Many days I feel accomplished to complete most or all of my to do list. What's on that list has changed over time. Is your daily to do list mostly fires that need putting out, or do you have lots of longterm tasks on it too? In short, what do you assign priority to?
In this article, I want to share something it took me years in my art career to realize, even though it's really just common sense. No amount of planning for the future is as important as what's on my easel right now.
Are you old enough to remember the hugely successful Nike ad campaign of 1988? I remember it. "Just do it" captivated a generation. The idea was that you should focus on the doing, trusting that you will eventually reach the outcome. Just get moving. Do something, anything. THEN make a choice. Arrive at your destination using small adjustments, but don't be distracted by how far away you are from your goal. Often, goals change along the way.
In my art journey, this is how things happen for me. I couldn't have scripted the big wins if I'd tried. And even though I may have been able to avoid some pitfalls, I actually learned a lot from having gone through them. I don't think I would want to avoid them if I could rewind time.
In fact, the spontaneity of a "just do it" mentality increases the number of failures and challenges I experience. This is a good thing for me because I never learn anything when I am winning and unchallenged.
One example that comes to mind is when I had been thinking about how to up-level my art skills and I took an advanced painting workshop. While there, I decided to just do it and commit to a five year drawing and painting curriculum offered by the school. I cannot begin to tell you all the unexpected ways this one action has benefited me. I can't imagine my trajectory without it anymore. And, I have failed and had to redo assignments regularly in the year I have been pursuing the up-leveling of my skill set. This is really exciting because I know this is how I grow. It's working!
In my studio, it's most important that I am in there working. The time at my computer doing the business side of this art career is definitely required, but there is no magic goal that will catapult me to the top of the art world. So all the strategizing in the world won't help me as much as working to be better at what I create. Get better. This IS my marketing strategy. All the rest is supportive of that goal.
If you don't enter shows, you can't win awards. If you don't practice, you don't improve. If you don't maintain your website, you can't refer people to it. If you don't post on socials and send newsletters, people can't follow you. If you don't apply to galleries, you may never be in one. For me, all of these distill down to "Just do it."
Have you regretfully wasted some of your valuable time? At the start of my art career, I worried about whether everything on my website was right. It turns out it was way more important for me to HAVE a website, than to spend a lot of time trying to make it perfect.
I spent countless hours researching galleries and feeling like I wouldn't be a "real" artist until I was represented by one. Once I was in galleries, I realized they are only one of many sales options available to us.
I worked tirelessly to create art for solo shows, only to discover it is a lot more fun for me when I have shows with friends, or even strangers I can network with.
These are just some of the reasons I now focus on what I can control in this moment. Of course a little preparation and planning for the future is necessary, but it's often easy to fall way too far into that rabbit hole.
Have you heard of Greg McKeown's 90 percent rule? It can feel ruthless, but I find it an efficient way to prioritize when I have more to do than I have time for. In the 90 percent rule, you assign all your tasks a number between 1 and 100, based on how much it supports your end goal. Like I said, my goal is to be a better artist. Anything on my list that scores below a 90% when I think about how supportive it is to me becoming a better artist - it can wait for a day when I have time to spare. In this way, I can usually look at my daily list of tasks, identify those that rank above 90%, and just do them.
Are you finding it's best to just do it? Or are you still spending the majority of your time trying to figure out your destination? If your goal is to get better, is your current situation working for you? I'm curious whether it's just me, and if other artists prioritize differently.
Until next time,
