Creators Don’t Set Goals
Creators dream and most of them dream big, really big. In fact creators aren’t afraid to dream enormous dreams. They know that dreams are the seeds of what will eventually become their creations.
One thing though that creators don’t do is set goals. Now before you go off thinking that I am a complete fool in saying this, please give me a chance to explain myself.
You have no doubt searched many self development products throughout the years, and probably would agree that almost every single one of them in one way or another talks about goal setting. Am I right? Many of those self development products are tremendously powerful self development tools. I’m not writing this to disagree with goal setting. There are many great things to be said about goal setting.
Recently I read an article in the Early to Rise newsletter written by Michael Masterson which spoke of setting goals. It spoke of a study that was done by the Harvard Business School.
Harvard Business School did a study on the financial status of its students 10 years after graduation and found that:
- As many as 27 percent of them needed financial assistance.
- A whopping 60 percent of them were living paycheck to paycheck.
- A mere 10 percent of them were living comfortably.
- And only 3 percent of them were financially independent.
The study also looked at goal setting and found these interesting correlations:
- The 27 percent that needed financial assistance had absolutely no goal-setting processes in their lives.
- The 60 percent that were living paycheck to paycheck had basic survival goals (such as managing to live paycheck to paycheck).
- The 10 percent that were living comfortably had general goals. They thought they knew where they were going to be in the next five years.
- The 3 percent that were financially independent had written out their goals and the steps required to reach those goals.
Pretty powerful statistics in favor of goal setting wouldn’t you agree? Like I said I am not writing this article to disagree with goal setting. It’s just that for creators goals are too weak, too wimpy. Goals give too much wiggle room. Goals don’t carry enough umph to propel a true creator to the completion of their creation.
Creators create – plain and simple. It works like this: A creator dreams of what he would love to create, and then something almost magical occurs. The creator begins to love the creation. There begins to be a burning desire inside the creator to see the creation live. The creator will stop at nothing to bring the creation into existence. The creator begins to create. As the momentum increases the creators desire to see the creation exist increases as well. Passion, diligence, even obsession begin to drive the creator forward.
So you see goals are simply too weak to push the creator towards the creation. So what do creators do if they don’t set goals? How do creators ever accomplish anything of any significance if they don’t have goals to push them along?
I hope that I can explain the answers to those very important questions. Creators don’t have goals to push them along; instead creators have the creation that is pulling them towards its completion.
It’s kind of like this: Imagine a mountain climber trying to scale the side of a mountain. Below the climber is a goal that is trying to push the climber up the rock wall. Above however is a creation that has lowered a sturdy rope called structure (in later article I’ll describe what structure has to do with creating) that is pulling with great force. Which do you think will have more success in fulfilling its purpose, the goal or the creation? Which do you think is in a better position to bring the climber to its desired destiny?
As I hope you can see, goals simply aren’t powerful enough. And they are positioned in such a way that they cannot make use of powerful tools like passion, diligence, and even obsession. Creators create creations because they are driven towards and pulled by the creation itself.
The power to create is immensely more powerful then goals can or ever will be. In a further article I will explain why this is so. Come back soon to learn just how powerful this power is.
Creators Create Because They Love
Creators create because they love.
Let me explain: Have you ever been in love? I mean, have you ever been truly in love with someone else?
When you love someone with great passion you don’t want to let them alone. You don’t want to be away from them or leave them for long periods of time. No, in fact, quite the contrary, you can’t stand to be away from that person. You do whatever you can to spend your time with that person.
You watch what you say, what you do, and how you behave. You do nice things, you are careful because you don’t want that person to get upset with you or to be offended by anything you say or do. You do only what is necessary to have the romance blossom and grow. Things that would cause the relationship to be cold or distant you avoid at all costs.
The very same thing happens between a creator and a creation. A creator desires to bring the creation into existence. The creator loves the creation.
There have been other words used to describe this like, buy in, or empowerment, or take responsibility for, or accountable for, but I like to use the word love the best.
When the relationship is like being in love a creator treats the creation with careful preciseness. The creation lives because the creator loves it.
I do not think a creator can create a creation that he does not love, or at best the creation will not reach its potential. That is where procrastination comes into play. But when there is a passionate love for the creation the creator will at all costs create the creation.
A creation that is passionately loved by its creator is never left alone. It is constantly on the mind of the creator. Creators rise early to work on the creation and retire late, if at all.
In a recent article written by Robert Ringer he wrote about John Britten, I think he said it best:
“John Britten, was born with a serious learning disability that made reading extremely difficult. Not able to learn in conventional schools, Britten attended night school and eventually earned an engineering degree from Christchurch Polytechnic Institute of Technology. His determination to earn a degree — and, more important, gain precious knowledge — was a sign of things to come.
Britten was a quiet, unassuming, totally focused individual. Some years before I met him, he began building, of all things, a futuristic motorcycle in his garage. His stated goal was to win the prestigious Battle of the Twins international cycle race in Daytona Beach, Florida.
His cutting-edge cycle involved over 6,000 parts, most of which Britten hand-made. With the notable exception of the engine, his extraordinary machine was constructed primarily of carbon fiber, a first for the motorcycle industry.
He had dedicated helpers who worked for free, mostly at night, while holding down full-time jobs during the day. Incredibly, the actual cost of Britten’s masterpiece was not more than a few hundred dollars, while many large corporate sponsors spent several million dollars on their entries.
Working while others slept was a Britten norm that was accepted by those who agreed to become involved in his projects. Toiling around the clock became his trademark. Anything short of a superhuman pace would have made it impossible for him to build his one-of-a-kind cycle from scratch in just under eleven months, barely finishing in time for the Battle of the Twins.
With just three weeks to go before the big race, Britten’s carbon-fiber cycle crashed while being tested. It was a cruel blow, a bad break that everyone agreed Britten didn’t deserve. The task of locating and correcting the problem, then repairing the bike, seemed insurmountable — but Britten and his crew again managed to overcome all obstacles, and arrived in Daytona just in time.
Then, during the qualifying run, disaster again struck. Just twelve hours before race time, a hairline crack in a cylinder sleeve — one of the few parts Britten had not built himself — threatened to end his bid for the unofficial world championship for twin-cylinder motorcycles. Britten’s reaction? After tireless but fruitless efforts to find the right spare part in the Daytona area, Britten, who had no previous experience in welding cylinder sleeves, repaired the broken part himself.
By race time, Britten had been awake forty-seven hours straight. But, as events unfolded, it looked as though the monumental effort by him and his team would finally pay off. Once again, however, like a scene out of a depressing movie, bad luck reared its ugly head. With Britten’s cycle leading the pack, rain forced an end to the race one lap from the finish, which meant the entire race had to be run over.
In the restarted race, Britten’s cycle again led the pack most of the way, until — you guessed it — yet another non-Britten-built part, a faulty rectifier, halted his bid for victory once and for all. John Britten had captured the admiration of the racing world, but had failed to come home with a trophy.
But when he returned to New Zealand, he didn’t waste time focusing on the bad breaks he had experienced in Daytona. Instead, he went right back to work, rebuilt his handcrafted motorcycle, and returned to Daytona the next year. This time, he finally won the Battle of the Twins championship, a Rocky Balboa finish if there ever was one.
The victory doesn’t end there. The first commercial version of the Britten motorcycle sold for a record $140,000. Not a bad return on the few hundred dollars he had spent on the design and construction of the original model. “
You see, John Britten loved his creation. He was willing to fight through whatever, doing whatever it took in order for his creation to live, to exist.
True creators passionately love their creations. And understand this also, just as a lover will not do anything to offend his partner so too a creator will only do what is necessary to bring the creation into existence.
Too many people don’t understand that principle. Too many think that creation is about how one can use creative techniques and principles. They expand their imagination by “creative” problem solving, or thinking outside the box, or idea generating, or mind-mapping, or other solutions to creatively “freeing the mind” and creatively “breaking through” barriers and obstacles that stand in the way.
Even though many of these principles and schools of thought can be involved in creating they are not necessary to create. It is not about creative problem solving or how to increase your imagination to generate a myriad of never before thought of creative alternatives. It’s about loving your creation.
Why, you will come to see that those very approaches leave out the most important and ultimately essential question of the entire creative process: “What is it that I desire to create?” or even better, “What do I love so much I want to bring into existence?”
The originality, the artistic, the fanciful and inventiveness that spring from the creative process is not brought about by coming up with new ideas that are “outside the box”. Nor does creativity come about by generating many new unheard of alternatives or generating new paths to solve old problems. In fact, it is something quite different.
Through these past years I have had occasion to sit in psychologist’s offices and hear the doctors say, “Michael does things that are so original and unusual, he is so creative. If we could only encourage it, bottle it up and give it to all our patients, then all our patients would be more original and creative.”
I hope to teach you that the path to get to the creation is important, but the creative person isn’t so much worried about the path, but more intently focused on the end result: the creation. True creators don’t worry so much about the process but more about the results.
True creators love the creation so much they want to bring it into existence. I know I keep saying that, because it is absolutely true.
Here is an example I hope will make it more clear: What if Michelangelo worried more about the process and took this approach while painting the famous painting of “The Creation of Adam” can you imagine the result?
“Hmm, let’s see.” He says, “How many different ways can I paint Adam’s hand? Let me try doing it with watercolor, now charcoal, now lets try different sizes, a baby’s hand, now a grown man’s. Now let me try it on different canvases, paper, parchment, a stone wall, a ceiling?” If he had taken that approach he might have never finished the painting, and if he had finished, it would have been a hodgepodge of different alternatives.
Truly modern art, but far from the masterpiece he actually did create. Far from the creation that he obviously poured his whole heart and soul into, the creation that he no doubt loved.
Creative people who really know the creative process might over many years of experiments and experiences use many different methods and techniques to learn and grow in their varied disciplines. That’s called practicing their craft.
But when it comes to creating the creator asks the most important question that can be asked, “What would I love to create?” And then with an economy of means employs only those techniques and methods that will bring the creation into existence as effectively and efficiently as possible.
Each of us, individually, have the power to be creators. Even those of you who think you are not creative. I am going to prove to you that you do in truth have the power to create. You have the power to create anything you desire to create.
It’s not about being artistic or painting paintings, or making sculptures, or singing or dancing; it’s about creating. It’s about loving. If you can love, you can create.
