The gap between where you are and where you want to be
Why creative people are so impatient
🛸 👋 This is Georgia from Out of Hours: the newsletter for creative and ambitious people who want to make the most of their hours on this planet.
Hello,
How do you avoid getting distracted by big future ideas and stay the course? Today we’re talking about one thing a lot of creative and ambitious people struggle with: consistency.
When I ran the Out of Hours Launchpad last year (a 5 week community course), one thing we talked about a lot was impatience: impatience to get where you want to be, impatience to grow and impatience to start all of your ideas at once.
With this impatience came dissatisfaction with the small wins. If only one person replied to your newsletter that week, did it mean no-one cared? If your Instagram was slow to grow, did that mean this idea would never be successful? And why did it take so damn long for the brand positioning statement to align with your vision? During the Launchpad, we often returned to what was written down in the first session: why did you start this project in the first place? Why does it matter to YOU?
A feeling of impatience can sometimes feel like the ‘truth’ ('it’s going too slowly, this isn’t a good idea) but really it’s an excuse. A reason to not put in the hard work. Impatience often leads to distraction and disappointment. This impatience is something Ira Glass - host of This American Life - termed ‘the taste gap’ - the gap between where you want to be and where you actually are. He writes:
“Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have… if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story... It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.”
Your taste might be the thing that makes you feel bad about your own work. But it’s also the thing that shows you have potential. If you think your art sucks that’s probably because you know what good art looks like. If you think your writing is clunky that’s because you’re able to identify smooth prose. If you think your small successes aren’t meaningful that’s because your brain is capable of imagining things that are so much bigger. The sheer ability to imagine and identify what ‘good’ looks like is a reason to celebrate, and a mandate that you must not stop.
So this week take a moment to reflect - what are the things you’re resenting that might be showing you where you want to go? And can you accept that impatient voice, but choose to commit to consistency anyway? Ironically, thinking small may be the best way to get to something big.
Remember: those people whose work you admire were once creative and impatient too. They too had to wade through dissatisfaction only to find - one day - they had in fact narrowed the gap.
I’d love to hear what you think - do you think you have the taste gap? How have you overcome it?
I’m also planning to run another event or two this year. Keep your eyes peeled over the coming weeks for updates and take a look at the Launchpad if you’re thinking of starting a new idea.
Georgia