The Creative Ratio
April 23rd, 2009
Published in
Miscellaneous
1 Comment
Tags: creativity, productivity
If the following seems a little abstract to you, don’t worry. It is. There’s a mantra, I’ve been repeating to myself for a long time, but I only recently wrote it down. This is it:
“If 1 in 10 ideas become projects, that’s good. If 1 in 10 projects is finished, that’s great. If 1 in 10 finished projects are successful, I’m happy.”
It made perfect sense to me while I was chanting it in my head, but as soon as I wrote it down, it seemed to require a little explanation.
Anyone who does creative work knows that ideas make up the primordial soup, from which all our creations crawl. And ideas have a tendency to spawn more, new ideas. Pretty soon you’ll have more scribbled notes, sketches and archived thoughts than you’ll know what to do with.
Enter the internal editor. He’s the little voice in your head that tells you what ideas to pick, which ones to mull over and which ones to discard. He’s also the first part of the statement above.
Once you’ve decided to evolve an idea into an actual project, various obstacles and challenges will invariably present themselves. You either overcome them, work around them or let them weigh your new project down, until you either finish what you’re working on or not. In the latter case, a project may end up in the drawer, in the garbage or as a starting point for more new ideas.
Unless you’ve got issues beyond the scope of this post, you will eventually finish projects. This is the second part of the mantra. Very often though, the end result is not exactly what you’d imagined, when you first started out. Ideas evolve as we work on them, there’s nothing strange or wrong with that, but just because you finish something, doesn’t mean that you’ll be in love with the result. Or that it will sell, impress or otherwise find any kind of success.
I’d be lying if I said, I don’t want my projects to be successful. Of course I do! I want my stock images to sell, my clients to love what they pay me for, listeners to like my music, readers to enjoy my writing. All of that and more. I want to please some of the people, some of the time. Achieving that does make me happy, but it just does not happen every time a project is released.
The 1 in 10 ratio is not based on scientific fact. It’s just a number I came up with, that seemed reasonably realistic. If the result is that approximately 1 in 1000 ideas produce successful results, the trick then seems to be picking the right idea to begin with. And productivity-wise, the goal becomes to lower any of the three ratios. If I can turn more ideas into projects, more will finish and end up fulfilling (or exceeding) expectations.
In other words, I look at the creative ratio as a starting point. A reminder that succeeding as an artist, whether you write books, make movies or whatever, is a continuous effort. There is no such thing as overnight success, but trial and error over and over until you get it right. This is true, whether you dream big or small. The ratio scales accordingly.
The mantra keeps me on track. It can be frustrating when the ideas keep coming, and I have too little time. Or when the ones I do start working on grind to a halt for whatever reason. Of course I am both proud and happy when something is ready to be set free, but even then I have to remind myself that the rest of the world might not be that into it. The ratio serves as a reality check.
Photo credit: Me!
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