Category / creativity

by Nathan Coumbe

Teaching how to fail

What did you learn about failure in school?

I learned to avoid it at all costs – if it wasn’t a good sentence, don’t write it. If you weren’t sure if the answer you just worked out in algebra was correct, you should probably go back and rework the whole thing. If you can’t draw very well, you just shouldn’t draw anything, because it won’t be good enough for anything.

You see where I am going with this; our educational system is so caught up in compliance, with getting the correct answer, with mastering the test, that the experience of failure is drilled out of us. Better not to do anything than to do something incorrectly.

So we have students going to college that can’t write well because they never learned how to write. They never learned how to write because they were too afraid of doing it badly, which is exactly what you have to do to get better. Start by writing poorly until you get better.

We have adults that cannot draw because they’ve told themselves they are bad at it, so they quit drawing. In actuality, everyone has the potential to learn to draw, you just have to get the right teacher (as an aside, not every artist knows how to teach someone how to draw well).

We have students who are so afraid of getting the wrong answer in a math class, or writing a bad line of code in a coding class, that they don’t put anything down – they don’t even try to work it out and get partial credit because it isn’t the right answer. If they only started, if they only put down the code that might work, they would eventually work it out until they got the right answer.

Leonardo da Vinci, arguably the greatest genius to ever live, failed at so many projects, works of art, and inventions that if you held up his successes next to his failures, we would probably classify him as a failure. But that’s not why we remember him, and that’s not how we measure success and failure.

He persevered and kept trying.

He knew that failure was the best teacher of all, which led him to create some of the greatest works of art in history and to imagine ideas and inventions centuries ahead of his time.

We don’t need to teach our students how to find all the right answers; we need to teach them to try to find an answer to an interesting problem, not the answer a test problem. It might be the wrong answer; that’s okay – just keep working to solve it.

Keep writing bad stuff until the good ideas start to come out.

Keep drawing until your left brain gets out of the way of your right brain, and you start to draw better.

Don’t teach the test; don’t teach the correct answer.

Teach how to ask better questions, how to analyze, how to lead others.

Teach perseverance in the face of adversity and failure.

by Nathan Coumbe

How to learn anything

Do it.

The thing you want to learn how to do? Start doing it.

Start writing. Start playing the drums. Start drawing. Start reading the classics. Start creating a podcast.

How do you learn how to speak another language? Any teacher worth her salt will tell you that you have to immerse yourself in the language and start speaking it. All the books and college courses in the world won’t help you if you don’t do it.

This is scary, isn’t it? The resistance in your head is telling you that you don’t know where to start or that you can’t possibly learn how to do this or that without a rigorous amount of study. If you don’t know where to start, then yes – go and pick up a book. Watch a YouTube video or download an app. Hire a teacher. But all the reading about it, watching videos about it, being lectured to about it – that won’t get you anywhere until you take action. Once you have a grip on the basics, you just have to start doing.

Learning is easy once you start doing it. Taking action is what’s difficult.

by Nathan Coumbe

Make time for your mind

I am always amazed at the quality of thoughts that I have when taking a shower. Some of my most poignant ideas occur not long after I close the curtain. Solutions to problems, blog topics, business ideas – they all seem to happen while I am standing in the shower.

Why?

I am completely undistracted; there is no waterproof cell phone in there with me. My brain checks out of the actions of the moment as my body automatically goes through the routine, and the brain is allowed to work its magic. This was not always true, though, as I used to bring my cell phone into the bathroom and blast music or a podcast or an audiobook. These quirks may seem harmless, yes, but my daily shower is some of the only truly undistracted time I have.

Our access to technology has our brain so constantly distracted that it seems few of us are having the “a-HA” moments that we need to improve ourselves and the lives of others. This is not a rant against technology but simply a call to action for you to work a few moments of distraction-free thinking into your day.

You’ll need a few things:

  1. Peace and quiet
  2. A notebook and a pen or pencil
  3. A timer (only if you truly need to keep track of your time, as I do when I am on a break at work)

Spend just a few minutes letting your mind wander; write down any thoughts you have which might seem significant to you. They may seem trivial, you may worry that other people think they are stupid or poor-quality (they aren’t), but write them down anyway. This is just for you.

I use my daily shower for this as well as my lunch break and the few breaks throughout my workday to just sit and think – no phone, no social media, no email, just my notebook, a pen, and my thoughts.

What do I write down?

  • Questions
  • Answers to questions
  • Business ideas
  • Problems
  • Solutions to problems I have at work and in my personal life
  • Observations of things I see around me (there is one entry in my journal about a very interesting bird…)
  • Drawings
  • Lists
  • Workouts
  • Music practice sessions
  • General randomness

Write whatever you want. Let your stream of consciousness take over for a few minutes. It is a wonderful feeling once you get used to doing it.

Everyone needs to carry a notebook with them at all times, something I learned from this amazing book (click here), and everyone needs to sit with their thoughts for a few minutes throughout the day. You will be amazed at how much better you will feel, how many good ideas you have, and how much more curious and excited about the world you will be. Try it out! Make it a habit for the next month to get 5 minutes a day of thinking time.

You don’t have to take your notebook in the shower – just leave it on the back of the toilet tank like I do.

by Nathan Coumbe

Make it a game

One of the reasons learning a new language with Duolingo is so effective (in terms of practicing if not fluency) is the idea of streaks. The app creates a streak for you to link together, treating the learning as a game instead of a tedious task. The longer you continue the streak, the harder it will be for you to give up and break it.

Start a streak with your creativity. One of my friends is attempting to draw every single day; another is hoping to read a little every day. The key is to just do it, whether it’s five minutes of reading or doodling something in your notebook. It doesn’t have to be a masterpiece or an entire novel – you get to make the rule of your game.

Find a way to start a streak in an area of your life you wish to improve and keep it going.

by Nathan Coumbe

Hobbies

Get one. Seriously, everyone needs a hobby (and no, vegging out in front of the television after a long work day doesn’t count).

Learn a new language. Pick up a musical instrument you have always wanted to play. Start drawing or painting. Take one of the thousands of online courses in a subject that has always fascinated you (hard to go wrong with history).

Whether you are making a living as a creative or not, you need something creative and stimulating in your life that is purely for fun and pleasure. It’s just for you.

Find out what resources you need in order to get started. Write them down. Write down how the hobby will benefit you personally. Write down any obstacles in your way to making the hobby a reality, and if necessary, find a teacher.

Anyone looking to be great needs a hobby. Maybe it will make some money, too. Wouldn’t that be awesome?

by Nathan Coumbe

Do it.

Some people call it “The Grind.” Seth Godin calls it “The Dip.” There comes a time in just about every worthwhile endeavor when things get tough, or boring, or lose their original excitement. The words don’t come and the muse doesn’t speak. You get “writer’s block,” or your sound quality sucks, no matter how hard you practice your instrument. There is a secret to overcoming this:

Do it anyway.

If you are a writer, write something, no matter how short or how bad you think it is. Train the writing muscles.

If you are a musician, play something, even if only for five minutes. No matter how bad it sounds or how little progress you feel you are making, practice anyway. Train the music muscles.

If you are an artist, make something. It might be incredibly similar to something you’ve already done. You might hate it. Draw it or paint it anyway. Train the artistic muscles.

In this way you are also training your brain to get used to regularly producing in your field of endeavor. It’s mental exercise.

Sometimes you just have to do it.

by Nathan Coumbe

Fail and fail often

When Thomas Edison was very young, a teacher told his mother that he was “too stupid to learn anything.” By age 10, he had set up his own laboratory in his family’s home. He became a full-time inventor and set up his laboratory at Menlo Park at age 20. He wasn’t stupid; he was simply born into an industrial, standardized system which sought to stifle his creativity, to make him compliant to the system. The teacher was bad at teaching; the system didn’t know how to properly educate a child.

Our educational system frowns upon children who don’t sit still, who ask too many questions, who can’t regurgitate facts on standardized tests. We are taught to be children who sit still, shut up, and absorb the facts and figures being thrown at us, seldom ever learning how to do anything. Thomas Edison, one of the most influential inventors who ever lived, was one of these children. Each of us is one of these children.

“I have never let schooling interfere with my education.”

– Mark Twain

Edison was not only creative, he was also a failure. And that is something for which we should all strive.

Edison tried over 10,000 different ways of creating a light bulb before finally making the one for which he is famous. A reporter asked, “How did it feel to fail 10,000 times?”. Edison replied, “I didn’t fail 10,000 times. The light bulb was an invention with 10,000 steps.”

Our educational system frowns upon failure, the greatest teacher of all. The lessons we learn from failure stick with us forever and tend to be much more valuable and useful in helping us make better decisions in the future. We are taught that failure, getting the wrong answer, or writing something poorly, is to be avoided at all costs. Yet the only way to get the right answer is to learn what the wrong one is; the only way to learn to write well is to start writing, most of which will be bad in the beginning.

So what?

Our children, our teens, and yes, us as adults as well, have to get used to the idea of trying new things, of failing. The failures of which I am speaking are not fatal – these are failures in creating something new, or trying out a new skill, or seeking a new way of doing things, of giving something to the world when it might not be accepted.

It might not work. So go fail over and over again until you succeed at something. Try new things, make something, start something, give something to the rest of the world. You might fail. And that failure will teach you a lesson. It will be one of the 10,000 steps in the right direction.

Fail and fail often.

by Nathan Coumbe

Live by the ABCs

I have a mantra that I repeat to myself through out the day, especially when I start to get bored or frustrated with something.

“Always. Be. Curious.”

These are my ABCs. Corny, I know. I don’t care.

My brain never stops; thoughts fly through my mind at light speed in a never-ending stream. There was a time when I tried to drown them out by mindlessly watching television or playing video games. I didn’t know what to do with all the thoughts; at times, they overwhelmed me, annoyed me, or just plain scared me.

Then I learned how to use it to my advantage – I started listening to Seth Godin who taught me to sit with the anxiety created by these racing thoughts and condition my mind to get used to it all rather than try and eradicate it by vegging out in front of a screen. I also read a book called How to Think Like Leonardo da Vinci by Michael J. Gelb which taught me to keep a notebook and write down my thoughts and observations throughout the day.

It changed my life.

I have written down some absolutely stupid, ridiculous, useless thoughts in my notebooks, and yet I have also written down profound words of wisdom, insightful revelations about myself and what I want, solutions to problems that have plagued me, and some of the most interesting observations of the world around me which used to just pass me by.

So today, think about embracing your inner child, the one who used to ask questions about everything, the child that had to touch and smell and taste and listen to everything that crossed his or her path as a way to make sense of the world. Sit with your thoughts, without a phone or a tablet or screen in front of you. Let your mind wander. Write some things down.

Always be curious.

by Nathan Coumbe

Don’t bury the gift

My inspirational reading this morning as well as the podcast to which I was listening on the way to the gym both spoke about gifts and talents. All of us have at least one; mine happens to be music. I started taking violin lessons when I was 7 years old and caught on very quickly. Throughout my entire musical career, things related to music came naturally to me, whether it was music theory, the history of music, or picking up new instruments and quickly learning how to play them.

Then I auditioned for college – it was in that audition that I realized natural talent would only carry me so far. As a child and young adult, I rarely practiced – it all came so easily to me, I didn’t feel like I needed to do so. Halfway through my college education, I realized how much I really did have to learn and talent wouldn’t carry me any farther without disciplined, dedicated practice and lots of sacrifice.

I quit.

I suppose it was fear – something which came so easily to me was suddenly difficult, it was work, it took time to develop.

I buried my gift.

For a couple of years, music was absent from my life – I neither played nor listened to music. I shut it off.

Nurture yours

After a lot of reading, listening, thinking, and rewiring, I realized that I had been gifted with an affinity for music and had to nurture it in some way. I was no better than anyone else, and certainly much worse than others, it was something that simply came naturally to me and needed to be developed (imagine how much further along I would have been had I taken the raw talent when younger and practiced). But I finished my music degree and brought music back into my life.

You have a gift.

There is at least one thing that comes easily to you. Some people may tell you that it isn’t a talent or a gift, but I say it is. Perhaps it isn’t an obvious one, or a gift over which others ooooh and aaaahhhh. Maybe you speak very well, or understand electrical systems, or the inner workings of cars, or have a deft hand at puppetry! It doesn’t matter – if you have an natural inclination towards something, develop it.

Do something with it. Get better. It may not bring you money or riches, but nurture it anyway. Practice the one thing (or more than one thing) at which you were uniquely gifted, however seemingly big or small the talent.

Get better at it. Develop your gift, and when it gets difficult, keep going.

Don’t quit.

by Nathan Coumbe

You are a unique work of art

Have you ever copied something? For instance, if you were learning to draw, you probably traced or copied some other piece of art in order to practice. Or maybe if you are a musician, you have emulated or copied something that one of your favorite artists played on a record or put up on YouTube.

Here’s something to think about – even if you copied it “perfectly,” it still wasn’t exactly the same. The note you played was probably infintismally sharper or flatter than the note the musician played; the line drawn probably had one or two atoms difference in the width or the length. So, in a certain respect, the art was original – it was yours.

You are quite similar to these “copies” – similar in many ways to those that have come before you or to the people working in your same career. Even if you try to be exactly the same or to strive for perfection, you will be different in some minuscule, perhaps microscopic, way.

At the very least, genetically you are one of a kind. I am paraphrasing Robert Greene here, in a book he wrote called Mastery, in which he says that each one of us has never happened before and will never happen again. We are original works of art, no matter how similar we may feel to others.

This is wonderful, because it means that each one of us has the potential to become something great, something different, to bring something to the world that has never before existed.

So go ahead and copy, emulate the people you admire, and learn from as many different sources as possible; each time you do it, whatever you do will be ever so slightly different. Eventually you will become who you were uniquely made to be, and you will give your gifts to the rest of us.

P.S.

Mastery is one of my all-time favorite books. It studies the great masters of many different crafts in varying periods in history. I highly recommend it for those of you interested in finding some inspiration on mastering your creativity. Find it here.