common sense

The Best Laid Plants (Plan To Make Plans)

Posted on by Tim Kuefler

Remember a week ago when I said we were done with the preliminary series of Life Hacks AKA Skills To Invest In?

Well while that was true, I wasn’t telling you that we were done altogether, only that we were done with the basic concepts.  This is because we did touch on each concept in one way or another dear readers, but we didn’t spend dedicated time on 2 topics in particular, and I want to get to them this month.

Which is why today we’re going to focus the first topic – Planning To Make Plans. Before we dig into it, let’s take a peek at the skill summary:

Plan regularly! Build routines to start your day AND end your day. You are going to have to organize throughout the day too, so make an outline to insure you aren’t starting from scratch over and over. Please also set deadlines for major projects by planning ahead. You’ll benefit from organizing your desk/workspace, minutes save hours, believe me.

We will definitely hit all four of those highlighted points dear readers, but if you’re patient with me, you just might foresee the great plan being laid out.

1. I don’t care who you are or what stage of life you are at, it’s important to have a daily routine and to schedule your days in a way so that they always start & end the same. How do you accomplish this you ask? Try theming your days

Monday – production and creating
Tuesday – management, company identity, and running your business
Wednesday – production and creating
Thursday – marketing, communications, and partnerships
Friday – production and creating
Saturday – FUN, aka relaxation
Sunday – reflection, feedback, strategy for the upcoming week

2. Organizing throughout the day can be daunting, especially with all the various forms of distraction we have so handy in our lives. But if focus on what exactly you want to accomplish that day, or to put it another way, what positive influence do you need to make on the world and that follows your passions for life, you can then set up an outline that will cover your needs. Especially with so many internal or external distractions, model your days (on Sunday) so that you hit four or five points throughout the day each day of the week

WORK – 2-3 tasks you need accomplished that day
PLAY – dedicated time for fun and recharging activities
FOOD – both prep and eating should be identified
HEALTH – to slot in exercise and self-care
MIND – for reading, learning, and simple reflections

3. Deadlines always seem scary, but guess what? You’ve already started to lay the groundwork to fit them into your routine. By coming up with a weekly and daily schedule, you can very easily develop a monthly schedule too. This is where deadlines can be helpful – You should never set deadlines for the non-creative work, as a creative professional, but you should set deadlines for projects, within reason. Where the reason comes in is somewhat subjective, but essentially you don’t want the deadline to be so far out that it loses meaning, or so close that it overwhelms, you need to find that 2-4 week sweet spot.

4. Organizing your desk and/or work space: Or how to keep your creative space inspirational. No matter what kind of creative person you are, you must know that your environment effects your creativity. But the question remains, how do you make your space both visually interesting & comfortable to work in?

– Have beautiful objects around you and music that motivates
– Organize based on your personal aesthetic and make it functional, -with stocked supplies
– You need to control the light – have access to daylight, but be able to to dim for abstract thought
– Comfort is crucial – your seat, your clothes, your shoes, the temperature… all important
– Remove distractions (phone, social media, TV, children) and troublesome clutter

This might seem like news to you, common sense or somewhere in between, but no matter what stage of planning your life is in, we all benefit from these types of theories because our current technologies are incredibly efficient at depriving us from focus – Dangerously so. But that’s just a theory after all.

I’m out of theories for now, but be sure to check back tomorrow when I examine something timely and lay out the monthly schedule.

Tim!

A Time To Make Wages (Artist Fees)

Posted on by Tim Kuefler

What a strange world we live in, my dear readers.

Human beings have a wonderful capacity to either create or destroy, to build up or break down, to protect or attack, to love or hate.

That statement I just made isn’t a new one, in fact, lots of us have heard it before through various channels. Probably one of the most famous comes from this passage of the Judeo-Christian Bible.

A Time for Everything

3 For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven:

2 a time to be born, and a time to die;
a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted;
3 a time to kill, and a time to heal;
a time to break down, and a time to build up;
4 a time to weep, and a time to laugh;
a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
5 a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together;
a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
6 a time to seek, and a time to lose;
a time to keep, and a time to cast away;
7 a time to tear, and a time to sew;
a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
8 a time to love, and a time to hate;
a time for war, and a time for peace.

Now, don’t misconstrue my intent here.

I recognize that sharing literature from a personal belief can create all sorts of obstacles in learning and I am not interested in converting people over to that particular belief system nor am I interested in getting into debates over belief systems. I want to stick to concepts which are universal and valuable for people either interested in the arts or directly involved in them, no matter what principles guide their lives.

Back to my original theory.

We have always liked to speak in universals and this particular passage I just shared describes dichotomies very well.

It also proves that dichotomies have existed for thousands of years. I mention this primarily because we find it easier (in general) to identify concepts and life in uniform ways. I covered this exact principle in one of my very first posts which addressed common sense.

I have left this link here in case you want to read in detail, but I will share quick summary of the problem too.

The roots of common sense statements are based on our individual experiences and a combination of culture hierarchies. The phrase that something “is common sense” is problematic because common sense relies on an idea of what is “obvious.” It’s not supported by evidence or rational research based results.

So what does that have to with today’s post my friends? A lot actually.

Being an analytical type, or so I’ve been told over and over by friends and loved ones, I can appreciate the value of a deal and will spend time breaking down risks versus rewards for fun. Especially when it comes to things which I love, and which are loved by lots of other people too. (Read: albums, movies, graphic novels, and nonfiction books)

But it really bothers me when I witness people undervaluing the effort of those who create artwork, no matter what form it takes.

There are a number of reasons it bothers me, one of them being that by purchasing work for a fraction of what it is worth, that decision not only dilutes the effort of the artist but of the community overall and one of the consequences of that decision is that we don’t have as much variety available to us.

For example, a photographer who is just starting out should be charging less for their services than an established one, because quite frankly they don’t have as much experience or command of their skill, and as they test their mettle, they will be able to charge higher rates to their clientele.

But by charing significantly less to get immediate payment, the marketplace gets messed up, and attitudes crop up which are wrong, but make sense given the circumstances.

And website services like 99 designs are just as bad. Holding a “contest” where a bunch of artists all bid on a project by offering up one or two designs, means that the work that gets chosen at the end of the day isn’t even representative of the business or individual who needed services.

I can expand on this idea even more so in a future post, but if you want more of a taste take a look at this article. What do you think of that theory?

Tim!

Motivation and Movies (Universal Concepts)

Posted on by Tim Kuefler

I wanted to start this post with an interesting fact about me that not a lot of people know initially – I am an introvert who loves archetypes.

One of the main reasons I love archetypes, is that I have found in life, people generally want to simplify the world and everything within it in order to live their lives in a way that makes sense for them. And it does make logical sense to view life through a particular lens because there is just way too much going on in order to process it all simultaneously. Archetypes allow us to classify behaviours, characteristics of things, collective thought (sometimes called common sense), which I will come back to in a bit, and symbols or motifs.

Because I am an introvert, I have worked really hard at building an identity for myself that allows me to connect with others in both my personal and professional relationships even though I am much more comfortable on my own, and gasp, even enjoy it!

You see, our brains are wired to accept information, and then we perceive, understand, and judge that information based on our existing personal experiences with objects, ideas, places, and people. And so the concept of archetypes gets even more interesting when you consider the theoretical construct of motivation.

The mental framework of the human mind is unique to each person – our neural networks develop differently based on how we live our lives. I’ve personally found that the quickest way to connect with someone new or whom I have not developed a short hand dialogue with is to think about what people do in movies and employ that behaviour or alternatively to reference a film during a conversation that makes sense within the context of the interaction.

Movies are one of our favourite forms of storytelling in the 21st century. I truly believe that they serve as a primary method of getting narrative out there, whether it is for archiving culture, providing entertainment, instilling values, or simply for instruction.

And so because I am not a “natural” at small talk and have taught myself to adjust my behaviour in order to connect with others through a creative outlet that I am already invested in, movies have become a method that simply works for me.

I would hazard a guess that many of you have heard the expression, “common sense is not so common”, dear readers, and the truth is, that the common sense we individually understand is always rooted in culture!  Let me elaborate, whether the culture we look at is the country, the city, the neighbourhood or the family we live in, what is implicit for me as common sense might not jive for you. See the below video for more insight into why common sense doesn’t always give us the right course of action to take (you can probably stop watching around the 5:40 mark, but by all means watch the whole video if you dig it).

Having gone over all of these ideas now, albeit briefly, that doesn’t mean that I think that there is no inherent value learning about the world and that we should start giving no attention to social cues.

Instead, lets circle back to archetypes!

Films are often spoken highly of because there are “universal” concepts used in them. And when we start to focus on a few key concepts in a film, we often decide to classify that film as a genre or sub genre, whether it is romantic, history, comedy, musical, etc. You get the picture I am painting.

What I personally find exciting about films is that they allow us to pick up social cues really quickly because actors observe behaviour and emotionally invest themselves into the mindset of the characters they portray. Ipso facto, we can learn how to behave by watching movies. Further to this end, I believe we can learn what motivates people by learning about what movies they like, and I also believe that we can become more empathetic if we invest our time in watching movies that we may not initially gravitate to.

I am going to get into the value of watching movies some more in the future, but you have something to chew on, so let me know what you think, and these are all the theories I have for now.

Tim!

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