10:14 am - Wed, Jun 2, 2010

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Doing What You Don’t Know

“When we write only what we know, we limit ourselves to territory we’ve already covered.”

 The above is a quote from Steven Pressfield’s blog which I read no more than two minutes before I started writing this blog post.  The quote is completely about creativity and how we create art.  Rather than looking at “writing what we don’t know,” I’d rather explore the implications of “doing what we don’t know.”

Sometimes the more knowledge we have of a certain subject, the less likely we are able to make change in the category.  Our biases and often times expert-like knowledge and abilities of something we do sets up parameters limiting our true creativity potential.  To offer up an example, I’ll talk about about wine, a topic I’ve recently been actively seeking more information on, either in the its actual form through tastings, (to which I’ve found myself staring at many empty bottles) or in the form of different sommelier and wine expert writings online.  The one downside of learning is: the more you learn, the less creative you’ll become if you were to produce art or in this case, wine.

Since I only have the primitive know-how I’ve read about wine making, anything I create is sure to be wildly interesting.  Interesting can mean the worst wine, ever, or perhaps something truly great, garnering a cult like wine aficionado following.  Or maybe what I will have created wouldn’t be wine by definition, but more of a new of a form of alcoholic beverage, assuming I have the fermentation process down pat.  My limited resources (knowledge wise) will “unbound” me from certain traditions other’s with knowledge would never dare stray away from in the creation of something new.

One of the only reasons businesses seek out information on processes they undergo while making a product/service is to help protect themselves from taking a loss, money wise.  While it seems like a grand idea to protect yourself from losing money by doing massive amounts of research, what you wind up doing is similar to every one of your current and future competitors.  If you can research something and find information on it, well than so can your competitors and it is certainly not art if you’re set out on reproducing what is already available.

 Here is something you can do.  Attempt to produce something, it can be anything you are interested in but have little to no knowledge of.  When you are done producing “it,” go ahead and Google it.  If nothing comes up, well then you’ve created something new; no matter how good, bad, minuscule or majuscule it is, it is new and therefore, art.  When nothing comes up on Google, you have beat Google, so pat yourself on the back; you’ve just won, and winning is what counts, right?

Now it’s on me to create something great, so I’ll get back to my production of ice wine from grapes crushed by penguins wearing custom Tom’s Shoes - I think I’ll call it “Waddle Wine.”