by Paul Jarvis
Spend your time worrying about what’s now, not what’s next. It’s the only way to ensure you do meaningful work regardless of an outcome you can’t predict or set.
There’s no time
Thinking there’s no time is one of our biggest excuses. If you work a full-time job, have children, and do too much as it is, how can you find the time to write that book, launch your own business, paint a masterpiece, or anything else?
We're all busy. We work long hours and feel like there's not even enough time to sleep properly. But pursuing meaningful work isn't about magically finding extra hours in the day; it's about prioritizing the time we've all got.
What if instead of reading, you wrote? Instead of watching TV, you made videos? Instead of listening to music, you learned how to play guitar?
It takes sacrifice to make something great. In order to shift your mindset and experiment with ideas, you have to choose a new path. You have to change your paradigm from consumption to creation. Then the possibilities are limitless.
Once you choose a path toward creativity, it becomes easier to prioritize. Why watch TV when there's important work to be done? Why get caught in a social media time warp when there are great ideas to develop?
If there's something creative or innovative inside you that needs to come out, get to work and start now.
Work is sacrifice
In a presentation at the beyond tellerrand 2013 conference, graphic designer James Victore described how he was almost evicted after spending his rent money to print and hang posters that offered a different take on Columbus Day. Everything has a cost involved, and all good work requires some sacrifice. He sacrificed his rent because his work had a message that he couldn’t stop himself from sharing.
Victore paid for the freedom to express his art. His work is now in the MoMA – and he probably has less trouble paying rent.
His speech to a group of young designers explained why he puts everything on the line to create meaningful work. A person in the back row (it’s always a person in the back row) asked why he didn’t value life’s necessities. James replied that he did, but he didn’t want his gravestone to say, “Here lies James. He paid his rent.”
Every time you do one task, you’re choosing not to do something else. If you truly value the work you create, choose to do it. There’s no way to do everything and still keep your whole life in balance. Most artists and creators only know the word “balance” as a concept. Choosing to work on what you value means not choosing something else. This is okay.
What are you willing to sacrifice in order to make great and meaningful work? It doesn’t have to be your rent money, but we’re all busy, tired, stressed and being pulled in several directions. What can you cut out to create room for making something great?
Money to start
Money tends to be another factor that keeps us from starting or doing the work we want to do. “If only I had enough money, ” we think, “then I could start the business I've always dreamed about.”
You can start without money. Scale the idea back to its essence and think of it as a prototype. What is your work? Without even knowing what it is specifically, I would guess that it helps someone else to solve a problem. If you want to be a web designer, you'd help people by making their websites. If you want to own a car dealership, you'd help people find cars.
Making your work about helping people doesn't mean giving away websites or even cars, but it can mean giving advice about either (or both, if it's a website for a car dealership). Help people for free, as often as possible, without expecting anything in return. Tell them honestly why one car is more suited for them or one idea for a website is better than another. This isn't charity work; it's just a way to slightly reframe your work.
If you have a message or story that will inspire or entertain people—tell it. You don’t need a book deal or a film contract; you can simply set up a free blog and tell your story. Worry about selling it later. No creator was ever punished for telling too much of their story or giving too much of it away freely.
If you think your idea is too big to start without funding or a full-time commitment, you're thinking too far ahead of yourself. Scale the idea back to its core and start immediately.
Ideas and work can be small in the beginning, and they don’t have to emerge as full-fledged businesses. Start while you're working full-time somewhere else, if necessary. Start with as much or as little time as you've got. But start.
Side projects are experiments
Nathan Barry taught himself to code by creating and selling his first iPhone app, just after his wife had a baby and while he still had a full-time job.
The book he later wrote about creating that app sold more than $12,000 on its release day. Nathan’s also gone on to create an email capture web application, write more books, and make a few more iPhone apps. He didn’t quit his day job until he had established several income sources from those side projects
Nathan started all of these projects with little to no money, all while raising a new family. He’s now scaled all of these “experiments” into full-time businesses.
I also created my first book with almost no money. I bartered, traded and borrowed nearly everything I needed. I made the book digital-only to avoid inventory and to ensure I didn’t go into debt or borrow from my existing business to publish it. Once I made some money with that book, I used it to write and pay for services to make another. Then I used the money from that to create another, bigger book.
If I had focused on where I wanted my writing to go or what I dreamed my writing could be, I may have quit doing web design and focused on writing full-time (probably in a cabin in the woods somewhere). I may have printed thousands of copies that would still be sitting in my office. They might have sold, or they might not have, but that’s not the point.
Starting incrementally made it easy for me to transition into more writing, as writing incrementally shifted from a side project to a larger amount of work.
A wooden puzzle
One summer, I was at a coffee shop (more a shack, actually) in a town comprised of four buildings. While the owner was making my coffee, I noticed a bunch of wooden puzzles, the kind where you have to put the pieces together so they all fit back into the box – almost like 3D Tetris. Done incorrectly, the pieces don't fit and the box won't close.
I immediately got to work on the puzzle by trying to fit two pieces together. Then I added another, then another until I got something that almost fit into the original box. Except it didn't. It was off by a few pieces. So, I had to try again, which I did until I got it to fit.
If I had tried just that one time, I would have failed and stayed a failure at the puzzle box. If I had tried the first two or three times, I still would have failed at it.
It was only because I tried and failed (until I didn't fail) that I successfully got the pieces back into the box. It didn't work at all, until it did. All I had to do was keep experimenting with different possibilities – making choices and moving forward in the adventure.
Being afraid to die
Our fear of failure often prevents us from attempting things. It feels safe not to try, but not trying is the only way you're guaranteed to fail. Don't fail in advance by not even making an attempt.
With something as silly as a wooden puzzle, few of us would be afraid to try. The stakes for winning or losing are so low that neither truly matters. But when it comes to our art, our ideas, and our work, there's much more involved, and sometimes we feel that fear of trying.
But what if our greatest fears about that work came true? Would we die? Would it be impossible to try anything again? Would we be unable to start again?
Most of the time, our fears come down to being judged by others. And it's a valid fear, because other people can be really fucking judgmental. Letting that judgment actually stop you from doing something, though, only hurts you. Know that everyone else (including the most successful people in the world) is judged, too. In
fact, wildly successful people are judged exponentially – every day. But they push on. We need to do the same. Pushing past the fear of being judged and doing the work is exactly what can lead to great work.
Don't let the fear of being wrong give you decision paralysis, either. You could have two paths and they could both be wrong. Or both be right. Go anyway and risk being wrong. You won't know until you try and if you are wrong, you can go back and pick a different way.
Unfortunately, this fear of failing won't go away. Everyone's got it. The best you can do is realize it's part of being human and push through anyway. Letting fear hold you back is really just failing yourself and your potential.
Grateful fears
I got an email from a mailing list subscriber who read my thoughts about fear and my list of everything that scared me. She, too, had written a similar list of her fears.
But then she realized that everything she was afraid to lose was something she was grateful to have. She was afraid of losing her husband, because he was one of the most important people in her life, and afraid of getting sick, because she had always been healthy.
That's an awesome way to look at things. Fear is losing what you might already be grateful for having, so let gratitude shine through that kind of fear.
Remember that taking a chance is exactly what can lead to this sense of gratitude. My reader wouldn’t have her husband, for example, if they hadn’t risked dating and getting married (which is definitely scary stuff). If you weren’t afraid of anything, you’d have nothing of value to lose. So turn your fear into gratitude. Be happy that it’s there, because it means you’ve got something worth losing.
Acknowledge, then do
I'm grateful for the business I've built, so I'm afraid that if I rock the boat and try new or innovative things, I'll lose everything I’ve worked so hard to create. I'm grateful for my audience, so I'm afraid I'll lose it whenever I hit “publish” on an article or newsletter, or release a book.
I handle this fear by acknowledging that I’m afraid, then doing it any way. That can obviously lead to some epically stupid decisions, and I always have a steady stream of people who unsubscribe, unfollow and don’t want to hear what I have to say, but pushing past my fear of sharing has also led to huge and new opportunities. Sharing my ideas is a risk I’m always willing to take.
I’m okay with either sharing the stupidest or the smartest ideas—because they’re my ideas. And I know more ideas are always on the way.
Courage creates possibility
My friend Matt was recently at a coffee shop in Nashville and realized that Jason Mraz (a famous pop singer-songwriter) was sitting nearby. Matt’s a fan, so it made him giddy like a small child to know that someone he respected so much was just a few feet away.
After a few minutes of working up the courage, Matt went over, said hello and shook Jason’s hand.
Then Jason did something Matt didn’t expect. He asked Matt’s name and invited him to sit down and chat, like normal human beings. So they spent a few minutes talking music, Nashville and craft beer.
Matt was fearful about talking to someone he looked up to, but went ahead anyway, and now he has a pretty fun story about that time he met Jason Mraz in a Nashville coffee shop and chatted about craft beer.
The only way to push past fear is to acknowledge it and fight through it with first-hand experiments. Sometimes the results can be pleasantly surprising.
By the way, this technique works not just for small stuff like talking to Jason Mraz, but for pretty much anything you might be afraid to do. Fear, acknowledge, and most importantly, do.
Does fear even exist?
Fear plays you against yourself. It can't actually do anything to hurt you, but it makes you think that it's the biggest, baddest bully in the playground, ready to slap you down if you stand out too much.
Fear only has the strength you give it. Its power lies in making you too afraid to try something. So if you're afraid but try something anyway, fear loses its power.
I'm afraid of almost everything: leaving my house, groups of people, heights, flying, sharing my writing, being criticized, talking to people, just to name a small few. And if there's something I'm not aware that I fear and you ask if I'm afraid of it, I'll probably develop a new fear right there on the spot.
One time I wrote down all my main fears. It was a big list. Only one or two of them had the potential to result in my death, and both of those weren't very probable situations, like being eaten by a bear. The rest would, at worst, bruise my ego and make me look bad.
I face my fears and push toward them every time. I continue to leave my house, exist in groups of people, write and publish things. I keep trying to innovate, create new things, and stretch my limits.
I start small at first, with small pushes. I know that being afraid and moving forward don’t have to be mutually exclusive. I work up to medium pushes. Fear still can't do anything if I don’t give it any power. Then I push harder. Don't worry; fear can take it, and fear can't fight back.
push, Push, PUSH.
Being afraid in public
I've been a touring musician as long as I've been a web designer, which seems odd to most people, given how introverted I am. I'm awkward in groups, I'm not comfortable out in public, let alone on stage, and I have a hard time communicating verbally. Seems like a recipe for disaster or failure, right? Playing shows, on stage, in front of others—sometimes lots of others.
But I started small, with small pushes against the fear of being on stage and sharing the music I write. I would sit in a park with the people in my band, not playing for people per se, but playing music around other people.
When I conquered that and didn't actually die, I moved up to open mics, where every other person in the room was equally scared to perform (at most open mics, you're usually playing for other musicians).
From there, my bands booked shows at smaller clubs and played for handfuls of people (if we were lucky). And still, I didn't die. People listened and some even bought CDs or t-shirts. Or better yet, some people came to more than one show – which I've always thought was the best compliment you can give a band.
I moved on to playing bigger shows sometimes, and even touring Canada and the US, playing almost every night. I've never become less afraid of being on stage, talking into a mic, or interacting with crowds, but over time I definitely learned to see the fear, acknowledge it, and then walk out onto the stage anyway. I've played wrong notes and didn’t die. I've played the wrong parts at the wrong times and not been laughed off stage. Most of the time people don’t even notice those tiny mistakes.
Sometimes the shows where I felt the most self-conscious were the same ones where lots of people told me afterward just how much they enjoyed it.
I wouldn’t have experienced any of this if I hadn’t started experimenting with my fears.
Why pushing is important
I’m motivated by seeing how far I can push myself – how far I can take my experiments and how close I can get to actually knowing who I am, or how far I can go with any of my ideas. I’m not satisfied with anything, ever, so I feel like I need to keep stretching or I’ll die a stagnant, uncreative death. My tombstone will read: “Here lies Paul. He didn’t do a whole lot.” Even worse, it’ll be carved in some horrible typeface (like Comic Sans or Papyrus).
I think experimenting with fear is important, because it makes us present and accountable to ourselves, and it ensures we live meaningful lives by learning how much we’re capable of accomplishing. We have no idea what we can really do unless we try things and challenge our perceived limits.
Confronting fear can also create some of your proudest moments. I feel good about myself if I do something I was scared to do. Almost everything I’ve feared has turned into something I can’t believe I was ever scared to try.
Out there, in the distance
Why push against fears? Why move toward them if it makes us uncomfortable? Isn't it nice to stay unafraid
but safe?
Only by experimenting with fear can we find our true limits – not the limits we think we have, because these are only assumptions until we try. When we push up against fear, we realize that our limits are much further away than we realized; sometimes those limits are so distant, we can't even see them.
Run with dangerous ideas. Great work requires great risk. Achieving something doesn't come from a lack of fear; it comes from being afraid and trying anyway. True courage typically involves a great deal of fear, but it also means proceeding anyway.
Start running (but not with scissors).
The paradox of missing out
The more you worry about missing out on things, the more of your actual life is consumed by worrying about what you’re missing. Constantly checking in on virtual activities means you’re peripherally participating in everything, without actually participating in anything. It takes you out of being present and puts you into observing someone else who is only partially present.
Social media is a great example of FOMO (fear of missing out). The more we refresh our streams, the less we’re actually doing anything. So, our work suffers because we think we might miss something that someone else says, does or posts.