I've been reading a lot about creativity lately because it is central to my practice as a mediator and central to the business opportunities of my commercial clients.  As Colin Powell says when speaking to business people, "to negotiate a deal, you need to be inside the other guy's decision cycle." 

Understanding the creative process in business is one of the ways I try to stay in my clients' "decision cycles." 

So why Juggling in a Cone? 

Two reasons.

HOPE AND CREATIVE SELF-EXPRESSION

First, it gives me hope for humankind.  That we follow the creative call and then spend hundreds (THOUSANDS?) of hours perfecting our heart's desire without realistic chance of material gain  makes me believe we WILL find solutions to global warming, tribal and border warfare, poverty and disease.  I can't help myself.  Juggling in a Cone makes me marvel, makes me laugh, lights up my world.

Second, Juggling in a Cone is all about exploring creativity with severe constraints.  There's not a lot of room in that cylinder.  Given its limitations, what might a juggler do?  Hit the play button and see if you're as enchanted as I am. 

TURNING LIMITATIONS INTO SOLUTIONS

In Turning Limitations into Solutions (the February online issue of Business Week) Marissa Ann Mayer, vice-president for search products and user experience at Google, says

Creativity is often misunderstood. People often think of it in terms of artistic work -- unbridled, unguided effort that leads to beautiful effect. If you look deeper, however, you'll find that some of the most inspiring art forms -- haikus, sonatas, religious paintings -- are fraught with constraints. They're beautiful because creativity triumphed over the rules. Constraints shape and focus problems, and provide clear challenges to overcome as well as inspiration. Creativity, in fact, thrives best when constrained.

Yet constraints must be balanced with a healthy disregard for the impossible. Disregarding the bounds of what we know or what we accept gives rise to ideas that are nonobvious, unconventional, or simply unexplored. The creativity realized in this balance between constraint and disregard for the impossible are fueled by passion and result in revolutionary change.

Having recently been turned on to cartoonist and copyrighter Hugh McLeod's Gaping Void comics (care of Geoff Sharp's eagle eye) I find that artists have been hip to the creativity-constraint principle for some time.  In McLeod's case, the constraint is the size of a business card.

In mediation practice -- the practice building part -- the constraint is generally expressed as a series of reasons one can't make a living at it -- the pro bono panel distorts the market, I'm not a judge, I'm too young, I did transacitonal work, I came to the market too late, there are too many mediators in Los Angeles, the commercial panels have the market all tied up, etc., etc., etc.

If we use these constraints rather than complain about them, we might find ourselves, well, juggling in a cone.

For excellent advice from an artist about pursuing your heart's desire, go to the extended entry, Advice on Being Creative .  I took the time to read this in full yesterday -  a highly worthwhile time commitment.  I recommend it to anyone searching for a solution to the intractable problem of "what are we to do with our one and only lives?" 

Put the hours in.

Doing anything worthwhile takes forever. 90% of what separates successful people and failed people is time, effort, and stamina.

I get asked a lot, "Your business card format is very simple. Aren't you worried about somebody ripping it off?"

Standard Answer: "Only if they can draw more of them than me, better than me."

What gives the work its edge is the simple fact that I've spent years drawing them. I've drawn thousands. Tens of thousands of man hours.

So if somebody wants to rip my idea off, go ahead. If somebody wants to overtake me in the business card doodle wars, go ahead. You've got many long years in front of you. And unlike me, you won't be doing it for the joy of it. You'll be doing it for some self-loathing, ill-informed, lame-ass mercenary reason. So the years will be even longer and far, far more painful. Lucky you.

If somebody in your industry is more successful than you, it's probably because he works harder at it than you do. Sure, maybe he's more inherently talented, more adept at networking etc, but I don't consider that an excuse. Over time, that advantage counts for less and less. Which is why the world is full of highly talented, network-savvy, failed mediocrities.

So yeah, success means you've got a long road ahead of you, regardless. How do you best manage it?

Well, as I've written elsewhere, don't quit your day job. I didn't. I work every day at the office, same as any other regular schmoe. I have a long commute on the train, ergo that's when I do most of my drawing. When I was younger I drew mostly while sitting at a bar, but that got old.

The point is; an hour or two on the train is very managable for me. The fact I have a job means I don't feel pressured to do something market-friendly. Instead, I get to do whatever the hell I want. I get to do it for my own satisfaction. And I think that makes the work more powerful in the long run. It also makes it easier to carry on with it in a calm fashion, day-in-day out, and not go crazy in insane creative bursts brought on by money worries.

The day job, which I really like, gives me something productive and interesting to do among fellow adults. It gets me out of the house in the day time. If I were a professional cartoonist I'd just be chained to a drawing table at home all day, scribbling out a living in silence, interrupted only by freqent trips to the coffee shop. No, thank you.

Simply put, my method allows me to pace myself over the long haul, which is important.

Stamina is utterly important. And stamina is only possible if it's managed well. People think all they need to do is endure one crazy, intense, job-free creative burst and their dreams will come true. They are wrong, they are stupidly wrong.

Being good at anything is like figure skating- the definition of being good at it is being able to make it look easy. But it never is easy. Ever. That's what the stupidly wrong people coveniently forget.

If I was just starting out writing, say, a novel or a screenplay, or maybe starting up a new software company, I wouldn't try to quit my job in order to make this big, dramatic heroic-quest thing about it.

I would do something far simpler: I would find that extra hour or two in the day that belongs to nobody else but me, and I would make it productive. Put the hours in, do it for long enough and magical, life-transforming things happen eventually. Sure, that means less time watching TV, internet surfing, going out or whatever.

But who cares?