Do You Love The Process?
The wealthiest place in the world is the graveyard.
“Because in a graveyard you’ll find inventions never invented, business never erected, songs never sung, books never written, ideas never nurtured, people never realized. Because they were scared to take a risk.”
This is something that has sat with me for about 9 years now since I first heard Prince Ea say it in his video “Why Most People Die Before 25”.
Many people have ideas, but few people actually turn their ideas into reality.
I ruminated on this in my newsletter about “What’s Stopping You” and the importance of effort without excuses.
But maybe effort isn’t the answer to the question of why so few people actually turn their ideas into reality. Maybe the answer isn’t fear either. Maybe the answer is love.
People love their ideas. They love talking about their ideas. I know because I’ve talked to so many people about their ideas.
But I’ve come to realize that you need to love something else.
You need to love the process.
Ideas aren’t special. They can feel special because ideas come to us in a magical and kind of mystical way, but ideas are really overrated. An idea is just an idea. What matters is can you actually turn that idea into something.
Creating something is like 5% idea and 95% execution.
People who just love their ideas will get stuck on the ideas and not do anything. They might say it’s because of a fear of failure or some other excuse, but I think what’s really stopping them is the lack of love of the process.
People who love the process will just create and create and create.
Love beats fear.
You can’t just love the idea of a business. If you want to create a business you have to love the process of building that business.
You can’t just love the idea of a story. If you want to write that story, you have to love the process of writing.
You can’t just love the idea of an app. If you want to create an app, you have to love the process of coding. And this is why my app ideas will probably never see the light of day.
You need to love the process in order to create. You need to love the execution part.
So if you’ve been stuck with ideas for some time now but haven’t done anything with those ideas, maybe you don’t have to be so hard on yourself. Maybe it’s simply because you haven’t fallen in love with the process, and this isn’t something to beat yourself up over. Loving a process I think is something very unique and natural to each person.
Education expert Sir Ken Robinson talks about finding your passion and he called this your Element.
I think we all have an element, but many people just haven’t found their element. Your element could be dancing, or teaching, or farming, or a whole bunch of other things. If you want to find your element, you’re just going to have to try things.
The other thing that really has me thinking about the love of the process of creation lately is this new fangled thing called AI.
When you read about AI there are two types of people. There is the artist worried about how AI will ruin art, and there is the techie excited about how Ai is going make it so anyone can create art. AI is going to take over Hollywood they say.
I’ve experimented a bit with AI myself, and here’s the one thing that I think the techies don’t realize. AI is boring.
You write some words and then click generate, and you wait like a minute and then the AI gives you an image or a video clip. That’s the process of using AI and it’s boring. At least to me it is. Some people might like it.
I will never stop shooting with my camera because I love the process of shooting with my camera. I love setting up the camera, framing the composition, and when everything lines up for a perfect moment I get an incredible adrenaline rush.
I love editing those images together. This is where the real magic of filmmaking happens.
Most of all, I love writing. I love thinking about words and structure and flow, and how to string words together to create evocative sentences. I would never use AI to do that for me.
I think AI will be used for certain aspects of filmmaking and art that help with less fun parts of the process or just for creating quick content, but I don’t think it will ever completely take over.
Ultimately artists create not because of our ideas but because we love the process.
What do you think?
Stay tuned. Stay curious!
-Zach