure was incredibly novel in 1900.
A hundred years later, the rules are changing faster than the world can catch up. The means of production are distributed, readily available, and becoming universally automated - the secure factory job won’t be around for long.
 
We don’t need rule followers; we need artists.

Strategies For Creation

Here's the truth that you have to wrestle with: the reason that art (writing, engaging, leading, all of it) is valuable is precisely why I can't tell you how to do it. If there were a map, there'd be no art, because art is the act of navigating without a map.
Seth Godin
 
I don’t know what you should create or how you should create it, but I can share a few techniques that I have found helpful when thinking creatively.

Art Requires Craft

Art and craft are not the same thing.
A craft is a set of technical skills that turn ideas into reality. Art is the process of experimenting with an idea to see where you might end up. We often mix up the two.
Learning how to oil paint is a craft, not an art. Perfectly replicating the Mona Lisa is not art. Even the skill Da Vinci used to paint the Mona Lisa is not art. The art was Da Vinci’s idea to employ jesters to capture Mona Lisa’s faint smile as he painted.
Craft is only useful to the extent that it translates your ideas to others.
Craft can and should be efficient. Learn from others’ experiences, employ well-known strategies, take online courses, mimic and compare your skills.
Art, on the other hand, cannot be efficient. It is impossible to optimize the unknown, and you must move deliberately to capture the new world you are seeing.
When beginning your journey as an artist, go wide and test out as many crafts as you can (design, public speaking, engineering, etc…). Listen to what brings you excitement and taps into your natural talents. Most importantly, see if a certain craft brings out your internal artist. You may have no ideas about melodies to play on the piano, but you might be flooded with thoughts when writing about politics.
 

Schedule Exploration Time

Discipline equals freedom.
Jocko Willink
Even if exploration happens slowly, we need regularly scheduled times to explore. When the entire world is out to steal our attention, this is much easier said than done. Most of us feel overwhelmed and desperate for time; how do we create more time to do nothing?
Being diligent about regular creative sessions helps us in two ways. It allows us to explore new ideas, and it helps us detach from the overwhelming feeling of manufactured urgency. By sacredly maintaining a yoga schedule, morning walk, or quiet lunch alone, we allow ourselves to come up with our best ideas while also realizing that we may not have to do a quarter of the things we think we need to do.

Deliberate Day Dreaming

Even though it is impossible to know when inspiration will strike, I have found a few patterns that drive my excitement and creativity.
The first step is to preload information. Read an essay or section of a book, watch a technical YouTube video, listen to a new song, etc. Then, perform activities that allow diffuse thinking—driving, running, walking, being on an airplane. These activities require a detached attention that allows your subconscious to wander.
My favorite practices are:
  1. Waking up excessively early, drinking too much caffeine, and driving in nature.
  1. Performing high-intensity workouts to the point where I feel like I can’t continue, and then listening to audiobooks or meditating.
  1. Traveling to a new location while listening to nostalgic music.
Note the circumstances when you feel inspired, take advantage of those moments when they happen, and experiment to see if recreating them opens the inspiration again.
 

Artists’ Golden Rules

  1. Write down every idea you have. Make a practice of reviewing, deleting, or promoting ideas based on how they feel in hindsight.
  1. Do not judge your ideas. Do judge your craft.
  1. Once you begin crafting an idea, set a deadline. Perfection is the enemy of done.
  1. Ship at all costs. Even if you don’t like what you made, somebody else probably will.
  1. Collaborate. All ideas come from a shared origin. Going at it alone is difficult and limiting.
 

Outro: I Cried On My Turkey Club

I had the idea for this essay while sitting at 34.061, -118.444. I just finished a workout while listening to Rick Ruben’s new book, The Creative Act. I picked up a Sandwich and sat down to eat. I usually watch 15 minutes of my favorite daily show while eating as a form of decompression and entertainment. Inspired by Rick, I sat and did nothing instead. Before attempting this practice of awareness, I had a moment of anxiety. I was scared of doing nothing because I am accustomed to constantly absorbing information. I let the feeling pass and began my lunch.
I cleared my head and allowed myself to watch the world around me, listening to and releasing thoughts as they came. I noticed more than I had in a long time. “Hmm, the cheese is on the bottom of the sandwich. Look, Trader Joe’s is selling a fun new color scheme of potted plants. Wow, I’ve never noticed how the top of that building looks. Ooh, a butterfly.”
As I observed the afternoon sun breaking through a series of windswept branches, I took a deeply delicious bite of my sandwich (thank you, tomato, bacon, and mayonnaise). Marveling at my bite’s deliciousness, I felt a pinhole leak in my headspace. This pinhole soon burst into a waterfall, and I was flooded with a deep ecstasy. I don’t know why this emotion came; it just did. Maybe it was the endorphins from the workout I completed. Perhaps the sun was entering my eyeballs in just the right way. Maybe god herself made my sandwich. I’ll never know why it happened, but I am grateful I made myself available for the moment.
I let myself experience the sensation for as long as possible and then wrote nonstop without reviewing, analyzing, or judging until I had no thoughts left.
I cried on my club and had the idea for this essay at the same time, all because I chose to do nothing.
I hope this essay inspires you as much as my Jersey Mike’s toasted #8 inspired me.
 
Thank you to Seth Godin and Rick Rubin for writing incredible books about art.

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