This post contains 5 more tips for doing the things in life that take time (see the previous post for the first 5). These are intended for highly-motivated, possibly high-anxiety people, rather than those who lack the drive to go after things. I think of it as “Making my Type-A-ness work for me rather than against me.”
Onward!
Snapshot your progress and celebrate it even if you haven’t reached your destination.
I have bad joints. The flute is probably one of the worst hobbies to pick up for the arthritis-prone, but I wanted it. My progress was going to be slower than most. I would be starting on the fundamentals of music at 40, while most students start at 4. At first I could only play for ten minutes a day before my fingers and wrists hurt too much. I was learning via Skype, taking classes as my busy travel schedule permitted. Every few months, I’d need to take a break and let my forearms and tendons recover. So when I recorded this last April I was totally embarrassed by it. The delta between the music in my head and my execution was so vast.
If I were fancier, I’d make a training montage. But here I am, exactly a year later. Still embarrassed by the delta. Still making mistakes. My execution has improved, but so has my aspiration, which means the goalpost has moved, and I feel exactly the same way about my skill now as I did a year ago.
If I hadn’t recorded the first song, or if I’d given in to my inclination to delete it once my teacher had critiqued it, I wouldn’t be able to hear how far I’ve come today.
With pursuits that require skill, the better you get, the more you realize how far you still have left to go. If you don’t set yourself up to celebrate how far you’ve come, you’ll burn out. It’s important to reward yourself, even if it means backsliding just a little bit or taking a break. Better to intentionally slow down and catch your breath than burn out and have to quit.
Sharpen the saw – skill is its own reward.
Is there a way past that embarrassment once and for all?
We tend to throw about years of experience as a marker of skill, e.g. “I’ve been an engineer for fifteen years!” Experience only helps if you’re actually using your time to learn and grow. If you’re just turning the crank, year after year, you’re not just stagnating. You’re deteriorating. With creative and technical skills, you have to constantly be adapting just to stay relevant. Language is dynamic, technology is disruptive, and the moment we’re in requires us to sharpen the saw like we never did before.
A while ago, I struggled to hire artists for a creative project. They had spent so long honing their unique style that no matter what story they were illustrating, the characters looked the same. My breakthrough was when I realized they were still treating art as expression, not as communication. They were still struggling to have their art be the execution of their intent; incorporating other people’s feedback and intent was a step too far.
But language is the fabric of society. Technology is a lever to change society. And as much as I consider myself a practitioner of both, I need to keep my skills sharp. So I take classes, I read extensively, I talk to other writers, I see how the industry changes, and I keep my mind open to change.
A few months ago, for the first time ever I wrote a novel from start to finish without getting stuck and needing to rewrite. If I plan on a long career where I write a book a year, I need to get better, faster, at conveying my meaning the first time, instead of going through four revisions to get close. It also allows me to know when and how to listen to others’ feedback without losing my own voice. This is also a skill that’s helped me with presentations to executives: being able to get a deck drafted in a day, to allow others to change and improve it without losing the narrative or meaning, is a skill that’s saved me weeks at a time.
Sharpening the saw allows you to go from hoping you’ll succeed and feeling like everyone else’s voice is either a critique or a threat, to having enough confidence in your skills to be open to others’ influence.
Know what you want, what you really, really want.
When you’re out on the ocean and thirsty, you really want to drink the water. It only leaves you thirstier. In the same way, you will find salt-water everywhere in your career and life. A job with the boss who makes your stomach squirm (but who says no to that salary?). An agent who flatters you and responds immediately to your work (but dumps you when your books don’t become instant bestsellers). A lover who says all the right things (but doesn’t do any chores WTF?)
The hardest thing in life is knowing when you’re drinking saltwater. Sometimes your friends have to tell you, “Sweetheart, you’re tap-dancing to keep that relationship alive.” Or, you might stay in the job or the relationship until the other person rips the bandaid off and be utterly shocked at how you missed the warning signs.
That’s not the right time to be asking yourself what you want, because the answer will naturally be “gimme back the thing I had.” Instead, wait for a time when you feel particularly settled and write down why you feel settled. What’s the feeling of drinking a glass of actual not-salty water when you’re thirsty? Once you know that, you’ll know when you’re compromising instead.
Leave a breadcrumb trail for others, even if you aren’t at your destination.
Sometimes our minds think certain things are true, but when we examine the belief we can’t quite figure out where it came from. A while ago, I realized I believed I wasn’t “ready” to help others. I wasn’t successful enough, didn’t know enough, wasn’t savvy enough to help others navigate the world. I needed help–what business did I have trying to help others? Wouldn’t I only lead them off a cliff?
Then Instagram and Tiktok happened. And people who knew less than me were spouting advice (some good, some terrible) and I was left wringing my hands, saying, “But that’s not how publishing works!” or “That advice only works in your early career. It doesn’t work if you’re a leader.” Turns out I did know a thing or two. And I could both need help myself and offer it to others.
Over time, I realized that society reinforces hierarchical relationships everywhere: mentor-mentee, coach-trainee, parent-child, teacher-student, etc. So we seem to believe we’re in one bucket until we magically teleport into the other one. As if humans only become adults when they become parents.
Help others along before you feel ready to. Teaching others is actually about being a lifelong student. Learning where they’re at, reconciling it against your experience, and embracing a place of mutual becoming isn’t just a way to succeed in the endeavors that take time–it may be the only solution to bridge the world’s greatest divides.
Know when you’re actually at your destination.
I like symmetry in writing. So, going back to point (1) – just as we’re not always honest with ourselves about not being where we want to be, sometimes we’re not honest when we are exactly where we want to be. Societal expectation, peer pressure, and the capitalist structures of society all push us onward even when we’re just fine. There’s always something new you’re supposed to chase: the next promotion, the next book deal, something to fill the void you’re supposed to feel. Because, if you actually felt you were good enough, the economy would grind to a halt.
I call this the forced football game. Growing up in Saudi Arabia, you couldn’t escape football (no, it’s not soccer, the Americans are wrong). It meant that any time you got into a fight with a boy, their answer would be, “Shoot a goal and you can have the field for your game.” or “Kick the ball higher than one of us and we’ll stop teasing you.”
As children, we assumed this was the way of things, and so we learned to play football. But the other day I was in a football field and I had the strangest realization: I don’t HAVE to kick the ball into the goal.
Why, on a large open field, had I made my own life difficult by setting up a tiny goal and a goalkeeper? I could kick the ball literally anywhere. I could not kick the ball at all and sit on it and read a book instead.
There is a LOT of forced football in the world. We can get caught up in the pressure, watch others score goals and wonder when it’ll be our turn, never questioning whether we wanted to play football at all. To me, this is how I feel about book deals. Everyone’s getting one these days. Five figures, six figures, foreign and film rights and an all-star cast.
I got a book deal. A generous one. It settled something in me that shouldn’t have needed external validation but did. Maybe it’s that immigrant sensibility that until the mainstream accepts you, you aren’t good enough. But it only made me realize that validation and readership aren’t the same thing. That you can get a promotion but not the respect of your peers, and that’s not worth very much. It forced me to do a lot of soul-searching about what I actually want out of my writing, and why I’d set up a goal on an open field.
Which brings me to my current state of mind. I’m happy at work and don’t need to get promoted anymore. I want to play more music (but never want to perform). I want to write. I want people to enjoy what I write. I don’t want to make people wait the 2-4 years they’d have to wait for my next book if I was always going through traditional publishing. And I don’t want to spend the rest of my life chasing goals others have set up for me.