Blocked from your grand vision by technical details? That’s not tortured genius. That’s immature creative process.

Photo by Ivana Cajina on Unsplash

Dear Me,

I get it. You think big. You feel super creative and inspired.

But then you struggle to execute. Your vision lingers perpetually out of reach…

Time to watch a YouTube video on How to stop making excuses and execute?

Not quite.

Your creative process & assumptions are getting in your way:

1. You assign your vision to a medium, then that medium becomes the focus. Definitionally, every medium limits you. Because you’re focusing on the medium, you feel the vision was compromised, and it’s too discouraging to go on.
2. You get carried away imaging the final product & it’s glorious external validation. Your process becomes about trying to reach that external validation. This doesn’t just make things anxious and betray the vision. It also encourages a focus on the medium, since it will be the vessel carrying your vision to others. Usually, this means you jump to a shiny, slow, public-facing medium that chokes the original creative spark.
3. You believe it’s about achieving the vision. It’s not: the initial vision is just what propels you into motion. If engaging & creating with the real world didn’t evolve & refine your initial vision, you’d have to have started out omniscient. (Hint: you didn’t.)

Let go of “Why can’t I achieve my vision?” Ask these questions instead:

1. What parts of this big vision might the constraints of this medium help me focus on? And, is this even the medium that best suits me right now? (eg do you need to build a web application, or could you just sketch in your notebook?)
2. If no one outside your most intimate relationships ever saw this, what would you create? What’s the simplest way to convey it to them?
3. What’s the best next step to evolve this vision into something new & deeper?

Beloved me, I love you. And I know you love to create.

But notice when an attitude of violence and control enters your creative process: when it becomes about achieving and executing.

Creativity is not about changing your world. It’s about how you change when we put yourself into it.