The Illusion of Ease

Jackopierce-Jack O’Neill & Cary Pierce

When I see a pro at work I have to remind myself that the ease, perfection and polish that I am witnessing is an illusion.

Nothing this good comes easy.

Sure there are protégées but the truth is that they are extremely rare.  Most of them fizzle out and never reach full maturity in their craft, skill, or gifting.

The temptation is to be duped into believing that this perfect polish was achieved easily.  Let me give you a few examples to prime your senses.

Pick your favorite writer, your favorite band, your favorite photographer or painter.  How about the entrepreneur or public speaker, school teacher or professional athlete?

Made to look easy

When you experience them in their respective area of strength do you say to yourself

How did they get so good?
Man they make that look easy.

It is true.  It does look easy.

When the pros are doing their thing, they are absolutely inspiring to watch.

In the past few weeks I have felt a temptation to assume that the pros I have encountered somehow found a shortcut.

They must have found the magic pill, magic button, hidden road or seed to plant their money tree in their back yard.

I know better.

They must have found a shortcut

When we make the conclusion that someone got a free pass or got to cut to the front of the line and bypass all of the hard work, perseverance, disappointment, agony of setbacks and defeats then we create a dissonance between us and them.

We interpret the gap between them and us with a list of reasons for the gap being so wide.

  • We conclude that they didn’t have to work as hard as we do.
  • They didn’t have a tough start like we did.
  • They must have had a really good father, mentor, friend, grandfather, professor, boss, rich uncle, etc.
  • They are more naturally gifted.

When we conclude that the pros were the benefactors of a shortcut then we justify our current position as affirmation that we will likely never close the gap.

The truth is that the pros also waded through the same crap 
that we have to in order to achieve their dreams and desires.

Don’t preclude yourself from the pursuit of your desires.

Don’t embrace the temptation to believe the illusion of ease.

Show up and do the work and close the gap instead.

5 Reasons Why You Should Start Creating in Your Garage

Walt Disney’s first advertisement

I started working on that (animated short) in the garage
while I was still working for the film studio.  

Great Beginnings Start in the Garage

Walt Disney started creating his animated shorts in his garage while he still had a day job.

The world was forever changed because of his unwavering commitment to bring his ideas to life.

You dream about changing the world for good.  And yet you aren’t making any headway on your master plan.

You have this secret hope that you might receive a FedEx package with an invitation inside that reads,

You are cordially invited to begin doing the work of your dreams;
Please report to duty on Monday morning.

Come on?

Instead of waiting for that mythical invitation to pursue your life’s passion,
you should start working in the garage today.

It is the best hope you have.

How am I so sure? 

This summer my family and I were in San Francisco and we visited the Walt Disney Family Museum (Read more on the museum).

Listen to the podcast interview.

On the wall there was one quote that lured me to quickly write it down.

I started working on that …..in the garage.

In the early 1920’s Walt Disney was working in Los Angeles, CA for a film studio.

  • His name was not yet in neon lights.
  • His dreams had not yet been realized.
  • While he still had a day job.
  • While he was putting food on the table.
  • While he was a freelancer trading hours for a day’s wage.

  • He was secretly working in the garage on his best stuff.

Walt Disney altered American family history because he started tinkering in the garage.

I think you should start altering the trajectory of your future by creating in your garage.

Why your best work is born in the garage?

1) No one is watching.

That’s right.  No one is over your shoulder watching you work asking if you are done yet.  You have the opportunity to work on your craft without anyone else witnessing your creation.

2) There is no pressure.

You don’t have a deadline.  You are free of obligation to deliver a finished work.  There are no customers tapping their toes waiting on your final product.

3) Your livelihood does not count on it.

When decoupling your livelihood from your craft there is an immense amount of pressure relieved.  So what if you mess it up?  So what if it sucks?
So what if you start over 52 times?

Paying your mortgage is not tied to the result.

4) You will never have more passion than you do right now.

Never again will you be so unadulterated in your view of this project.

The purity of your passion is like that of a Hawaiian black sand beach
just after a volcano erupted virgin lava onto her shore.

Yep that damn sexy.

Think of the welled up desire that you have to pour out onto the paper, the sculpture, the wood, or the guitar strings.

When else will you possess this poetic a prose?

5) The rent is cheap

The garage looks pretty affordable compared to a two-year lease for an office.  Pause and appreciate the luxury of being nimble, thrifty and dynamic.

Once you hire a bunch of people and start spending all of your time meeting with attorneys and accountants everything changes.

Bonus advice: You already have a Thing

A good friend advised me that the best time to start working on your next thing is right now while you have a thing.   

Isn’t that great advice?

The garage is perfect. 

The garage is the perfect figurative or physical place for you to start honing your craft.

Where would the world be if Walt Disney had not started tinkering with animation in his garage?

Where will we be if you don’t start in your garage?

Other compelling nudges for you to start:

Everyone is waiting on you.

Start doing the job you wish you had.

Do you feel like you are playing for the farm team?

What do you think you have to loose?

5 Reasons Why You Should Start Creating in Your Garage (Like Walt Disney)?

“I started working on that (animated short) in the garage
while I was still working for the film studio.” Walt Disney  

Great Beginnings Start in the Garage

Walt Disney started creating his animated shorts in his garage while he still had a day job.

The world was forever changed because of his unwavering commitment to bring his ideas to life.

You dream about changing the world for good.  And yet you aren’t making any headway on your master plan.

You have this secret hope that you might receive a FedEx package with an invitation inside that reads,

You are cordially invited to begin doing the work of your dreams;
Please report to duty on Monday morning.

Come on?

Instead of waiting for that mythical invitation to pursue your life’s passion,
you should start working in the garage today.

It is the best hope you have.

How am I so sure? 

This summer my family and I were in San Francisco and we visited the Walt Disney Family Museum (Read more on the museum).

Listen to the podcast interview.

On the wall there was one quote that lured me to quickly write it down.

I started working on that …..in the garage.

In the early 1920’s Walt Disney was working in Los Angeles, CA for a film studio.

  • His name was not yet in neon lights.
  • His dreams had not yet been realized.
  • While he still had a day job.
  • While he was putting food on the table.
  • While he was a freelancer trading hours for a day’s wage.

  • He was secretly working in the garage on his best stuff.

Walt Disney altered American family history because he started tinkering in the garage.

I think you should start altering the trajectory of your future by creating in your garage.

Why your best work is born in the garage?

1) No one is watching.

That’s right.  No one is over your shoulder watching you work asking if you are done yet.  You have the opportunity to work on your craft without anyone else witnessing your creation.

2) There is no pressure.

You don’t have a deadline.  You are free of obligation to deliver a finished work.  There are no customers tapping their toes waiting on your final product.

3) Your livelihood does not count on it.

When decoupling your livelihood from your craft there is an immense amount of pressure relieved.  So what if you mess it up?  So what if it sucks?
So what if you start over 52 times?

Paying your mortgage is not tied to the result.

4) You will never have more passion than you do right now.

Never again will you be so unadulterated in your view of this project.

The purity of your passion is like that of a Hawaiian black sand beach
just after a volcano erupted virgin lava onto her shore.

Yep that damn sexy.

Think of the welled up desire that you have to pour out onto the paper, the sculpture, the wood, or the guitar strings.

When else will you possess this poetic a prose?

5) The rent is cheap

The garage looks pretty affordable compared to a two-year lease for an office.  Pause and appreciate the luxury of being nimble, thrifty and dynamic.

Once you hire a bunch of people and start spending all of your time meeting with attorneys and accountants everything changes.

Bonus advice: You already have a Thing

A good friend advised me that the best time to start working on your next thing is right now while you have a thing.   

Isn’t that great advice?

The garage is perfect. 

The garage is the perfect figurative or physical place for you to start honing your craft.

Where would the world be if Walt Disney had not started tinkering with animation in his garage?

Where will we be if you don’t start in your garage?

Other compelling nudges for you to start:

Everyone is waiting on you.

Start doing the job you wish you had.

Do you feel like you are playing for the farm team?

What do you think you have to loose?

“Don’t Worry Be Crappy” Ship It Anyway

Photo by Guy Kawasaki

Have you ever shipped a new blog, software version, music track, speech, design, (your art) knowing it wasn’t perfect and you sent it anyway?

Like you, I am an artist, an innovator constantly fielding new ideas and rumblings.

That means there is always another idea waiting for me after I ship this one.

Let’s explore why shipping early and repairing later is actually better than waiting for perfection.

Real Artists Ship.
Steve Jobs

Fellow heretic Guy Kawasaki

Formerly Guy was the chief evangelist of Apple.  I am very partial to one of his first books, Rules for Revolutionaries -The Capitalist Manifesto.

In this twelve year old book Guy lays out nine rules for revolutionaries to follow.  (See all 9 here).

Don’t Worry Be Crappy.

Yep, that is what Guy said.  And you should too.

I’ve spent the past seven years in the software world.  Software is never perfect.  As a result you have to determine the impact of the imperfections.

Sometimes you hold back and conclude that would be a mess.  Other times you hit the publish, upload, send, compile button and hope you are right.

You never will know if you were brilliant or foolish until it’s out the door.

Will your customers, prospects, colleagues, friends, followers share the same belief that your defect was only “minor”?  Or will they berate you for your lack of professionalism and excellence?

Michael Hyatt has a great post on this topic related to his blog writing and readers finding mistakes.  Also check out a second post from Michael about Embracing Permanent Beta.

Alpha is worse than you think.

Each time I ship a new version of Alpha software I learn a lot more when it is in the field.  The benefit is that you receive the direct benefit of quickly finding out what is flawed.

The Market Will Tell You.

Shipping early means you gain the benefit of your market, customers, followers, tribe, telling you what you’ve done wrong.

I believe it is better to ship 75% of the right solution to the market than waiting until you have 90% and you are late.

You will never be able to address all of the market needs from inside the walls of your company.

Microsoft has mastered this art of Don’t worry be crappy.

Every second Tuesday of the month they ship us a new Windows update, they know the market will instruct them on what’s crappy.

It’s crappy, now fix it.

Guy’s Rule # 2 is Churn Baby Churn.  Once you ship then you hear what is broken, the clock begins ticking.

Fix it fast.  Equally important is communicating with your customers, tribe, prospects or followers.

Straight from Guy 
Churn, baby, churn. I’m saying it’s okay to ship crap–I’m not saying that it’s okay to stay crappy. A company must improve version 1.0 and create version 1.1, 1.2, … 2.0. ….. Innovation is not an event. It’s a process.

Being Nimble is your advantage.

I have a friend whose son is a Marine.  He was explaining to me about how in battle, the commander is always making decisions with 70% of the available information.

The battle happens too fast to have 100% clarity on what is occurring on the actual battlefield.

The ability to have real-time course correction is the safety net to not knowing if your decision is correct.

The difference between us and Microsoft is that we have the opportunity to revise quickly.

Their big organization moves slow.  It is hard to turn around or quickly change course .  Not us, we are nimble.  

With a phone call, a bug fix delivered to the Cloud, an Elance job, email, Asana task to our virtual assistant-DONE.

Mean What you Say.

The promise that you extended to your customers or your tribe I’m reliable. We care.  You can call the CEO with a problem.  

All of those previous statements now are tested.  What will you do?  Do you care?  Will you fix it?  Do you have an answer at all?

Mr. Customer, I know this looks crappy.  And it is.  It is worse than we thought and we’ve got a team on it.  We will call you each day or email you with a close of business summary of our progress and findings.  Here is my personal cell phone you can call if you ever want an update.  I may not know the answer but I can find it.  

How fast you revise is critical to your survival and integrity in the market.

And if you can’t fix it, say so.

Art I’ve shipped that I knew was crappy

  1. This new website had some rough edges.
    I knew the comment section had some issues.  Yet I knew the overall design and feel was a massive improvement from V1.0.
  2. PriceAdvantage V1.0 gasoline pricing software Spring of 2005.
    This thing was riddled with problems.   One time all of the prices at the pump went to Zero $…..yes Zero $….FREE GAS.  And the store manager called our help desk to ask if she Should I refund the money of the guy who pre-paid $20 cash.  

Now it is your turn to tell your story.    

What project, product, Art have you shipped that you knew was crappy?

And what happened?

Would you do it over again?