I couldnt get a lot out of this talk and havent read the book. But I do feel the theme of what he’s saying becoming a popular narrative lately.
People are hungry to provide themselves and others with purpose and meaning. It seems as though so many of us want to know what we’re doing will make a difference, in the short and the long term. Not just working for the sake of it, or competing blindly in what may be a zero sum game.
The speaker's narrative style in this video has many depth-first branches, before he unwinds the stack and continues. This makes it a high-effort endeavor (for me) to stay focused on his message.
After ~15 minutes, I gleaned these two points:
1. Creation is an essential part of being human
2. The way we create has fundamentally changed over the past half-century, and the consumer of a work now plays a non-trivial role in shaping the work.
I wonder if the book has a similarly discursive style.
For me the highlight was the ~15:14 mark, building up on the the diving buddy example. First he mentions that creative process needs a buddy (in "pioneering conditions"):
- buddy must be passionately curious
- buddy needs to be kind
Then he explains that all creators create in a cycle, and that long-term creation must be fun, since there is no quick payday. The cycle:
- ideating
- experimenting
- exhibiting
He explains that the exhibiting can (should?) be done to audiences that "get it" and are able to consume the content even in experimental form.
This resonated for me. The most creative and long-term work I did was in this very cycle. I was able to produce things that were immediately consumed and the feedback loop was very quick. This allowed me to stay motivated and sustain "the creativity" for > 2 years.
The obvious question is how to create this cycle artificially, and how to sustain it from an employer point of view.
There is some relationship between motivation and enthusiasm. I think enthusiasm is the single most important thing.
Naively, you could state that showing enthusiasm is an expression of internal motivation. But enthusiasm can be faked, while I'm not sure you can fake motivation.
The remaining question is: is it possible to have motivation to do creative work without having an enthusiasm?
(and of course, how to build both things consciously. Is convincing yourself to "doing meaningful work" exactly that?)
Interesting analogy about narrative style. I’m not deeply familiar with stack behavior but am very interested in narrative, so I want to make sure I read you correctly. Are you saying that he goes into depth on one topic, and then moves into depth on another, and then at the end you have to piece the topics together yourself?
What’s your preferred narrative style? To connect all the topics at a high-level in the beginning, and then go into depth on each?
(Based on everyone’s comments I don’t think I’m going to spend time on this video, hence why I’m asking here if my interpretation of your comment is correct.)
He would ideally say A, B, C, and D. Then descend into each part, so we know where he is going.
Instead, he says A, A1, A1.a, A1.b, A1.b1, A1.b2, A1.c, A2, A3, A3.a, A3.b, A3.b1, A3.b1.i, A3.b1.ii, ...
What should be a smooth narrative for a 30 minute talk about a book, becomes a series of asides, discursions, qualifiers, and more minutiae, which, while technically accurate, make it hard to stay engaged as a listener.
Of course, I'm only a "YouTube listener". The average person physically in the audience that day might have substantially higher levels of commitment and focus on parsing his narrative.
In creating things that matter, one has to decide what matters, are you creating what matters to you or to the public? If for the later, then you must ask yourself if you are willing to deal with all that it entails such as criticism, moving in a direction that you don't care about where you might not even enjoy the work, and doing a lot of work that other's might value but refuse to pay for.
I frankly believe that the act of creating is "creating things that matter", if it never mattered you wouldn't put in the effort in the first place, the question is does the impact matter? if you created something for only you or you and your friends, what's wrong with that? Absolutely nothing! It use to be that creators created things that mattered to them, but now it seems we are driven to create for others and for profit.
If anything, I would argue against "creating things that matter" and simply preach, "CREATE!"
(I'm a bit critical in my comment below; Caveat being that I do appreciate David Edwards' exploration of the subject. Also, his talk is only 28 minutes. The additional material in the his book may well address what I've brought up below).
at about 9:29 :
> "The wall between the creator and the public is going away, and that it's becoming increasingly difficult to receive commercial value or to learn and not to co-create..."
I think this doesn't give enough credence the 1000 true friends / believers concept that Kevin Kelly and Seth Godin have discussed. The 1000 true friends theory is especially potent when the the absolute audience size is most of the people in the world, and only a tiny subset across that audience is patronizing the creator/artist.
Later in the video he talks more about the maker movement ..but comes back to "the lab" as a place that that can be captured and understood. I don't quite understand that..
At about 11:00:
> "kids are the ultimate pioneers"
I don't understand this - kids are certainly sponges for learning - but I don't think they're creative pioneers at all - calling kids creative pioneers is much too broad (IMHO). It seems kids are much more reactionary to the creativity that has been put in front of them; often in new mediums ...which means the creative pioneers already exist. Sure there are exceptions to the rule that are indeed kids.
Edit: re kids : in the video he shows a young child - and that is what I'm reacting to. But if you define "kids" to be people in their 20s ..well, that's different. That said, it would be interesting to have some statistics for creative pioneers who are kids (per some definition) vs others.
The talk is interesting and the importance of audience is a good point.
However, there is selection bias in the statement that most creations are made for audience. It is true that most famous creations were made for audience, indeed, otherwise they would not become famous or even known to others. There is more to art though.
Some people don't publicize their art, or don't get a lot of attention from others. Yet these people are not necessarily lesser artists. The whole audience can be one friend, or small internet community, or there may be no intended audience at all, when art is made for the sake of the creation process, not necessarily for exposition at all.
The same for the necessity of beauty, which he states is required for all art. I think, not all art or artistic creations are beautiful. However, beautiful art gets remembered and becomes part of the bigger culture easier.
im midway thru this book atm. its got an encouraging and enlightening feel, but suffers a bit from being situated in elite academia.
for example, this requirement of being "nice" was ubiquitous in gradschoolland and synonomous with "unchallenging, flattering, " and especially, "beyond critique."
hopefully this talk lets the book's concepts trickle down to Earth a bit.
I highly recommend everyone to read "Perennial Seller" by Ryan Holiday. Really insightful and fun to read book on the same subject that does a much better job of explaining it than this dude.
TLDR - The creativity nowadays goes in much faster cycles than before, and less life. "Our creations used to live the life of trees, then turtles, and lately flies..." (unknown rand() thought)
Basically: lots of people create things now, and the creations are more short lived than in the past, when there were less creators and less creations. It was one of the least rewarding videos I've watched recently.
People are hungry to provide themselves and others with purpose and meaning. It seems as though so many of us want to know what we’re doing will make a difference, in the short and the long term. Not just working for the sake of it, or competing blindly in what may be a zero sum game.