Creation is something that can be noted as variable. To most, just because something has a form, like a song, does not mean all songs are alike. This is obvious to most, but there is undeniably truth in the fact that some struggle to notice differences between songs that are in the same genre. For example, someone could listen to a black metal song, by one band, and then another, and find virtually no difference. Sometimes, the song could truly be incredibly similar, however, this is not always the case. To those who do create and take notice of the differences, you likely reach for more, wanting further improvement, and generally a need for change. This change can be brought about in two main ways: systematic training/learning, and playing around/having fun. Most would probably say that a bit of both is ideal, but that doesn’t always happen. Therefore, I would like to talk about many of the things that I’ve misappropriately assigned a systematic method, but also, how others might have gotten there. Additionally, I want to speak of the times in which either side may arise in most people, and of course, mention the exceptions.
Systematic methods to achieving goals are what I wish to focus on first. This is due in fact that I’m far too systematic in how I approach creative processes, but that will be focused on later. What instead will be initially focused on is why someone would take a systematic approach, when it makes sense to do so, when it doesn’t, and the emotionality hidden within the seemingly machine-like operations.
The reason someone would take a systematic approach to something, within or out of the arts, is that it would help them achieve a particular goal at an accelerated rate. Take for example guitar; one could do nothing but play around, they won’t even have to know what a key is. Sure, there are benefits in this extreme, but for now, we must note a person like this is unable to know what they’re doing, and so they don’t know how to achieve particular results nor what to do in specific to achieve something. In taking an orderly approach, one could then focus on something deliberately, and based on that intention, achieve results in that particular thing. If someone were to do nothing but practice their scales, ascending and descending, there is no doubt in my mind they would feel not only comfortable in playing in any key, but they would also be very good at ascending and descending. This is true outside of music, too. One could do nothing but studies of geometric forms, over and over, and they would become quite competent at it. However, the reasons for the continued and repeated processes are not always self-evident.
Just because someone is drawing geometric shapes over and over again does not mean that’s what they want to do. Instead, they draw the shapes in order to improve on something they want to do or struggle to do. Suppose I really sucked at perspective. Indeed, I could make entire drawings repeatedly, trying to also improve my perspective, but simultaneously working on many other things. Yet, that would be incredibly time intensive, and honestly, it could even be considered irrational to some. Why? Well, they would think one could only improve on something in an intelligent way if they were focusing on the thing that needs improvement. If one were to focus on something in specific with the goal of improving within that realm they repeat consistently, they will, but just as well, completing an entire drawing would also improve a variety of skills. In this particular case, it makes sense to focus on something. If all you felt like you needed to do in the moment was practice perspective, then focusing on other things would be superfluous and impairing to the main goal, which is to improve on one particular thing. This might be a case where it makes sense and is rational to practice something in specific, but there are times in which acting in an orderly way would actually act as a detriment rather than benefit.
With anything, there is a grayscale of how well versed you are in that thing. Whether it be carpentry, writing, or even something as simple as talking. The more you do any of those things, the more experience you will obtain, and the ease in which that thing will be done, at least at some point, noted by the amount of time spent with that thing. If someone had a fear or anxiety with talking to people, would it be rational to tell them to focus on saying words out-loud continually and consistently until they felt like they had the confidence to say the words? No, obviously not, because isolation of a particular characteristic of conversation, speaking, would not help the individual become someone who is less fearful or more capable of conversation. Rather, irrefutably, the person needs to have conversations with other people in other to be more comfortable with talking, and the person would only have a decrease in anxiety as a result of the entire experience, not merely subjugations of it.
In that case that you’re interested in carpentry, there is a vast difference between someone who has merely one year of experience versus someone who has ten. In those ten years, that carpenter has learned many things about the trade throughout the years, about the people within the trade, and things surrounding the trade but not necessarily relevant to it. The individual with only one year will be able to handle the basics of carpentry, but more advanced techniques will out of their grasp. What this leads to, is that, perhaps the beginner could obtain the carpentry-specific knowledge of the person with ten years of experience, but as a result of merely focusing on knowledge, they would not have the same level of hands-on experience. Similarly, if they were to focus on specifically hands-on experience, they would lack the knowledge. In whatever way this person wants to handle their career or interest, they will not be able to achieve what the person with ten years of experience has unless they are willing to put in more time and energy than the senior person. On top of this, there is all the information that would be learned only through years of experience. Things that one will have to approach or solve that only occur in the situation where it is presented to them. A systematic approach to focusing on a particular area of carpentry would enable that person to do things within that specific realm, but would stop them from doing things outside of that.
A higher-level example of this could be noted in how society operates. Rather than millions of individuals who are all generalists, they are specialists. In being a specialist, they don’t have to focus on all the things not relevant to them. The English teacher doesn’t to be a mechanic alongside teaching English. It is possible they could be, and perhaps in some circumstances, they have no choice, but generally, the idea is that one person can focus on one thing, and with the value produced with that thing, they can buy services that enable another specialized person to do their particular thing. If you already have a career, whatever it might be, then obtaining another career, and then another, or at least the knowledge and capability akin to what one would note as a career, would take a huge amount of time. Yet, some would attempt to systematically obtain these qualities when really, it would be irrational to do so. This is because the scale of what is being obtained is so large that it would take some insurmountable amount of time whilst bringing very little benefit. Even in that particular case, now imagine someone attempting to learn and becoming multiple careers at once. Now, that’s another layer of absurdity. At least in the former case, there are times where someone wants to change their career, and so they have no other choice but to learn how to do something specialized they aren’t doing already. However, for those who try to learn the content and abilities of many careers at once, even in a systematic way, would be moving at such a slow rate that they would hopefully question why they are trying to do that in the first place.
No matter what the thing a person is attempting to obtain or work towards, the systematic method to get there could easily be labelled as machine-like. This is because a machine simply does the thing. It does not question the thing, the process of the thing, or what is coming of the thing. Unlike a literal machine, we might question how we’re doing the thing, what will come as a result of our doing, and if it might be better to do something else entirely. Just because it is something that is repetitious does not make it something that lacks emotionality. Rather, in the majority of cases, there is some emotional backing which enables the person to repetitively do something. Like already mentioned, one could draw geometric forms over and over. More likely than not, the person doing this is not concerned with specifically shapes. They don’t care for shapes in particular, but instead, they care for the results that drawing those shapes will provide. They are fundamental to drawing, and because they find themselves lacking in skill within the fundamentals, they can focus on basic forms which can help them work on the things of a higher abstraction.
The point is, people act in machine-like ways in order to work on improving or achieving greater goals, and it is through the strength of their emotionality that they are capable to do the same thing until they have mastered or come close to mastering it. They could do something of a larger scale, working on multiple things, but in this orderly way, they can limit their scope to a specific or a few specific things which will then transition to and be a part of the bigger picture at a later point. This works, and is reasonable in many cases, while in others, it is unreasonable, such as when the scale in which someone wants to systematically obtain many more things than they are actually capable. Moving on from the orderly approach to learning or obtaining something, one could instead take the most extreme opposing path. This would be a path in which a person does not follow any particular rule or systematic method to achieving any type of goal. They might want to achieve things, but their methods to reaching an end or completing a goal are limited to playing around or feeling out the medium they are using.
Suppose there are two individuals who like to play guitar but are on these two different extremes. One, who is specifically focused on orderly approaches to becoming better and obtaining certain goals in particular ways, while the other, plays around until finally reaching the end goal they want. For these two extremes, there are benefits for each side of the scale they fall under. If you are on the side that is focused on becoming better, for either a specific goal or for the sake of repetitive practice, you undeniably will become better at playing guitar. If you focus on technique, learning specific songs to work specific aspects of your playing, and continually practice, you will become a much better player than the person who just plays around. On the other side, the person who just plays around, they’ll have fun, feeling out what they want, playing whatever they want, and getting good whenever the circumstance calls for it. They don’t practice, they just play whenever, however, because they feel like it, and they don’t have a goal they have set out to achieve with deliberate and focused practice. Yes, they could have goals, but these would be reached only by playing around, not by any particular systematic method.
There are qualities on both of these sides which make either of them appealing, depending on the disposition of the person. For the more systematic person, they can learn things much more quickly, achieve their goals much more quickly, and get better at the thing, whatever it is, much faster than someone who only plays around. One of the major downsides is that this person will be generally dry and boring in their experience. Sure, they can understand how things work, what needs to be done to get better, and how to get there, but it is exactly that, how, and that is the most important quality to note here. In this extreme, merely all the person cares about are: how they are learning, how to be the most efficient, how they can be better, and how they are going to get there. On the other side, the person who might just play around, is not concerned at all with: how to be the best, how to learn in the best ways, and how to change how they play. Instead, they are focused on the thing that the opposing side fails to notice, what. What they are playing, what they enjoy, what they want to do, and what they feel like doing. To them, it doesn’t matter how good they can play until there is a difference between their capability to play and what they want to play.
Something anecdotal that can be noticed is what groups of people fall within these two sides, and in this case, it would be based around age. Generally, the how is more relevant to adults, while the what is associated with children or adolescents. When you’re an adult, you have to take care for yourself, you have to think about the future, and you have to do this in the context of money. This means you work, therefore you don’t have much time, because it is spent working, and then when you aren’t working, you’re tired, and the time you have to yourself, is limited. Knowing this, it almost seems natural at this stage in life, you would care about how things are done, because you want things to be done in the best way possible, because otherwise, you’re wasting time, which is the most valuable resource, and the last thing you would ever want to feel is that you’re wasting your time.
As a child, at least for most, you aren’t concerned with paying your bills, putting money away for retirement, how to make more money, how to get more time, improving your career; all you simply care about is what you feel like caring about. If you find it fun to draw, you’ll draw, and you’ll just do it because it feels like the right thing to do. As a kid, you aren’t thinking, “I must find the most efficient methods to learning how to draw so that I can become the best artist I can within a set amount of time!” All that you care about is drawing what you want to draw, and then you keep doing it, because you find it fun. It’s about what you’re drawing, not how, and so you can just do it without thinking about it.
It wouldn’t be unreasonable to think about the fact that it might not be bad to think about doing things in a more intelligent manner. However, I would say that, like all things, there needs to be a balance. This tends to be universally true for all things, but what that means to you will depend on the person. I mention all this because I have been at an imbalance. By acting in an orderly way, by thinking about how to be the most, how to do things in the best way, focusing merely on the systematic aspects of the thing; you don’t tap into the fun. The problem with this, is that, you want the fun, I want the fun. Without it, the thing is pointless, I want to simply enjoy the thing I’m doing. I don’t want every moment to be about trying to maximize my ability to do the thing, I just want to do it, and relax while doing it, and the experience doesn’t need to be anymore than that. There are various reasons as to why I’ve become this way, and what I’m doing about that, but I’d like to focus on the fact that there is a grayscale, and then showcasing that gray. Finding the gray is the most important thing you can do for yourself if you find you’re at the extreme side of something.
There could be a mix of gray between these two opposing sides. Even in the case that there are two people working on achieving the same goal, and they have similar faults which need improvement, they don’t necessarily have to work in either a systematic or fluid way. Take for example drawing a picture in its most realistic quality. Yes, to some, it might make sense to actively work on the qualities in the drawing which are lacking most in realism, finding out the building blocks for those things, and then working on those, to then later return on the realistic drawing, to see what needs improvement next. However, one could play around and still be making strides towards further realism without isolating a quality that needs more help than something else. Instead, they could draw the same thing, over and over, and try new things each time. They could search for what needs to be change, draw the thing again, and search again, and continually keep doing that, however, they would also be drawing the entire thing. They would go through all the motions, while also working on the particular thing that might be lacking, or what they believe to be lacking.
The greatest benefit to this, is that, while in isolated practice, you definitely become better at that specific thing at a quicker rate than if you were creating something alongside many other variables. Despite this, when that person comes back to the bigger picture, they might have improved on that thing, but will then realize that other things are now lacking, and they have to catch up with those things next. In some cases, they might even realize that it was silly to focus on something in specific, because if they had worked on the whole picture, many times, they would improve on many different things at once, and this would enable them to become better at a variety of qualities, just slowly. It’s matter of realizing what is needed most at the time. However, how does one figure this out?
I attempted to allude to this with the carpenter example. Generally, the idea is, as a novice, you shouldn’t be focused on specializing within carpentry yet. You still have to learn much of the basics, the nuances within those basics, and then complete some intermediate tasks to push some boundaries of what you thought carpentry was limited to. Simply, at the beginning stages of something, you have to be a generalist, learning all the basics, across the board. Once you are out of the novice stage, you might be able to specialize, but in many cases, you should continually work on a variety of things. It is when you are at the point of finding that working on many things at once doesn’t bring results at a quick enough pace. To find what is a reasonable quickness is totally on you, and shouldn’t be focused on all that much, but if you must find a value, consider how long it takes a majority of people to do something. When reaching that point, focus on particular things that can enable you to do the thing you want to do better, and then be ready to focus on different things at different paces and rates, too.
I have not touched upon the exceptions. I might support the idea of being gray, sitting in the area that contains a mix of both sides, but there are people who don’t need that. They are in the minority, the exceptions, but they are around, and it could be you, but I want to enunciate the fact that most people are not like this. However, some are really on one side or the other. Some people genuinely only care about how the thing is to be done better; they are obsessed with getting better at something, and finding the best methods to get better. The reasons for them to get better is simply for the sake of better. They don’t want to utilize the skill for something that happens as a part of the bigger picture, they just want to get better, because that’s the fun for them, in a sense. These people can get good at the thing they practice repetitively, but they don’t have a goal or purpose for it, there is no art or thing that will come of their work other than their ability to do the thing.
The opposing side also has exceptions. Some people never want to do things in a systematic way. That might drain them, cause boredom, or make them reject the thing they find fun. These people want to play around, and that’s the only way they can enjoy the thing, and introducing orderly methods to improvement are off the table with them. They can achieve great things, but it would be difficult, because they wouldn’t be using the methods to get them there at an accelerated rate. At the very least, they will have strengths from doing many the same things over and over, but as a grander piece of work, focusing on the whole, rather than the little pieces that build up that whole.
In the end, the most important thing is to focus on what you find the most fun and interesting. By tapping into a balanced, or as I might say, gray, perspective, you can then use that to become more well rounded which enables you to tap into a variety of paths. Once having many doors open, you can explore each room upon opening the door, and you can study the room for as long as you’d like. Once you find that you’ve had enough of that room, you can enter another, and study that one for any amount of time that you choose. We could spend an entire lifetime within one room, analyzing every aspect of it, taking in all the qualities that make up that room with our means of perception, but that would drive us insane. We want to do things, so we can take in a lot, but there’s something we have to do with all that perception, otherwise, nothing would ever come as a result of our existence. We want to make things, but we have to be careful in how we want to execute that.
It comes down to the fact that you have to be able to know what side of the what/how scale you sit on. If you find that you focus too much on the what, not pushing yourself, not being focused on specific goals, not trying to reach those goals in intelligent ways ever, then you might have to move over to the how side a little. The opposite is true, too. If you find that you sit on the how side, not playing around, not looking at the bigger picture, not having fun and enjoying the thing you spend so much time practicing, then maybe you have to move to the what side a little, too. One has to find a balance between these two things, and that balance is based around the individual, and you have to be willing to test what works for you best. Try to have fun, but if you want to, be smart in how you have fun, because it can enable you to have more fun more quickly, but don’t become obsessed in those methods, because then you won’t have fun, you just systematically get caught into a loop of self-improvement, which can and likely will cause distaste in the thing you enjoy.