Love this essay - it really helped me at a time that I was feeling stagnant with my work/career (which was really recently, just a few weeks ago). I do feel like I've found a job and a path that really does bring me a sense of meaning and impact and joy. But lately I had gotten into the habit of focusing way too much on the 'doing', without a clear goal I was working towards. I was 'wandering endlessly' - and I wouldn't say that it 'got me nowhere' - but you definitely don't get near as far as you could, or you don't really even know where you get to, without a deliberate intention of where you want to go. I was letting life and work happen without taking charge of my path. And agree that it's great to find 'flow states' and I find them all the time - but the super important part that resonated with me from this is the knowing what 'done' means and defining this clearly. In the short term at least, I'm starting to set goals and targets to strive for, that I can review progress towards, and change course if I meet them or decide my priorities have shifted.
Hmm, great point! It’s definitely a balance of both parts. I think most people get stuck in trying to just get “done,” so focused on the end. It’s rare that you’ve found yourself just “doing,” but also great to recognize when you need to zoom back out a bit and check your direction. If the ladder is on the wrong wall, you have no choice but to step off a bit before you can make any real progress.
This felt so related to what I'm thinking about right now as well. For me that thing is to draw in sketchbooks, I love to just disappear into them in the moment, fill up pages and to look back through old ones. Maybe turning those ideas into products/things is just a way for me to make enough money so I can keep filling the sketchbooks.
That reminds me of one of my favorite passages from Walden:
‘Not long since, a strolling Indian went to sell baskets at the house of a well-known lawyer in my neighborhood. "Do you wish to buy any baskets?" he asked. "No, we do not want any," was the reply. "What!" exclaimed the Indian as he went out the gate, "do you mean to starve us?" Having seen his industrious white neighbors so well off—that the lawyer had only to weave arguments, and, by some magic, wealth and standing followed—he had said to himself: I will go into business; I will weave baskets; it is a thing which I can do. Thinking that when he had made the baskets he would have done his part, and then it would be the white man's to buy them. He had not discovered that it was necessary for him to make it worth the other's while to buy them, or at least make him think that it was so, or to make something else which it would be worth his while to buy. I too had woven a kind of basket of a delicate texture, but I had not made it worth any one's while to buy them. Yet not the less, in my case, did I think it worth my while to weave them, and instead of studying how to make it worth men's while to buy my baskets, I studied rather how to avoid the necessity of selling them. The life which men praise and regard as successful is but one kind. Why should we exaggerate any one kind at the expense of the others?’
I love this. This is exactly how I realized that filmmaking was what I came here to do, or what I enjoy the most doing. In the few shorts and movies I've participated, I realized I enjoy the whoole process: from ideation, to writing, prepping, filming itself and post-production. Every little part.
Contrary to, for example, growing a business. I don't really enjoy the grueling process, I just like the end result: making money (haha).
Love this essay - it really helped me at a time that I was feeling stagnant with my work/career (which was really recently, just a few weeks ago). I do feel like I've found a job and a path that really does bring me a sense of meaning and impact and joy. But lately I had gotten into the habit of focusing way too much on the 'doing', without a clear goal I was working towards. I was 'wandering endlessly' - and I wouldn't say that it 'got me nowhere' - but you definitely don't get near as far as you could, or you don't really even know where you get to, without a deliberate intention of where you want to go. I was letting life and work happen without taking charge of my path. And agree that it's great to find 'flow states' and I find them all the time - but the super important part that resonated with me from this is the knowing what 'done' means and defining this clearly. In the short term at least, I'm starting to set goals and targets to strive for, that I can review progress towards, and change course if I meet them or decide my priorities have shifted.
Hmm, great point! It’s definitely a balance of both parts. I think most people get stuck in trying to just get “done,” so focused on the end. It’s rare that you’ve found yourself just “doing,” but also great to recognize when you need to zoom back out a bit and check your direction. If the ladder is on the wrong wall, you have no choice but to step off a bit before you can make any real progress.
This felt so related to what I'm thinking about right now as well. For me that thing is to draw in sketchbooks, I love to just disappear into them in the moment, fill up pages and to look back through old ones. Maybe turning those ideas into products/things is just a way for me to make enough money so I can keep filling the sketchbooks.
That reminds me of one of my favorite passages from Walden:
‘Not long since, a strolling Indian went to sell baskets at the house of a well-known lawyer in my neighborhood. "Do you wish to buy any baskets?" he asked. "No, we do not want any," was the reply. "What!" exclaimed the Indian as he went out the gate, "do you mean to starve us?" Having seen his industrious white neighbors so well off—that the lawyer had only to weave arguments, and, by some magic, wealth and standing followed—he had said to himself: I will go into business; I will weave baskets; it is a thing which I can do. Thinking that when he had made the baskets he would have done his part, and then it would be the white man's to buy them. He had not discovered that it was necessary for him to make it worth the other's while to buy them, or at least make him think that it was so, or to make something else which it would be worth his while to buy. I too had woven a kind of basket of a delicate texture, but I had not made it worth any one's while to buy them. Yet not the less, in my case, did I think it worth my while to weave them, and instead of studying how to make it worth men's while to buy my baskets, I studied rather how to avoid the necessity of selling them. The life which men praise and regard as successful is but one kind. Why should we exaggerate any one kind at the expense of the others?’
I think I've been bouncing between thinking like the native american and Thoreau throughout my life. That's a great passage
I love this. This is exactly how I realized that filmmaking was what I came here to do, or what I enjoy the most doing. In the few shorts and movies I've participated, I realized I enjoy the whoole process: from ideation, to writing, prepping, filming itself and post-production. Every little part.
Contrary to, for example, growing a business. I don't really enjoy the grueling process, I just like the end result: making money (haha).
Great article Grant, glad you touched on this.
Thanks Oscar! When are you starting your next film?
*First 😂 My plan is have at least a microfilm this year!
I’ll hold you to that :)
Leonardo da Vinci. “Art is never finished, only abandoned.”