The biggest barrier to an artist is self-confidence. The artist always battles his own/her own feeling of inadequacy.
When I was young on a movie set, I would try to stage the scene and the actors would read it, and they would begin to challenge the text. What I learned, which is a simple idea, is that if you hold out with your vision a little bit the scene doesn’t work immediately. It’s like taking the cake out without letting it be in the oven for more than a minute. Like, oh no, it’s terrible.
So you have to be patient, and then slowly everyone starts to see that the ideas are right, or make the corrections. You have to battle the lack of confidence by giving the scene the chance to solidify.
This Post is Censored
I’ve censored the following, in protest of a bill that gives any corporation and the US government the power to censor the internet—a bill that could pass THIS WEEK. To see the uncensored text, and to stop internet censorship, go here.
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9 filters for getting rid of negative thoughts from a post by James Altucher:
- Pessimistic thoughts
- Vice
- Perfectionism/shame
- Jealousy
- Painful
- Fear
- Obsessive
- Sadness
- Unimprovement
“Here’s a rundown on the weekly calendar Dorsey keeps as CEO of payments platform Square and chairman of Twitter.
Monday: Management meetings and “running the company” work
Tuesday: Product development
Wednesday: Marketing, communications and growth
Thursday: Developers and partnerships
Friday: The company and its culture
Weekends are a bit slower: Saturdays are for hiking and Sundays are for “reflection, feedback and strategy,” Dorsey said.”
A good outline for how to structure your interview questions. When you know this is the information you’re trying to learn, it’s easier to know what to ask to learn it.
Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.
“Expectation, as it turns out, is just as important as raw sensation. The build up to an experience can completely change how you interpret the information reaching your brain from your otherwise objective senses.”
“And it’s not the easy problems that make it your way. Those already got solved. Rather, they’re the hardest problems that people bring to your attention. Day after day. That, my friends, can be tiring.”
“…it led to two pretty interesting discoveries: a) people often don’t realize they’re facing a problem. Rather, they just feel frustration. b) problem solving, and particularly the ability to shepherd a problem through the four stages listed above, is highly correlated with seniority.”
