Last week on Mastodon, my friend and colleague GeePaw Hill wrote:
“Music — art — is not a promise of perfection. It is a promise of effort, of risk, of commitment, to an unreachable ideal. Pablo Casals, in his 80s, asked why he practices every day. “Because I think I’m getting better.”
If you create something, you are an artist. That includes the formal “arts”: music, sculpture/painting/etc, and writing. However, it also includes what I think of as my day job: product development. That’s because I innovate as I practice. That innovation is part of where I find my joy.
It doesn’t matter what I practice: project management, consulting, or writing. I am an artist—and so are you. That means the way we think about our art matters.
What Do You Call Your Art?
My fiction teacher, Dean Wesley Smith, says to avoid calling your writing “work.” That’s because too many of us don’t have the ability to innovate in our work. Instead, we find work drudgery. He recommends we call writing “play.”
I prefer to call it practice. (I think Dean is okay with that.) While I might practice alone for a little while, the best artists practice by showing their art to someone else—possibly for feedback and maybe for celebration. For musicians, that’s the solo practice to get ready for a concert or a jam session. For writing, it’s write-finish-and-publish.
In software product development, it’s release a minimum viable product for internal or customer feedback.
Without feedback, how can you tell if your practice is working?
Sometimes, feedback feels like judgment. And not just the judgment of our work/art/practice, but the judgment of us as individuals. When I’m in the depth of that fear, I don’t think “So-and-so didn’t like my story/proposal/suggestion.” Instead, I think, “So-and-so didn’t like me.”
At times, conference feedback feels like that to me, especially if I focus on the few people who hated my talk instead of most of the people who loved it. (I just realized why: I can’t practice that talk again. It’s already done, an outcome.) I have since reframed that by realizing I provoke Big Feelings in the people who offer that feedback.
In the (agile) spirit of “if it hurts, do it more often,” I now show my practice more often. That brings me great joy.
When Do You Embrace the Joy of Your Practice?
While we can strive for perfect outcomes, all art is imperfect. All writing, music, software development—you name it—is imperfect. That means we need to practice more and more.
If we only feel joy when we’re done, we limit our opportunities for joy. Instead, we can find joy in the practice of our art.
As a writer, I find joy in my daily word count, on the way to finishing a longer piece of work. Writing is a traditional “art.” And when I finish a longer piece of writing? Yes, I love how I feel with that outcome.
I also find joy when I prepare and then deliver a workshop and practice my facilitation skills. While facilitation is not a traditional art, it’s part of my consulting practice. (See that word again?)
I love a good outcome as much (or more!) than the next person. That’s why I write so much and practice so much. The more I practice, the less special any one art feels. That frees me to create even better outcomes.
I hope you also enjoy your practice, not just the outcomes.
That’s the question this week: How often do you embrace the joy of practice, not the outcome?