Discipline > Inspiration

There is an ongoing pervasive trend throughout any community which requires hard work. This idea of constant need for inspiration and motivation.

Now, do not get me wrong. I am not here to say that these two things are not vital in our search for well, anything. But I am finding that many people are using these two ideas as the foundation for where they build their house.

Much of the life lessons that I have learned from have come from either my studies of art and design or from the world of sports and performance. Many have built some kind of false dichotomy between these two. That they are incompatible and offer little to know understanding between the two. But I would like to humbly disagree. The people tend to be pretty polarizing and at face value of no use to one another. There is so much more to the two groups then what we like to believe.

One of the major ways that these communities are almost exactly alike is their use of motivation, inspiration and discipline.

Social media is overwhelmed with every piece of content available to us through every available platform, absolutely chalk filled with motivational pieces; photo's, quotes, videos, blog posts and everything else. Some can light a fire so hot under your ass that you feel like you can jump over mountains. It can be pretty sickening and almost nauseating at all of it.

This being said in full understanding that we are all in different places in life, that we all require different things at various stages in our lives. Which is super important to understand. But I continue to say this,

Inspiration sucks it isn't your friend and often will get you no where.

Discipline is what drives the engines, which keeps you going even when gas is on E. Everyone that I try to learn from in my studies has overwhelmingly one thing in common. It is simply that they do not rely on motivation as their foundation.

We have got it backwards. Lets take a look at building a fire.

You start with small flammable pieces of wood/paper/etc, things that can get caught on fire easily. Like a match. We all know how fast a match can burn out tho, almost just as fast as it was lit. We have to quickly add other things to it, building up volume and mass for the fire to catch till we are slowly adding branches, then cut up limbs then eventually logs.

These types of fires are the ones that burn all night or even longer. Just like our own work capacity, we want to be able to burn for a long time.

The beautiful thing about these types of fires is that even the morning after and all you are left with is coals. These warm coals can be quickly turned back into a fire with some oxygen. Add some small pieces and you are back in business.

Just like anything we work super hard for in life. You need a strong base of discipline. Something that you work at and practice daily. That way if the flames ever go out or you are in fear of them doing so. All you have to do is add some inspiration (oxygen) and you are back at.

All to often people start something with just a match. They don't add anything more. There is no substance to back it up, nothing left to burn once the motivation is gone. People hit a cycle of striking another match just to have that burn out too. Rinse and repeat for any major goal.

Add to your spark and make it a glorious blaze. That way even in you darkest, laziest, uninspired moments you can find solace in being able to add a touch of motivation to send it ablaze once again.

The lost art of drawing.

Before anyone gets too upset, just hear me out. I came from a fine art background so I am trying to be as unbiased as possible. I'll will let you be the judge of that.

Let me say this first.

So for the most part I have always been able to draw or use whatever is in hand to illustrate. With more years under my belt I have grown my skills and have gotten to a point where I feel comfortable being able to draw well...anything and do it well.

I believe this gives you a bit of an advantage when it comes to design. There seems to be no better way to understand the concept of form and space then trying to recreate that object on a plane. For example, being able to study how the human body is put together, how the skin sits on the muscles and gets wrinkled at curtains places and proper proportionality of anatomy.

All of these observations take place in the eye and brain. Taking mental notes trying to learn. But ask someone who cannot draw to visually show that information they just learned. Even if they spent an hour studying just the eye, they would only show a poor representation of what they had just studied.

Why? Do we forget what an eye looks like? Well of course not. But we have not practiced the forms. Many of us have to learn by doing, especially something that relies heavily on observation. We have to use our hand to practice laying down lines over and over again till we start to build whatever we are observing on the paper.

This repetitive practice of using these physical motor patterns and nerves firing help us learn these forms in a better fashion. That is why the vast majority of designers who have a background in illustration have awesome understanding of the basic gestalt theories already. Why? Because they have to, it they didn't then they would most likely not be very good illustrators.

Practice recreating forms and experimenting with space and volume. Teaching your eye not to just obverse but to be able to reproduce it down these physical pathways. Eyes have terrible memory so it is up to us to ingrain the motor pattern so that our brains are more in tune with this fine detail and level of observing.

I took a summer art class when I was younger and my teacher said,"Drawing is 90% observing." Which makes sense. Look carefully and thoroughly so you can properly understand the shape in front of you.

Draw more, people.