Failure is not the opposite of success, just a regular ditch along the path

This weekend, I’ve come to a realisation that has made me see things in a different light.

Recently, I’ve been feeling like I’ve been failing a lot, and as I was reflecting on these failures, I realised that perhaps I shouldn’t feel bad about this. The fact that I’ve been failing a lot is probably because I’m doing new things, pushing myself into areas I haven’t explored before, and trying new creative projects.

It made me think about the concept of flow, which was first introduced by psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. According to Csikszentmihalyi, flow is the state in which a person is fully engaged and absorbed in an activity—when our skills are fully matched to the challenge at hand. When we’re in flow, we’re in the right place, and it’s here where we can experience optimal experience, joy and satisfaction.

It’s important to note that flow is not a destination, it’s a journey and it’s not always easy. Being in the flow often means pushing ourselves out of our comfort zones and taking risks. It’s a zone where you will experience occasional anxiety and boredom and the zone where you’ll feel like you’re failing a lot. However the main feeling of flow is of being able to reach our goals, and of learning and growth.

So it’s important to remember that failure is not the opposite of success, it’s a natural and necessary step on the path towards it.

Instead of seeing failure as a negative thing, let’s reframe it as an opportunity to grow and learn. When we’re feeling like we’re failing a lot, it’s a sign that we’re pushing ourselves to the upper limit of the flow zone. It’s a sign that we’re on the right track and that we’re making progress. We should not hurriedly swipe our failure away, but look at it carefully. What happened here? What went wrong? What can we do to ensure the same thing doesn’t bite us in the bum next time?

One of the keys to thriving in the flow zone is to be prepared for failure. Expect it to happen and expect to learn from it.

When we’re prepared for failure, it doesn’t feel so overwhelming when it happens. We can take it in our stride and use it as an opportunity to grow and improve.

Expect others to see our flow path with all its uncertainty, vulnerability and failure, as a demonstration of our inability. Remember that people use this same judgement on themselves to keep themselves safe.

We may safely carry on, knowing that we’re learning, and that whilst we’ll keep failing regularly, we’ll be failing at new and interesting things, while the naysayers perform perfection slap bang in the middle of their comfort zones.

This carrying on, despite all the odds, is called grit or resilience. Resilience means being able to bounce back from failure and keep moving forward. It means being able to pick yourself up and try again, even when things feel tough. A key to resilience is to reconnect often with things which are not the project we’re working on at the moment. Take a step away to regain some perspective. Oh look, I’m failing regularly but the world is still turning, and nobody much seems to care that my latest project fell flat on its face. That’s alright then.

Resilience is an important quality to cultivate when we’re working in the flow zone because we will inevitably face challenges and obstacles.

In conclusion, flow can feel like an obstacle course. It can be challenging and a vulnerable place to be, but it’s also where we experience growth and progress.

So, next time you’re feeling like you’re failing a lot, remember that you’re probably in the flow zone, and practice gratitude for that.

Embrace failure, learn from it, and use it as a stepping stone to success. Above all, remember that you’re the only one who knows what the original plan was.

The importance of balancing work and rest: why taking time off is essential for creative success

Balancing work and rest is essential for both productivity and creativity. First of all, it’s essential to put in the time and effort to do the work and pursue our creative projects.

Pablo Picasso said, “Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working.” But then, on the other hand, it’s also important to take breaks and give ourselves time to relax and recharge. As Seneca wrote, “Consult with wisdom, it will advise you not to sit forever at your desk.” Does anyone remember Celebrity Death Match? I’d like to see a contest between Pablo Picasso and Seneca on the subject:

Seneca enters, with a sling, “Do not sit forever at your desk!” he yells, unleashing hell in the form of a few boulders at Picasso. Picasso shields himself with an easel, and in response chucks a volley of cubes at Seneca (I may be missing the point of cubism here). Seneca skids hopelessly on a thousand tiny dice, falls down and breaks his coccyx.

This idea of balance is particularly relevant when it comes to creativity. In a TED talk (thank you Helen, Maker of Things for recommending this to me), Elizabeth Gilbert discusses the idea of “genius” and how it has changed over time*.

In ancient Greece and Rome, citizens believed that genius would visit them rather than being something that they possessed themselves. Gilbert argues that this perspective can be helpful in reducing the pressure we put on ourselves to be “brilliant” or “genius.” By thinking of genius as something that visits us rather than something that we are, we can have a more realistic and healthy relationship with our own creativity.

Ultimately, it’s important to find a balance between putting in the work and taking breaks. If we work too hard and never take a break, we risk burnout and decreased productivity. On the other hand, if we take too many breaks and don’t put in the work, we won’t be able to take advantage of the opportunities for inspiration and creativity that come our way. By finding a balance between work and rest, we can produce our best work and maintain an ability to exist with contentment in the world.

What’s worked for you in terms of a balance between work and rest? Let me know in the comments. Thank you for reading.

*In the early 2000’s, I was lucky enough to appear on an episode of Dave Gorman’s Genius, a Radio 4 show in which Dave Gorman assessed various ideas to see whether they were “genius” or not. Stewart Lee was the guest judge on the programme, and decided that my idea (which wasn’t even mine, it was my then boyfriend’s, who didn’t want to speak on the radio) was not genius at all. The idea was, what if you invented a telephone that allowed you to hear what the person on the other end of the line said just after they hung up the phone. “Genius” it seems, is in any case, highly subjective.

Coming Up with ‘New’ Ideas

First of all, forget new ideas. There aren’t any. See through toaster? Already exists. Dusting drones? Done. DIY bath milk? What are you even talking about Harriet, that’s not a thing. Oh alright then, it is.

Whatever you come up with, it won’t be new. New is just old + old smooshed into a ball. All the way back to, “I wonder what happens if I bang these rocks together?”

Think about it. See through toaster = toaster + window. Dusting drones = drone + your Nan. You can work out the bath milk one.

Point is, you’ve got nothing. I’ve got nothing. Nobody’s got anything – every thought has been thought before. The good news is, it doesn’t matter. Smashing old ideas together is a valid way to become Elon Musk/Cardi B/any other entrepreneur you can think of.

How is it done though?

Years ago, this dude J.W.Young wrote a thing about how to come up with fresh stuff. He was in advertising, so we can assume he had to produce every day. He didn’t believe in ‘new’ either.

Here’s his method:

1. Collect ‘materials’. Both general materials and those specific to what you’re making.
2. Digest the stuff. Here we have to be like a ‘curious octopus.’ Pick each thing up, feel it all over like a randy, sorry, curious octopus. Feel for the meaning of it. Bring two things together, see how they fit. You’re looking for relationships and ‘synergies’.
3. This is my favourite part. ‘Make absolutely no effort of a direct nature.’ I read this as: take the afternoon off and go to the pub.
4. The ‘A-ha’ moment. Yes! This is what we’ve been waiting for. The ‘new’ idea hits us as we soak in a tub full of bath milk. There’s nowhere to write it down so we squirt it as best we can on the wall in Original Source Shower Gel.
5. Idea meets reality. “The cold, grey dawn of the morning after.” We’ve all been there. See if the thing has legs. Tell people whose thoughts you value for feedback.

The good idea, according to Young, has ‘self-expanding qualities.’ If a friend thinks of things to add, you may be onto something. If they say nothing but nod politely as their eyes glaze gently over, you might want to drop it.

Coming back to his method years later, Young added that pursuing ‘general materials’ for the idea producer’s reservoir is best done as an end in itself, rather than whilst boning up for something.

With thanks to Maria Popova at Brain Pickings for an article about Young and a bunch of other stuff on creativity, productivity and how to be a human in the world.

Do creative projects have a life of their own?

“There are two types of writers, the architects and the gardeners. The architects plan everything ahead of time, like an architect building a house. They know how many rooms are going to be in the house, what kind of roof they’re going to have, where the wires are going to run, what kind of plumbing there’s going to be. They have the whole thing designed and blueprinted out before they even nail the first board up.

The gardeners dig a hole, drop in a seed and water it. They kind of know what seed it is, they know if planted a fantasy seed or mystery seed or whatever. But as the plant comes up and they water it, they don’t know how many branches it’s going to have, they find out as it grows. And I’m much more a gardener than an architect.” – George RR Martin

This gave me great hope when I read it a few weeks ago.

“Maybe I’m a gardener!” I thought to myself, watering some tomato plants. Maybe that’s why I’m rubbish at writing long stuff. I get scared by the bigness of a project and dive into a completely alien way of working.

Maybe, I think, if I work out what all the sections of this are, and plan it to the nth degree, then eventually I’ll just fill in the detail in all the little compartments I’ve created and the thing will be finished and beautifully structured.

But I just don’t work like that. Neil Gaiman explains his writing method:

“Your first draft can go way off the rails, your first draft can absolutely go up in flames, it can — you can change the age, gender, number of a character, you can bring somebody dead back to life. Nobody ever needs to know anything that happens in your first draft. It is you telling the story to yourself.

Then, I’ll sit down and type. I’ll put it onto a computer, and as far as I’m concerned, the second draft is where I try and make it look like I knew what I was doing all along.” – Neil Gaiman (The Tim Ferriss Show”)

Another gardener! Write it, allow anything at all to happen, and then pick out the bits that make up an elegant plot in draft 2. He even goes on to say he prefers hand-writing his first drafts because then he can pick out the bits he wants when typing up, rather than having to delete whole pages of work on the computer.

Then I listened to another interview today which suggests that we may not be in control of our creative projects at all.

A true creator knows that you follow the thing to where it’s going, not where you think it ought to go.” – Adam Savage (via Tim Ferriss, again.)

Now that’s really interesting.

Is it that a creative project has a life of its own, and we’re not the master of the thing we came up with at all?

“I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.” – Michelangelo

It’s all very well for people of extraordinary vision like Michelangelo, but not everything is captured inside a block of marble. And if it is, not everybody can see the statue. Some just see a very difficult and painful afternoon.

I guess if you look at it from outside your own skull and the point in time that you’re at, every creative project has a trajectory and a rate of ‘success’, but we can’t see all of it from the beginning.

So maybe the point is just to set off along the path, and see where we get to.