How do you work on your goal when you feel unmotivated and confused on where to begin? How do you work on your goal when you feel lost or when you just can’t seem to figure it all out? How do you increase your creativity? What you do when you appear to be stuck and your mind just doesn’t want to cooperate? Do you wait on inspiration? Do you wait for illusive motivation to suddenly grip you?
The problem with waiting is you never know how long you’ll have to wait.
Instead of waiting, I highly recommend you try the “make a pile of chips” method of increasing your creativity and getting unstuck. Often attributed as a quote of Michelangelo, the motivational quote “make a pile of chips” comes from the artist who trained Abraham Maslow’s wife how to sculpt:
“He kept on pressing Berta (my wife) to get to work on her sculpture, and he kept on waving aside all her defenses and her explanations and excuses, all of which were flossy and high-toned. ‘The only way to be an artist is to work, work, work.’ He stressed discipline, labor, sweat. On phrase that he repeated again and again was ‘Make a pile of chips’. ‘Do something with your wood or your stone or your clay and then if it’s lousy throw it away. This is better than doing nothing.’ He said that he would not take on any apprentice in his ceramics work who wasn’t willing to work for years at the craft itself, at the details, the materials. His good-by to Bertha was, ‘Make a pile of chips.’ He urged her to get to work right after breakfast like a plumber who has to do a day’s work. ‘Act as if you have to earn a living thereby.’ “
Writers can surely identify with the problem of being stuck. They call it writer’s block. As both a writer and a developer I get to experience it in two different ways! First, I can identify with the traditional “writer’s block” when the words simply do not flow. And I have it in my development work as well when I am programming a new feature or repairing a bug. But the make a pile of chips method has served me well over the years.
In fact, going through the motions, putting ink to paper, putting hands on the keyboard, putting chisel against wood or stone – our pile of chips allows us to think. The chips are a measure of our progress as well and lend to the satisfaction of having committed to our work – even if a beautiful end product is not completed.
From a computer programming perspective I do not know how to do everything. There are simply too many different languages and methods. Who knows them all? So when there is a problem I cannot fix immediately, “my pile of chips” is a separate mini program that I write to solve or learn more about my problem. My mini-program is something where it doesn’t matter if I fail or succeed; it gives me the freedom to make mistakes and to learn without destroying my main application. Some days I’ll work a whole day on this mini program without solving the initial problem. I’ll instead end up with a pile of bugs. Ha ha!
But eventually something magical happens. Maybe not today or tomorrow, but eventually, this “pile of bugs” produces workable code – and usually, I get the bonus gift of an additional idea or programming shortcut I can use from that point forward.
I remember a few years ago I had a college professor who had a great idea for handling “writer’s block”. During a creative writing class she recommended writing a story about writers block or why you “could not” write. What an interesting idea! If you have writer’s block, write a story about how terrible it feels. Write about how you’d rather be doing anything else except writing. Nobody else has to read it but you and it might be just the thing you need for that additional inspiration.
So if I were to ask you what goal should you be working on right now, what would you say? After telling me, I’d ask what is holding you back. What pile of chips can you create while whittling away at your goal or your problem? If your goal is to find a new job your pile of chips could be a rough draft on a new résumé. You could write it out longhand on a piece of notebook paper if you like. It really doesn’t matter – just get started. Make your goal simple – the goal of a pile of wadded up sheets of paper in the trash can. Out of that exercise, you will have new ideas and new understanding.
Success is not in the perfection, it is in the doing. Through the doing, you will become inspired, you will get better.
So make a mess if you have to-just get started on that pile.
