marginal gains

I

The beginning of a new creative cycle:

Having put to bed the one large project that I wasn’t making satisfying progress on, and releasing a couple of others that were too big to be not-quite-the-right-fit — a different approach is now needed.

I’ve recently found myself a little paralysed. Overwhelmed by the possibility of both nothing and newness. The new cycle has to mitigate this paralysis, too. The behemoth terror of the blank page.

II

In past years I’ve been too easily spooked by slow results, and too easily won-over by thick bursts of fast creative progress. I have sold myself on the myth of the overnight gestation; the release into the world fully-formed.

Patience and boredom have not been adequately valued. Seen for the slow tonics that they are.

Patience. Boredom. Repetition.

(in the face of impatience; doubt.)

III

Recently, and for the first time in decades, I’ve found a regular exercise habit.

It was hard psychologically to get over the first hump, but it wasn’t that hard. At first it felt definitely odd, and mostly like I was faking it.

But now I couldn’t live without it. It’s less than an hour of my day, every day bar one.

The gains have been marginal. Until I started seeing them compound. And then I understood the value of having patience (in the face of impatience and doubt) and muddling through boredom and repetition:

Marginal gains compound to yield surprising transformation.

IV

The scope of my artistic projects has been too expansive until now — too ambitious too soon — and the to-do list far too long.

When considering my personal practice, I have also failed until now to properly acknowledge my work as an actor and voice artist. Occupations that take up an enormous amount of energy.

In so failing, I’ve over-extended myself by about 300%. I figure that’s a nearing literal calculation: having put the pressure on myself to perform as an artist-filmmaker energetically and psychologically, as if I didn’t have two other simultaneous professions. An impossible expectation.

Scope overreach. Energetic overestimation. An unfair assignment.

(NB: I don’t get to quit acting or voice work either — even if I wanted to, and I don’t — they are the roof over our heads, and I honour and value that.)

V

So. The shift. The new creative cycle is one wherein I practice nothing but making marginal gains.

I show up for the practice for no more than one hour of my day, every day bar one.

I do something as simple as write one scene: text or image or both.

Not necessarily flowing, nor necessarily part of the same project at all.

They just need to exist. To occur. To accumulate.

Whether or not they’re any good is of absolutely no consequence. The point is not that they’re good, nor even that they go anywhere. Just that they happen.

Each day. Each day. One day at a time.

*

I have James Clear’s Atomic Habits to thank for the provocation to this new model of practice. While I’ve certainly had mushy instincts towards this way of working, it wasn’t until I started re-reading his book (that I had consigned to the “business only” pile) that the idea of the tiniest step forward each day might — analogously to my new-found exercise habit — form a bedrock of both meaningful consistency, and eventually, artistic transformation.