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Wednesday, November 06, 2019
9 Creatives on Their Most Valuable Career Lessons
Adobe 99U: We all dive into the unknown with plenty of excitement and a good measure of tenacity. The wisdom tends to come later, after a fair share of stumbles and tests of courage. Looking back at their careers so far, nine thinkers and creatives let us in on some of the most important learning moments that act as their touchstones when making decisions and planning for their future.
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I’m happy to see a less generic advice giving article :) Although the last few points I’ve been told before, the creators all have their own spin on it. However, I think the first point is particularly important to artists and creators. Of course, being alone makes many people more productive and enable to solely focus on the task at hand. But the point that the article is making is that being alone in your down time is also beneficial. Sitting by yourself with no distractions can let you find your expression. We don’t need to fill the void or silence. For example, I usually walk to class in the morning listening to music, but I always try to just listen to the sounds around me when I remember and forget about my phone and my music. There’s just something really peaceful and enticing about being in the moment. Sometimes I just sit in a park alone doing nothing too, just because it makes me feel at peace and slow down for a second.
I appreciate the advice that is given is not far fetched and can be put into practice. I can see the importance of practicing the advice that was given and how they could reap huge benefits in the long run. Taking into consideration personality and patterns that individual exhibit is something that I can fully appreciate in the last advice that was given. The advice given is something that has to be practiced over time and the benefits (huge ones, the smaller ones might show up a little earlier) would not be seen immediately. One advice that I started to put into practice before reading this article was to keep records. Yes, the mind can be a very good tool but sometimes it lets you down in the moment but if you keep a note of things, you can always look back on it. The notes app on the phone can be very helpful and useful.
I think that I’ve inadvertently applied all of these pieces of advice at some point or another, but it’s really good to see them spelled out in this article. Especially important to me are the first two points, about being alone and using social media your way. In a world that seems to demand that you be connected and engaged 24/7, deleting social media apps can feel like an act of rebellion or apathy. It’s important to me to be a conscious consumer of media, to not just get lost in a scroll hole for hours and feel bad afterwards. You have to take deliberate steps towards curating the content that you consume, deliberate steps to make sure that you are not drowning in the barrage of information that comes at you all day. This also ties into spending time alone, unstimulated by media or music. Journaling in a notebook is my way of giving myself time to digest and process the events of the day, and step outside of myself to analyze what I did and how it went.
These were really cool pieces of advice! I think a lot of advice is like "work hard :) network :)." Which like, yeah, we know. This advice, however, highlights the important internal aspects to success that a lot of us don't think about because we're so focused on being constantly productive and always working ridiculously hard. But, that's not always the answer. Things like "Learn to Listen" and "Stay True to Your Priorities" are things that are important in every aspect of life, but will help immensely in a career as well. I think a lot of the time, communication and people skills are extremely overlooked, but I think they're some of the most important skills people can have. Listening, communication, empathy, curiosity, and community are incredibly important to any aspect of life. Career-wise, theatre is so uniquely collaborative that these are so much more important. In theatre, your people skills need to be great not only to interact with collaborators, but to understand and well-represent the stories that you're telling. There's no way to correctly reflect the complex experiences of people if you don't have these essential skills like empathy and communication. I also think that keeping a record is super important! It's a relatively basic idea, but creative thought is definitely not linear and it's super important for artists to record their ideas when they come. You never know when you'll have a creative block!
This list immediately hit me really hard because loneliness is something I have dealt with a lot in my artistic career, and from talking with my peers I know this isn't an unusual experience. Not that being alone is a great thing all the time, but I have been learning through the last few years how to use that time effectively to focus and think outside the box. Most of these list items are things that I have started doing instinctually since I joined the world of theater design, notably things like staying true to my priorities and taking note of all my ideas, no matter how vague or unrealistic. The points made on recognizing patterns isn't something I had considered before, but I am definitely going to implement this into my work because I think it could help me work out some of the artistic difficulties I have gone through in the past few months. Recognizing patterns in your own thought and creative processes is probably a great way to start learning how to become a more consistent designer.
These are all really wonderful tips, that I feel are really unique pieces of advice to give to constantly evolving creatives. I often see “professional advice” posted online, but it is usually geared towards the “typical” definition of a working professional—those in business or entrepreneurship or something. I love how this offers such a specific insight into this industry. Starting so well right off the bat with “learn how to be alone”—THIS IS SO IMPORTANT. I am someone who works really well bouncing ideas off of other people and developing something with creative passion collaboratively, but I’ve found that a solid portion of my best ideas come from me and my brain working alone together. I’m very inspired by the world around me, but those ideas formulate when I just let my mind wander. I think that a creative should have a good balance of both collaborative and alone time (this is why I can’t come up with ideas with 26 other people in studio!!). Keeping a record is a really good tip as well. I’ve gotten into the habit recently of doing so (because my short term memory is often so compromised), and writing down these quick thoughts brings back the idea so quickly. I try to keep this journal on me, because the ideas come fast. When I was in NYC a couple weeks ago, I ended up in a subway station that made me SO uncomfortable—I had a true visceral reaction to the space. Feeling so much in this moment, I stopped to try and analyze exactly what about the space caused this reaction, and hopefully by keeping a record, I’ll be able to pull from that in the future.
This is an interesting article, and not entirely what I expected. These lessons a re a little all over the place, but I actually really appreciate that about them. They each struck a different chord with me, some resonating deeper than others. And part of what made me like it so much was that you could tell you were getting these pieces of advice from people with wildly different experiences, backgrounds, and occupations. First among my favorites was the need to really listen to people. Not to necessarily agree with them, join in their frustration, or give them exactly what they're demanding. But just to listen. Sometimes, you don't need anyone to solve anything, you just need an ear and an sympathetic sounding board. Additionally, I think that generally we are all in this profession because we have made it personal. There is a need inside us to take part in the creative expressions we all feel, and share it with others. And most of the time, if it rings true to us it will resonate with others as well. That's the heart behind what we do and why we choose to continue doing it.
I think I'm going to save this article somewhere so I can refer back to it whenever I feel stuck or overwhelmed. This advice is niche yet applicable to almost all situations. I'm so happy whenever I find advice that isn't too broad to the point where you cannot even apply it to your life. I want to talk about one of the points that I've noticed is the hardest for me to pursue: learning how to be alone. I'm an only child, so I have no problem being by myself. I love to be surrounded by good people, and I'm a big fan of exploring with people, but I can totally feed off of my own energy whenever I feel like it. However, I am finding a difference in my opinions on being alone now that I'm in college. Back home, I always wanted to surround myself with my friends. That's changed now that I'm here, and I think that's because there are fewer places where I can actually be alone. At home, I had my car, the various rooms in my house, and the surrounding outdoors. Here, I really just have my dorm room, and that's if my roommate isn't there. I now find myself wanting to be alone more often just because I no longer have that balance between being with myself and being with others. That's affected my creativity and my work ethic, not to the point where I can't produce work I'm proud of--I'm actually quite proud of most of the work I've created thus far--but it's definitely something I've had to navigate. And it wasn't until reading this article that I actually realized that.
This article was a very good read and I think I will be finding a place to keep it, so that I can refer back to it in the future. As we navigate this crazy world of school and life and career all on top of each other, it can become overwhelming, very very quickly, and it can be very hard for us, as individuals, to process everything coming at us without any help. To hear encouraging words and helpful advice from those ahead of us in the field, who have experienced the struggles we are experiencing is invaluable. This article pointed out some really lovely things as well. Even just the very first point, about learning how to be alone and celebrating in that solitude is such an important point. I think that we can very easily get caught up in the very social nature of our industry and can fear that alone time is unproductive or simply not fun, but it is so necessary for us in order to recharge and develop as artists and as humans.
This was an interesting list. I particularly liked the one about stoking curiosity. I know as artists we can have our own styles or ways of doing things. But it is important to be willing to step outside of our comfort zones and explore other avenues. Even attacking things from a newer angle or going about a process in a different way than we usually do. This ties in with being willing to listen and simply being a sponge, observing things around us, as well as being open-minded. Not saying that the outcome will always be as great as us doing things the way that we've enjoyed, but you never know. For me personally, I know that when I am drawing, I pay attention to every little detail so I may spend a lot more time than necessary trying to get the smallest detail to be as perfect or exact as I can. There is nothing wrong with this, but there are times when having a free and flowing style of sketching is useful, so I am trying to learn how to do this by using my left hand to sketch, as my right hand is already too stubborn and stuck in my normal habits. In relation to the valuable career lessons from the creatives, these were nice but I feel as though there may be some more valuable lessons out there that could trump some of these. For example, not taking things personally or even something as simple as trusting your own artistic process.
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