Mysterious Flame

About a month ago, I wrote on Gumption Traps, those things that slow down one’s momentum and enthusiasm, as mentioned in the book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. We all run into them, no matter what our area of work is. But artists are particularly prone to them, since we put so much of ourselves into what we do.

As a quick refresher on Gumption Traps, allow me to quote myself:

It’s important to remember that there are two primary sources of gumption traps: external, which are really setbacks, and internal, which are really your own hang-ups of some kind. Knowing where the source is helps you figure out the solution, whether it’s something outside of you, or something to do with your own approach to the problem that’s keeping you stuck.

I also mentioned how external setbacks come in a variety of forms, and there are a number of strategies for dealing with them, many of which are already available if you do a little research. External setbacks can be frustrating, but it’s the internal hangups that you really have to watch for. And since artists so often do self-defined work, most of the setbacks they experience are internal. That brings us to the three kinds of internal hangups:

1. value traps
2. truth traps
3. muscle traps

Value Traps for Artists

Since value traps are the ones where your thinking is not as clear as it should be, it’s easy to see how the first one, value rigidity, comes into play whe we put the emphasis on wrong area in our work. Our focus may be too narrow or to broad. We may get all caught up in one particular thing that the rest of the artwork gets ignored or ends up halfway done. The solution is similar to that of truth traps: change your focus and shift it to something else. Another solution is to consciously avoid developing one area more than the rest of the piece, and develop it all at the same time.

If you’ve got a lot of anxiety about the piece you’re working on, you’ll see it in your fussiness, nervousness, and generally overdoing things. In this case, you’re probably expecting too much out of yourself. You have to relax and lower your expectations. Don’t put up with mediocrity, but don’t be hard on yourself if every piece you produce isn’t a blue-ribbon winner.

Along the same lines, you might be really overwhelmed by the magnitude of your project, no matter how awesome you know it is. when this happens, try breaking it down into more manageable pieces.

Truth Traps for Artists

When you’re thinking of things in terms of either/or answers, try thinking of a third option. As I’ve said before, it might be that the “question” you’re trying to ask is too small, or just plain irrelevant. Try changing your angle. You might be coming at your piece too directly or too obliquely. Try doing just the opposite of what you’re doing.

Muscle Traps for Artists

Like I said before, muscle traps deal with your physical capabilities and available tools. Sometimes the equipment you have is not adequate and hinders you from getting the job done. Low-quality brushes, paints, canvas, pencils, clay, paper, scissors, computer hardware and software, etc. will do you in and frustrate you more. Invest in the best tools you can afford.You’ll be glad you did.

Another muscle trap for artists is a lack of strength or knowing how far to push your materials. Mechanic’s feel is a great analogue for this. This problem crops up with throwing pottery on a wheel or stretching a canvas, or anything that requires a bit of physical strength. The trick here is to know how far your materials and tools can and should go. This comes with experience.

As I mentioned last month, your physical environment can affect you a lot, bordering on external setbacks. If you’re hot, you get frustrated and angry easily. If you’re cold, you get in a hurry and make mistakes. You become careless. Pay attention to ergonomics and comfort. Make sure you have adequate lighting and ventilation, especially when working with oil-based paints, clay, or airbrush/spray paint.

I’ve tried everything and I’m still stuck

I can think of two things here: you’ve got something else bothering you on a deep level and you haven’t taken care of it, or you just need to take a break. Know your own limits.

Let’s say you’ve gotten into a project you’re all excited about, and you’re brimming full of ideas and ambition. Your project gets bigger and bigger, and before you know it, you’re in over your head, completely overwhelmed by it. You know you have something good, but it’s just too big and unwieldy and it’s just become a monster, a nightmare of a project, and you are the one who cooked it up. What to do? It’s a bit like eating an elephant — you do it one bite at a time. Get out your mental Henckels steak knife, and start cutting your work down to make it more manageable.

Remember that Art & GTD series I did a while back when I first launched the site? Well, that started out as one big honkin’ post. I felt good about it, and I knew the content was worth writing. The problem was, it was just too big, and I knew it. I vetted it around to several people, including the guys at Black Belt Productivity and Alyson Stanfield at Art Biz Blog and Art Biz Coach. They liked it, but I think everyone agreed that it was way too long.

So I broke it down into separate posts where the topics changed and where the subheads came up. That one long article became five articles of sufficient length. In addition to these five posts being more easily read, they now formed a series that could last a whole week. Furthermore, they’re more search-engine optimized by default, since people searching the web are probably looking for one specific piece of information, not a lot of other extraneous information. Finally, it made me feel better since I wasn’t so overwhelmed by such a huge post. It was more organized in the end.

So the next time you find yourself in over your head by some really big project, especially if it’s written, try breaking it down into smaller, more contained pieces.

Here are some examples of projects you may need to break down:

• A really long blog post like mine — break it down into smaller pieces and put them in a series
• Elaborate story arc for a novel — focus on just one part of the story and make it a trilogy or something. It worked for Star Wars and Lord of the Rings. Conversely, I’ve heard it said that the Dune movie did too much by trying to put a whole trilogy in one film, and thoroughly confused people who hadn’t read the books. (I haven’t seen it yet, but I probably will this week as I’ve checked it out from the library.)
• A very ambitious painting — Try doing multiple paintings on the same theme, focusing on different aspects of a concept, scene, or narrative. Or make a triptych.

“Stuckness” is a problem that visits all of us and is the commonest trouble of all. Robert Pirsig devotes a whole chapter to it in his classic book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. It comes up when the narrator’s son is trying to write a letter to his mother, but doesn’t know what to write, so he asks his dad for help:

Usually, I say, your mind gets stuck when you’re trying to do too many things at once. What you have to do is try not to force words to come. That just gets you more stuck. What you have to do now is separate out the things and do them one at a time. You’re trying to think of what to say and what to say first at the same time and that’s too hard. So separate them out. just make a list of all the things you want to say in any old order. Then later we’ll figure out the right order.

Stuckness is right up there with Gumption Traps, and is a gumption trap in itself. Fortunately, though, dealing with stuckness is something that artists are naturally good at. The scientific method isn’t really good at dealing with it, since the scientific method is great at telling us where we’ve already been. It won’t tell us what’s next unless we’re just going around in circles (and that itself will get us stuck!)

It turns out that stuckness is a good thing! In fact, this stuckness is exactly what Zen Buddhists try to induce with koans, special breathing exercises, sitting still, and the like, all with the goal of having an empty “beginner’s mind.” Try this: consider that stuckness is something to be desired, rather than feared.

The solution will eventually show itself. Remember that all solutions are simple — in retrospect.

A few months ago I had the treat of getting to spend some time with my old college roommate, Nick. He and his wife and one-year old little girl came to town about a month before my wedding. When I told Nick about Mysterious Flame and what it’s all about, he said it reminded him of a section in a book we read back in school, Robert Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, where the author talks about “Gumption Traps.” I decided to re-read the book.

Gumption traps are those things that slow your momentum. “Gumption” is one of those fun words that is really a synonym for “enthusiasm.” Enthusiasm literally means “filled with God (Greek theos).” When you’re enthusiastic about something, you’re ready to jump in. You roll up your sleeves. You’re energetic. But when you’ve lost your gumption you just don’t feel like doing whatever it is you’ve set out to do. You get unhappy and maybe a little depressed. There are a lot of ways to restore your gumption, like going fishing, napping in a hammock in the summer, or lying on the beach. The problem is, there’s no “intellectual justification” for those things that seem to be just being lazy. However, when you recharge your gumption, things that bugged you before you took that vacation, they no longer bother you so much. You’ve got renewed enthusiasm. Says Pirsig in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance:

But the returned fisherman usually has a peculiar abundance of gumption, usually for the very same things he was sick to death of a few weeks before. He hasn’t been wasting time. It’s only our limited cultural viewpoint that makes it seem so.

But what to do about all the little things that sap your gumption and drain your enthusiasm? Pirsig in his book goes on for several pages about different gumption traps, joking that he’d like to start a new whole academic field and call it Gumptionology. Ever on the analytic side of things, the author breaks them down into several kinds and catalogues them, which we’ll sum up here.

It’s important to remember that there are two primary sources of gumption traps: external, which are really setbacks, and internal, which are really your own hang-ups of some kind. Knowing where the source is helps you figure out the solution, whether it’s something outside of you, or something to do with your own approach to the problem that’s keeping you stuck.

External setbacks come in a variety of forms, and there are a number of strategies for dealing with them, many of which are already available if you do a little research. Most of the time, though, hard work and experience pay off and you’re faster at overcoming those setbacks. You learn to not get too sure of yourself, since some things keep cropping back up when you think you have them licked. While external setbacks can be frustrating, it’s the internal hangups that you really have to watch for.

Internal Hangups

There are three kinds of internal hangups:

1. value traps
2. truth traps
3. muscle traps

Value Traps

Value traps are the ones where your thinking is not as clear as it should be. Value rigidity is the first one. It is a refusal to value anything other than a certain thing just because it “has” to be that way. A lot of times a solution will be staring you in the face, but you’re in too much of a hurry to notice it. Slow down — stare at it for a while! It’s very much like a fisherman sitting and waiting for a nibble. Value rigidity is usually an ego problem. Lose the ego and be humble. Let yourself be surprised, and solutions will show themselves.

Anxiety is another value trap, and it shows itself in excessive fussiness, overdoing things, and messing things up with your own nervousness. It leads you into a downward spiral. You have to relax and realize that everybody messes up, even the old pros.

Boredom is yet another value trap. The problem is that you’re no longer seeing freshly like a beginner. The best solution is to just stop and refill the well. Take a break. Go sleep. Or drink a cup of coffee. If you’re still bored when you get back to your project, it’s very likely that there are deeper distractions that you need to deal with before you can move forward.

Impatience is the next, and it’s often the first reaction to any sort of setback. When this happens, again you need to slow down, but allow yourself twice as much time as you think you need to so that you don’t rush and mess things up. Rachet up your immediate goals and forget about the overall goals for the moment.

Truth Traps

Truth traps come in the form of mistaken dualistic thinking, which is a common problem in Western societies. Our culture is based on the assumption that every question has a yes or no answer. Sometimes there’s a third option. Or the question you’ve asked is too small. Sometimes what you’re after is just plain irrelevant. When you hit a truth trap, don’t give up and think you’ve just been spinning your wheels. The reality is that you probably need to broaden your focus or shift your attention to something else.

Muscle Traps

Muscle traps deal with your physical capabilities and available tools. If you have inadequate equipment, you’re likely to get more frustrated than if you have the best tools you can afford. You won’t regret having good gear. You can also be influenced by your physical surroundings: if you’re hot, you get frustrated and angry easily; if you’re cold, you get in a hurry and make mistakes and hurt yourself easily. Comfort and ergonomics are more important than a lot of people give them credit for. Another aspect of muscle traps involves muscular insensitivity or “mechanic’s feel.” Train yourself to know how far you can push your materials and tools. This is one of those things that comes with experience.

Live Right!

Finally, the way you live predisposes you to avoid traps and see the right facts that will help you solve problems. As Pirsig puts it:

If you’re a sloppy thinker the six days of the week you aren’t working on your machine, what trap avoidances, what gimmicks, can make you all of a sudden sharper on the seventh?