New posts every week. Subscribe to get the posts sent to your inbox.
What finally got me to start writing every day was becoming comfortable with ambiguity (not always knowing in advance what I would write about) and letting go of the idea of perfecting the writing (also known as analysis paralysis).
Don't overthink your creative work; get it out there.
Curiosity leads you to wonder, passion leads you to act, and grit keeps you curious and passionate long after the initial burst of interest or excitement.
What qualities are the greatest predictors of future success? According to Eric Schmidt, the former CEO of Google: “The combination of persistence and curiosity is a very good predictor of employee success in a knowledge economy.”
His thoughts pair nicely with now nearly 10-year-old talk. from Angela Lee Duckworth titled: Grit: The power of passion and perseverance. She studied kids and adults in a variety of challenging settings, and in every study, her question was, who is successful here and why? She described her findings this way: “In all those very different contexts, one characteristic emerged as a significant predictor of success. And it wasn't social intelligence. It wasn't good looks, physical health, and it wasn't IQ. It was grit.”
Interesting that one of the most successful commercial enterprises and an academic researcher came to a similar conclusion on what leads people to future success. Passion, curiosity, and perseverance (grit).
Something as simple as walking requires us to have made a profound number of calculations that we don’t even consciously think about. Imagine having to write out instructions to program a machine on how to walk. There are so many calculations that must be made. It’s far more complex than we realize when we stand up to walk.
Joints along with many muscles are engaged and to the proper degree. Legs are coordinated so the result is continuous smooth forward motion. How far is your foot from the ground and how far should the step be? Our eyes and other senses are constantly alert for any obstacles that would be a hazard and need to be avoided. This information is used in coordination with the rest of the calculations necessary to walk. Why did we decide to walk in the first place? To get somewhere our brain calculated we needed to be. On and on and on. So many calculations. Yet we don’t even have to give much thought to all of this as we walk. It’s mundane. In other words, there are profound calculations our brains make every day without us even noticing.
Perhaps that is what a gut feeling or instinct is, a series of profound calculations that our brains have made, but we didn’t even notice ourselves making. Yet we have a sense for something, the gut feeling, the instinct. This, of course, isn't to say that a gut feeling is always right; just as we may occasionally stub our toe while walking due to a miscalculation or distraction.