I still don’t know what “the practice” is. (I understand why I don’t, but that doesn’t make it any easier….)
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About the book (a reminder)
The Practice is comprised of over 200 short chapters that, much like Seth’s blog, provide quirky and provocative insights into what it means to be a creative professional.
I’ve been treating it like a collection of daily meditations, and now that I’ve finished the second section of the book (“Generous”), the trade-offs remain pretty much the same—though I am generally less impatient than I was, perhaps because this section was more personally challenging than the previous one.
What I’ve Been Thinking
As with the first section, I am reflecting on a lot that came up in this chapter (not to mention that I’m still grappling with ideas from the previous section). But here are three main issues that I’ve been working through.
“Anyone”
For Seth, creative work is a generous act, a way to change the world. These changes might affect a lot of people (a “hit”), but more likely will affect a more limited group of people who have become enrolled in the work.
In other places—I’m sure it will appear in the book at some point, and I’m surprised it hasn’t named it already—he talks about the smallest viable audience. The idea is to shun making something for everyone, which would most likely become lowest-common-denominator quality, and instead make something for someone.
This requires an informed level of intention: whom are we putting ourselves on the hook for? What do they need, and how can we meet that need?
In reflecting on all this, I discovered that I am not at all certain whom I envision as an audience. My attitude has been to make work for anyone—a reliance on serendipity that, in the end, probably amounts to a version of hiding. It tries to have it both ways: I make stuff for myself, and—since my taste is far from unique—I figure other people are likely to enjoy it, too.
As Seth notes, it’s fine to make work for yourself. But trying to do that and to create connection and change for others is a recipe for unhappiness: it’s rare that one’s interests match perfectly with an audience’s. It can happen—I see that in Rick Ruben, whom people hire for “the confidence that [he has] in [his] taste.” But, of course, I’m no Rick Ruben. If I expect others’ taste or expectations to match my own, I’m bound to fall short. (I can hope, but, as they say, hope is not a strategy.)
So while I don’t think I have a problem with creating work intended for everybody, I have not (yet) embraced a “somebody.” I’m not sure how I’ll do that—I don’t know who that “somebody” would be, or what needs or desires that I might meet for them. But I now understand the value of asking that question.
Small-minded double standards
This chapter brought into focus a series of double-standards that I have for myself. I suppose I’ve known about them, but I don’t think I realized how deep they lie.
In the “Trust Your Self” section, I stumbled across one: my tendency to encourage others’ creative pursuits while dismissing my own. That one came up again in this section, along with a couple others:
- I have no problem financially supporting artists’ work, whether that’s by hiring an artist for work I need done, or buying an album, or joining a Patreon, or whatever. But when I think about the prospect of asking for money (in any sense, and even though the point is currently moot), I clench up. It becomes a form of Resistance.
- I love music, and I love that musicians put their music out in the world. I enjoy local musicians—both those working as professionals, and those content to work as amateurs. I find music meaningful (even when I’m not particularly fond of the genre). I want more of it in the world. And I know that others feel similarly—yet, when I think of my own music, I somehow think it doesn’t matter in the same way. Sure, it’s fine if it does find an audience. But I don’t see my work affecting others the way I see others’ work affecting me.
These double standards keep me “off the hook” and limit what I see as possible. That in turn limits my intention. And Seth is clear on the importance of working intentionally: that is how you make a difference.
As with the issue of “anyone,” I’m not sure how to deal with all this. (I suspect the two issues are related.) But this section of the book brought the issue into focus, and I understand the value of challenging myself around these double standards.
Distraction and focus
Unlike the other two thoughts, which raise questions that I don’t yet know how to answer, this insight has resulted in immediate change.
Two concepts came together for me: the importance of working intentionally, and the observation that saying “yes” implies saying “no.”
Specifically, Seth noted that taking things as they come easily—kind of a path of least resistance (“sailing downwind”)—doesn’t lead to the type of work or insight that will make a difference. And any time you choose to do something in that vein, you’re automatically (perhaps even unknowingly) choosing to avoid that difference-making work.
For me, that “path of least resistance” hasn’t even been within the work; it’s been all the distractions I’ve allowed to crowd out the work: obsessive and completist looks at Twitter and Facebook feeds, meandering journeys down the rabbit hole of YouTube, queues of podcasts. They’re fun, if usually empty, intellectual calories. But they’re both time consuming and, in the end, enervating.
And though Seth’s insights weren’t targeted at this kind of time wasting, they clearly apply. I guess they came at the right time, too; I’ve been growing dissatisfied with my social media habits, so the change I needed to make came relatively easily.
Specifically, with the guidance of Cal Newport’s Digital Minimalism, I’ve pared down a lot of the distractions. As Newport notes, it’s important not simply to cut them out; you have to be sure that something is at hand to fill that vacuum. One of those things must be solitude, which he defines as time spent without input from other minds. This gives the opportunity to wrestle with one’s own thoughts, as well as allowing the creativity that arises out of boredom (a lost art in the world of distractions). Another would be recovering old activities, things that have been crowded out by the engineered hijacking of attention; in my case, this is reading, listening to music (and really listening, not just running it in the background), watching movies, and, most importantly, making music.
Wrapping Up
As I’ve said many times in this process, I still don’t know what “the practice” is—or, more precisely, I don’t know what my practice is. I had more or less resigned myself to the understanding that my practice will emerge from my work. But, especially after Seth finally made that point explicit, I’ve come to understand (a) that this isn’t something I should “resign myself to,” but, rather, I should embrace; and (b) that any vision of a practice I might have developed had been crowded out by the path-of-least-resistance surrender to distraction. With that swept aside, it will have a better chance of emerging.
The next section of The Practice is called “The Professional.” As was true of the first two sections, I expect to be productively disappointed. I came to the book looking for practical advice (Seth would say I was looking for a recipe, which doesn’t exist). Instead, I found meditations on concepts—self-trust, emergence, generosity, intention, and so on—that have challenged me, how I view myself, and how I view my work.
This series is meant to capture my thoughts as I work through Seth Godin’s The Practice. It’s a book with over 200 (very short) chapters, which I hope to work through and, I further hope, to implement over time.
If you’re interested in more of Godin’s ideas, or my thoughts about them, you can check out this collection of posts. Note that if you’re more interested in the former, you should probably get Godin’s book and read it yourself; my notes will be both incomplete and idiosyncratic, and my thoughts will relate to my own experience.
But if my thoughts resonate with you, or if you think I’m just silly, I welcome your comments.
Top photo by Markus Winkler on Unsplash