Tag / creativity

by Nathan Coumbe

Replace One Word and Solve a Problem

I have been working on my self-talk a lot recently, and a technique that I have found that really helps me get out of my own way is swapping out the word “but” for the word “and”. This idea came to me after reading a short, but very impactful, blog post by Scott Miller of FranklinCovey entitled “I Can’t Do That”.

How is “but” sabotaging us?

To illustrate the point of how this process can work, let me give you an example with which I am currently wrestling. I studied classical and jazz percussion in college, something that I absolutely loved and found great fulfillment in pursuing. Then I made some stupid decisions and am now currently without a drum set or anything other than a snare drum and some sticks. I would love to start another side hustle using my musical skills and abilities, but I have talked my way out of it many times without even trying. My normal thinking would be “I would love to start a business using my musical skills to teach and play the drums, BUT I don’t have an instrument other than a snare drum.” Well, there you have it – nothing can be done now. I’m stuck. There is no possible way for me to do anything with the skills or resources at my disposal.

Perhaps you already see how this works, but I will walk through it all the same. If I just change the word “but” to the word “and”, something magical happens. “I would love to start a business using my musical skills to teach and play the drums, AND I don’t have an instrument.” Now it is just a problem to solve rather than a brick wall preventing me from making any progress. I could easily follow it up with “so…[insert solution to problem]”, and I have just gotten out of my own way and on the path to a side-hustle. (As an aside, I am positioning myself as an expert snare drummer with a focus on musicality and technique that can be applied to the drum set as well as other percussion instruments.)

Implementation

There are plenty of others ways you can implement this:

  • I want to lose weight, but I don’t have much time.
  • I want to start my own business, but I don’t have any startup capital.
  • I want to get a job in web development, but I don’t know about JavaScript.

You know the drill now – we use “and” now.

  • I want to lose wait, AND I don’t have much time, so I should find a physical activity that I enjoy that doesn’t take up much of my time.
  • I want to start my own business, AND I don’t have any startup capital, so I should find a business idea that costs little or nothing to start making a profit.
  • I want to get a job in web development, AND I don’t know about JavaScript, so I should sign up for an online course or read a book about the subject.

What about you?

Are there things you want to do, AND the word “but” is getting in your way? See what I did there? It’s now just a problem for you to solve! The next time you start talking yourself out of doing something, try this little technique and see if you come up with a possible solution to your problem. You’d be surprised how easy it is.

by Nathan Coumbe

Discovering a new passion!

I always believed that I was creative in only one realm, that realm being music. I have since discovered that I was wrong. Who would have thought that a musician and amateur historian would fall in love with computer programming and web development?

I began working for a very large tech company in 2017 which required learning countless new skills. One of those many skills was learning the basics of computer coding so that I might teach others in a rudimentary fashion. I quickly discovered that I had a knack for solving problems and puzzles with these languages. Not only was I good at it, I was enjoying it! It was the first thing since my days of practicing music for hours on end that caused me to lose track of time while I worked.

After a while, I decided to explore this area further and see what coding could do in the real world. I came across Codecademy.com thanks to my wife, Theresa; she is a brilliant mathematician and wonderful teacher who has had to learn coding for her master’s degree. I worked through the Code Foundations plan, then picked up the Web development plan. The results are below:

My first little webpage! A HUGE thanks to all of the people working at Codecademy.com for their awesome instructional materials, of which this was a part!

There isn’t much to it, I know, but I am thrilled! I haven’t felt this excited in a long time; I built, from scratch, a simple arts & crafts website today! Using nothing but a “spec sheet” given to me by Codecademy.com, which told me what the desired appearance of the page was to be, and one quick Google search for the answer to a question, I went to work. I programmed my own HTML and CSS code into my new text editor from Atom, linked the files together, inserted pictures, and built a simple, attractive little home page within an hour. I never dreamed I would be doing this, and yet here I am. This has been scratching my creative itch like I never thought possible. 

What begins as a collection of symbols, words, and at times what appear to be indecipherable hieroglyphics comes together in a web browser to show the reader the pictures you see above. It is simply miraculous! Creating physical art by hand is not something at which I have ever been skilled, but by using my newfound computer skills, I think I will be making my own type of art.

I am not finished learning; my skills are still in their infancy, and there are coding languages which I have not yet touched. But the fire which I thought only responded to music has again been lit. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have more work to do!