Value

But, Where Is The Difficult Part?

Garth Beyer

Godin speaks so much truth today.

I sat in Camp Randall stadium today to watch the University of Wisconsin’s 2014 commencement. John Huntsman, the deans, the chancellor and the student speakers talked about the Wisconsin experience, the trials all the graduates faced throughout their time at university. What each speaker spoke around was one important concept: reflection.

Graduates were told to reflect on their experiences and who helped them along the way; to reflect on the adversity and celebrations of the last four years. What they didn’t come right out asking the graduates to do was reflect on the difficult parts of their experience. Were there any?

If there weren’t. Was it that much of an experience? Was there that much value? Was the degree, the debt, the stress worth it?

This doesn’t go for just graduates, it goes for everyone in the workplace, everyone in the freelance realm, everyone everywhere.

You can make accomplishments in life, but where’s the value of them come from? Where is the difficult part?

If you haven’t found it, you have some searching and stretching to do.

 

Stay Positive & Congratulations To Those Who Made It Difficult On Themselves, They’re The Real Graduates

Time

Garth Beyer

Maybe it’s not that a person doesn’t have time, it’s that you haven’t made something worth their time.

We all have 24 hours in a day. We can choose to search for people willing to give us their time to click on another page, to test out our product, to listen to our pitch…

or we can spend more of our time creating something people will willingly trade their own time for.

 

Stay Positive & Is Their Time As Valuable To You As Your Own?

Where The Value Is

Garth Beyer

You can find it about 16 paces to your right.

Wait. I mean 16 miles.

No, that’s not right…

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The greatest value is not found. Nor can you literally create something that is valuable. Take for example, a novel no one has ever read, no one knows it exists, it has yet to have a value attached to it.

This is a common mistake I see in artists, writers, and those alike. So much of their intention is to create something valuable that, in doing so, they forget 1. their original motivation for creating (commonly to induce social change) and 2. that most items perceived as invaluable are so far off the paved, beaten, and forked road.

The fault is in trying to create something that fits a current valuable perception.

The answer to create something that does not fit any current valuable perception. (In all irony, that’s exactly where the most valuable perception is.)

I can’t help but think that, right now, there are people walking, driving, flying, and swimming in parts of the world that so few people before them have been. Surely, some are exploring areas for the first time. I envy them. No, I’m down right jealous. They are in the most invaluable places on earth.

Fortunately, art is not limited to the landscape of the earth.

 

Stay Positive & There’s Enough Space In Art For You To Be The First There

Garth E. Beyer

Photo credit

 

 

Something To Pin

Garth Beyer

I consider myself a fairly creative person. But then I go on Pinterest.

We can throw paint on a canvas, carve our names in a slab of wood, and fill up journals with ideas, rants, and realizations. While I consider these creations personally invaluable, they are far from being valued by others.

Respected, maybe. But not valued.

Creativity contains both the mindfulness and skill to combine two or more unimagined pieces. Remember, the melting crayon art? What happens when you cut a marker in half, pour the content into a nearly empty windex bottle, and spray onto the colored side of Tootsie pop wrappers? Just imagine what you can actually do with a slab of wood?

If you want something to pin, you’re going to have to strain your brain and go through the emotional labor it takes to create something, truly create something.

Creating something sounds easy. Give it a try, though, and you will see just how hard it is.

 

Stay Positive & Respect Is A Good Place To Start

Garth E. Beyer

It’s Not Your Art

Garth Beyer

So what that you put hundreds of hours into creating what you did? Just because you went through all the pain of developing what you did, doesn’t make it yours. Even if you searched for every single piece of your creation and sold your sentimental belongings to afford what you made – it still doesn’t make it yours and it definitely doesn’t make it art.

Art is only art when it’s shared.

It’s the same with genius. Einstein wouldn’t have been a genius if he never shared everything he studied, ruminated, and experimented with. Or, a person can write a novel a year, but they will never be a writer unless they share it.

People might shout,

“This is not the time for metaphor! This is not the time for art! And this is certainly not the time for art about you!” But once you’ve shared your art and it’s resonated with a single person, it’s no longer about you — once you share it, it’s about everybody. And if your art is found by a single soul, shared with a friend who links it to a friend, and the response is whatever it is, you start to see how art becomes about everybody — just through the act of being shared.” – Amanda Palmer

I am stating that art becomes about everybody the same as it becomes everyones.

When I buy your art, I don’t see it the way you do. I don’t know how much money, time, sweat, blood, relationships, tears, mental exhaustion, late nights, and broken prototypes went into it.

When your art is in my hands – no, even when I see your art – it becomes mine too. It’s part of me. I put my emotions, my thoughts, my personality in and around it.

And let me tell you something. Art becomes so much more beautiful when it has amassed a variety of emotions, thoughts, and personalities.

 

Stay Positive & Sharing Always Makes It More Valuable

Garth E. Beyer

Creative Class

Garth Beyer

Each era prior to the present is defined by what people did with their hands: agricultural, manufacturer, knowledge based. (Knowledge: experiments, hands on activities, tests.)

Now our current era of the connection economy has produced a new class of workers. Nonchalantly coined by Richard Florida as the “Creative Class.” This class of – better called artists than workers – don’t reside in cities that are built around assembly production, construction, or mechanical organizations.

There’s no age requirement, no credential, or resume that qualifies you as part of the creative class – it’s a conscious (and consistent) decision.

The difference between being part of the institutionalized workforce and the creative class is like writing a report as a homework assignment and writing it in a way that you would also share it with your peers, your community, your friends, and your tribe.

It’s the difference between doing banal, monotonous, industrialistic work and melting your passions, mentally building a mould, then transforming your liquid art into something emotionally tangible.

These artists of the creative class are managers, engineers, consultants, teachers, painters, entrepreneurs, connectors, and all around movers and shakers – but with a new class flair.

My reason for telling you this is so that you know that you’re not the only one. There are others like you. Others that are fed up with the assembly line work, others who are afraid to step out of the box (and dance), others who want to make, not just a positive impact, but real human connections.

Your ideas are valued. Share them.

 

Stay Positive & Welcome To The Creative Class

Garth E. Beyer

 

Taking Inventory

Garth Beyer

I’ve written a bunch about starting fresh this new year. This post is by far my favorite

Ship or Delete

Taking Inventory

Nah. It’s more like getting rid of your inventory. Very cut and dry.

Go through all of your lists right now: your projects, your folders, your notes, your journals, your goals, and either ship or delete them.

Simple right?

Well you’re going to come across a project and think to yourself, “Well this is something that I can’t ship right now because it’s unfinished and it’ll take time to be finished.”

Decide right now whether you will actually finish it within the next two months. If yes, then do it. If no, then either delete it or ship a short version of it. Put it out there for someone else to work on.

There are a couple of concepts at play here.

The first is that if your idea was remarkable enough, you would be working on it constantly or would be passionate enough to complete it within two months.

The second is that if you can withhold one of your ideas, one of your projects, then you are saying it’s not important enough to be delivered right away. (If it is, then now I’m mad that you’ve made me wait so long and won’t buy into it when you finally deliver it.)

The new year is about starting fresh. You have 21 days to go through all you have and either ship or delete. Ship or delete. Ship or delete.

In order for a door to open, you must close one. Actually, the cool thing about life is that when one door closes, a million open for you. How many will you have opened for the new year?

 

Stay Positive & Make Room For New Inventory

Garth E. Beyer