I used to be able to swing freely on the monkey bars without feeling sore. I used to spend hours on end climbing trees. I used to play golf well. I used to know how to do quadratic equations, and work out the interior angles of triangles. I used to be able to calculate the volume of a cylinder and program computer games.

I used to do lots of things, and now I don’t. Instead, I do many different things. And so why do people tend to need us to have done something before before they trust us to do it again? And just because I could do it before, doesn’t mean I can do it again (at least not without more practice). Past me had never written a children’s book, or illustrated one. Past me didn’t know how to cook. Past me had never painted with watercolour. Now, I do all those things, and who knows what I’m capable of tomorrow.

Just because we’ve never been an artist or written a book or made a clay pot before, doesn’t mean we can’t do it tomorrow. Our identity is formed by the actions we’ve taken in the past, but, more importantly, the ones we choose to take in the future. There’s no better time to be an artist, or a writer, or a potter, we just need to trust that the past doesn’t control the future, it’s what we decide to do today, and tomorrow, ane day after that do.

What happens when you’re the odd one out – If ‘the man’ said no, you can’t do this thing that you’re born to do? What would happen if you did it anyway? And what about something else, like free-trade? Is it a good thing? If things never changed, how long would we survive? What are the strengths of anxious people or introverts and what if the world knew how to use them?

It turns out I ask a lot of questions. Fiction, whether it’s reading it or writing it, is one of the key ways we explore these ‘what-if scenarios’.

A few years ago, I attended a workshop on storytelling by a PhD candidate whose name I can no longer remember nor find. She was researching why writers write, and, overwhelmingly, it’s always about answering questions.

Being published was (and remains) always secondary to me. What I’m trying to do when a new story or character emerges is I’m trying to answer something for myself. Whether or not it gets published isn’t about whether the story itself is good (although knowing about how stories work helps), it’s whether the publisher believes that there are enough people in the world who are also trying to answer the same question. That, for me, is really the key to determining whether we reproduce an idea 10,000 times or not.

As an artist who deeply cares about their work that goes into the world, letting go is difficult. Embracing chance is difficult. My watercolour practice has taught me so many things so far, and one of its key lessons is to trust in chance.

Trusting in chance

People often remark that ‘watercolour is the most difficult medium’. They tend to say this followed by, “because you can’t go back over mistakes.” And whilst that’s true, it begs a different question – what’s a mistake?

Whenever I’m making something, I set out with a vision. I have an image in my mind (or roughed out on a computer) about where I’m heading. And yes, I try to get it there, as close as possible, but as I’ve written about before, the expectation is almost never met. Mistakes happen. But, like art itself, mistakes are in the eye of the beholder.

If no one else but me knows what I was supposed to do and didn’t, does anyone else notice the ‘mistake’? Maybe to the viewer, there are no mistakes?

A most happy accident

In 1902, a French street performer and magician, Melies, began to use one of the earliest film cameras ever made. Of course, these weren’t anything like the cameras we see today, but almost a hyper-mechanical ‘steampunk’ style contraption of running film over a lens. Think grease and oil. At the time, film was brand new, and the few people that had access to film cameras used them in a very static way – to record basic sequential action for a short period of time (about 90 seconds).

But, one day, Melies set up his camera to film traffic passing under a bridge, and the camera jammed just at a point when a bus was passing under it. He unjammed the mechanism a few minutes later, well and truly after the bus had moved on, but just at the moment, a hearse was passing under the bridge.

When Melies played back the footage, he was both delighted and surprised to see the bus magically replaced by the hearse in front of his very eyes. Melies had accidentally invented the jump-cut, the first real ‘special effect’ of film where anything could become anything or, in true magician style, simply vanish. It unlocked an entirely new way to think about film.

History is littered with stories like Melies’ – the happy accident. Quite often, it is the happy accident that helps us make huge leaps both in new technology but also in the way we think. They are near impossible to contrive because, well, then they wouldn’t be an accident, would they? But, I wonder, which conditions might provide a space where happy accidents are more likely to occur? In any objective view, Melies’ camera jam would be counted as a ‘mistake’ – a thing to fix; the resulting footage something throw away. But maybe it’s worth sharing the things we think are mistakes in case, well, to others, it’s an innovation.

If you look up the word ‘priority’ in the dictionary you’ll notice something peculiar; there is no plural form. By definition, priority is singular – a thing that is regarded as more important than the others. So, when we try and make “priorities”, we attempt to tell ourselves what’s important but what we’re really doing is deciding that nothing is.

Instead of saying yes, how about saying this before that?

It’s easy for any artist to reel off a list of things that feel important. Do I work on this piece or that one? Do I invest time in social media marketing? Email marketing? Which medium do I work in, I love them all? I’ve been guilty of writing all these tasks down, then categorising them based on the type of activity, then ordering them in those categories. A bit like this:

Of course, what happens in this model is I’ve still got 3 or so things that appear to be equally important. I haven’t really prioritised in the truest sense.

At least until parallel universes open up, time and life are linear. One thing must come before another. It’s not possible to work on e-marketing and exploring a new medium at exactly the same time. I might think I’m ‘multi-tasking’ (also a fallacy by the way) by switching my attention quickly between the two activities but the risk is that both tasks take twice as long for the switching cost involved and, chances are, the quality of each won’t be as good.

Focussing on one thing at a time

But, if we acknowledge that there can be only one priority at a time, things begin to look very different. Firstly, we need to think much more about why something is more important than another. We have to actually make the choice – this before that.

Here’s an alternative way to structure and organise work.

• The Done column gives me a sense of achievement
• The In progress column only has one thing in it at a time. If I work on Concepts for a new book and then switch tasks, I move that item back in to Up next and swap it with what I now believe is the most important thing to work on.
• The Up Next column contains a single, prioritised list. It forces me to choose what’s important across categories. Yes, the order can change, re-prioritising happens all the time. But, in a single-column format, there’s nowhere for me to hedge my bets.

How to decide what’s important?

There are many reasons why something should be more important than another – that’s going to be different for every artist at any one time; tasks can be urgent, have high impact, make us feel good, make us money, etc. But, by forcing our ‘priorities’ into a single list, regardless of how we want to ‘categorise’ those things conceptually, what we’re left with is accountability to ourselves and, more importantly, focus.

Yes, there is fear in getting the ranking wrong, of working on something that may not be indeed as important as something else, but it’s better than fooling ourselves into thinking we’re doing a lot of important work all the time. A single list makes sure that we can continually ask the question, anyway, so it’s likely that we may just be one or two items off at any given time, but by working this way, we’re increasing the chances that we’re working on the most valuable things first – and that’s really the priority.

5 year, 10 year, 25 year plans – I don’t see the point of them, and I see how important they are.

The problem with long-term thinking is that plans change. The environment in which any human operates isn’t a static one. And so to say, “In 25 years, I’m going to travel the world, and do all the things I never got to do while I was working” seems dangerous to me. Yet, it’s the overarching narrative of my parents’ generation – work hard now, enjoy yourself later. Of course, later may never come and, even if it does, it may coincide with a 3-year travel ban because of a global pandemic. As the old saying goes, ‘You just never know.’

Conversely, the problem with short-term thinking is that it’s very difficult to build something bigger or something beyond what we’ve got right now. If all I do is think about tomorrow, I wouldn’t save money because, well, tomorrow may not come so I better spend it now. If all that mattered was getting to next week, my diet would contain many more chips and far less broccoli.

In both cases, we’re making bets. The long-term thinker is making a bet that things will be fairly predictable over 25 years in order to enable their 25-year plan. The short-term thinker, on the other hand, is making a bet that tomorrow may be vastly different from today and so it’s better to strike while the iron’s hot and do what you want to do now. But, maybe there’s a middle ground.

Incremental planning

Maybe there’s a better way to make bets? If we have more certainty in shorter timeframes and less certainty across longer horizons where does that leave us?

The longer the timeframe, the less specific or abstract the goal. Many of my parents’ generation planned on ‘visiting country x‘ when they retired. Or ‘driving around Australia.’ But, who knows whether driving will even exist in 25 years given the way automation is going. And who knows what political turmoil any given country will be in 25 years.

Outcome over output

For long term plans, thinking about outcome over output seems to be the right way to go. The trick here is to ask yourself, “Why that country?” or “Why driving?” If we understand the motivation behind our intentions, we may be able to use the concept of equifinality to satisfy our needs without being so specific. Maybe the goal of both of those things is really to see places that are simply different to the ones we inhabit everyday. There are many ways to achieve that, and you may not need to wait 25 years.

Once we know the less specific goal and the reasons why we have it in the first place, we can make smaller goals, based on closer timeframes, that still progress towards the larger picture. The idea of seeing different places can start right now. For example, during the constraints imposed on us by a pandemic, we’ve travelled to Victorian towns like Maldon, Benalla, and Gippsland – these are all places we’ve never been before. It scratches the novelty itch, and we build empathy for people who are not like us. We’re already achieving a version of the 25 year plan but it’s happening right now.

With an outcome mindset, and a little incremental planning, we become far more adaptable and resilient. We can still fulfill our needs allbeit in a perhaps a slightly less than ideal or different way than we may have intended or imagined.

What’s this got to do with art? Well, artist’s goals are usually, “I want to make a living from my art” or “I don’t want to compromise on my vision.” But, when we give ourselves time and introspect on the reason why we want to make a living from our art, it’s usually because the way we’re currently making a living is stressful, or tiring, or boring, and what we really want is for those feelings to go away or, at least, be reduced somehow.

I find the idea of blending my way to make money with my ability to produce art completely frightening for a number of reasons. Because of this, and using the concepts above, I’ve been able to balance a job that I’m lucky enough to find interesting, with ‘some picture book work on the side.’ I’m not particularly stressed or bored living this way, so maybe I’ve already got what I need without needing to commit to being a full-time artist. Maybe the tweaks we need to make to live a less stressed more fulfilling life aren’t really as big as throwing it all in and leaving a different life behind?

I’ve lived my whole life in service of deadlines. It’s both a positive and a negative aspect of working in a creative field.

It’s positive in that it gives me something to aim for – a date or time in the future by which someone needs something from me. I’ve made a lot of stuff because of my fear of upsetting someone else by not delivering by a deadline.

The negative side of deadlines is that they create anxiety. What if I don’t make it? What happens on the other side of it? Who will I upset and how upset will they be? The one question I don’t often ask myself enough is, “Who dies?”

It’s not about bloodshed, it’s about a commitment

No one dies on the other side of a deadline these days, at least not the ones we have in creative industries. That wasn’t always true, especially for people in prisons in 1864, but it’s useful to put today’s word in perspective; we’re simply talking about making a commitment.

When I compare the phrases “Making a commitment” and “Hitting a deadline”, the latter feels far more violent. And sure, maybe the violence is intended to invoke anxiety and energy towards the milestone but, to be honest, I don’t think it’s the anxiety of losing one’s life (or whacking it with force) that’s the thing that motivates me to deliver. No, my motivation to get the work done comes from two sources.

Firstly, I want to share it with others because I value the feedback. It’s only through feedback that I learn about what I’ve done well and not so well. When I have that feedback, I can use it in the next thing I make. Over time, it should follow that what I make gets better.

The second motivation (but no less important than the first) is that others depend on me. To produce anything amazing in this world takes more than one person, and we each have a role to play. Sure, maybe my name is the one that ends up on the cover, but the team (and family) that surround the book are also just as responsible for making it. As an author/illustrator, I feel like I’m just doing my part in the team. Just as a goalkeeper’s job of stopping the ball entering their own goal is just as important as the striker’s job of putting the ball in the other net.

In sport, the commitment to one another isn’t a deadline. It’s not a blood pact or some other medieval phrase intended to induce anxiety and fear. Teams huddle. They celebrate. They support and cheer each other on. Maybe the creative industry could learn a lesson or two from others and create an environment of positive energy rather than one fuelled by fear. Maybe it’s time to bury the deadline and start talking about commitments.

It’s always been interesting to me that in a world before globalisation, almost every culture, country, or continent ‘invented’ an alcoholic beverage. Rice in Japan, Wheat/Rye in England or Germany, Grapes in France. This was at a time where there was no cross-continent, instant knowledge transfer like there is now, so no one could learn from another. The different beverages – sake, beer, and wine, for example, were all discovered at different times and in different ways, in independent, closed cultures across the world, but people still got drunk and, largely, enjoyed it.

This is the concept of equifinality – the same outcome but different paths to get there – and it doesn’t just happen with alcohol. Agriculture, Weapons, Food and many other major developments in human evolution all lead to the same place but by vastly different means and influences.

What does equifinality mean for art? Well, it means that Felix Mendelssohn can bring a tear to an eye, and so can Charles Dickens. It means Arthur Streeton can reveal a vision of Australia that shows us something different, and so can Joseph Zbukvic. It means that no one medium is ‘better’ than another in expressing something or provoking an audience reaction. It means that, if we focus on the outcome rather than output, we can get there, even if it’s not how we expected it would happen.

Whenever I start a project, expectations are high. I have a vision in my mind of what I’m aiming to produce and so I set out in search of that elusive goal – to make my hands produce what my mind can see.

The reality is that I almost never get there. In fact, if I ever have, it would mean I’d stop creating art. So, whilst in theory, I want to hit the goal, there’s something in the impossibility of the task that is the thing that forms my art practice.

So, how do I publish non-perfect work? It takes practice. It takes an acknowledgement that, most of the time, the standards I set for myself are always higher than the standards that others set for me. That’s where the “radius of OK” comes in.

The radius of OK

The radius of “OK” is, in my mind, a ballpark. It allows me to ask the question – does this final illustration achieve what it was intended to achieve, even though it may not be exactly what I saw in my head? I don’t like to think about this as, you know, a percentage, or some imaginary bar to clear – that doesn’t feel particularly rewarding. It’s more about asking, “did I get close enough?”

Maybe it’s because I grew up playing golf, but, I know the chances of getting the ball in the hole from 180metres away is pretty unrealistic. But, hitting the green is something far more achievable. And, over time, the more one practices at golf, the better one gets at hitting the green. In golf, they have stat called “Greens in Regulation” which aims to capture this exact thing. Yes, getting the ball in the hole is important, but when you’re starting from a distance, hitting a green is just fine.

How does an artist decide whether to do something the slow way or the fast way? There are pros to both.

The fast way means getting to the end of something sooner, and there are plenty of lessons learned in finishing something. Once something is finished, it means feedback, and it’s through feedback that we’re able to work out what to keep or change if anything, the next time. The 100 pots study is a good example of why it’s important to finish something quickly and try it again.

The long way also has its benefits. While we may rob ourselves of the critical feedback from the public, which is often required for us to grow and learn, the long way tends to make it about us and the work, not the work and the public. If the goal of creating art is to help us answer the questions we find ourselves asking of the world, the long way round gives us more time to think through our response; to hold the space between complete ambiguity and an answer so that we give the idea space to breathe and work out what our *actual*, deeply held response to the question is, not, perhaps, the surface level one we drive toward with the easy way.

Maybe the long way round teaches us something that the fast way doesn’t? Maybe focussing on the journey instead of the destination has value? But maybe the opposite is true, too. There are many reasons to choose the long way, and equally many to choose the fast way.

What probably matters most is that the choices we make are conscious, not unconsidered. If we’re clear on the questions we set out to answer beforehand, chances are we’ll find our answers whichever route we take, and we may also be surprised along the way too. After all, that’s the fun bit.

There are 2 ways to look at the strengths and skills that come innately to us and not to others. The first way is to see it as a competitive advantage and to do everything in our power to leverage it in this hyper-capitalist economy. In this version, the gifted feel ‘entitled’ – as if they have a ‘head start’. Taking advantage of the gift is a priority, and fully in the individual’s control. If you don’t do everything in your power to use that advantage, you’ve failed. It’s a very individualist mindset – every person for themselves and it’s not my problem if you’ve wasted the opportunity to use your strengths.

The second way is to acknowledge that the strengths and weaknesses are unique and individual, but true advantage of them cannot be taken without depending on others. In this mindset, the strengths we each possess are ‘in trust’ – borrowed from the cosmic chaos of the universe and as such, should in some way benefit the universe in return.

All by myself?

It turns out that one of my strengths is visual communication. Out of all of the trillions of possible permutations, the atoms in my body have arranged themselves in a way that has created a natural hyper-sensitivity to colour, movement, line, and shape. But, for me to be able to use those fully, I need others. I need the farmers who grow the cotton that gets turned into my paper that I use to capture that colour, movement, line and shape. I need the paper makers and all of the history of science and the industrial world whose progress helped create the technology that those paper makers use today. I need the sable, whose hair goes into the brushes that I use. I need the trees from which the brush handles are made. I need the craftsmen and women who craft the individual components into what we see as a brush in the store. I need the building blocks of colour chemistry whose knowledge and skill have evolved from the knowledge of early humans – those that ground the first red scarab beetle to make a colour. I could write pages and pages of how the universe’s systems, and my place in the timeline of it all, which is largely a big pile of chaotic luck, have enabled me to use the strengths that I have in the way that I’m doing it in my brief speck of time on earth.

The interconnectedness and interdependence we, as individual permutations of human biology, have on each other and the biological world around us that’s been evolving over millions of years is something that’s easy to forget when we’re struggling with the fear that comes along with sharing our art. But, maybe the idea that we’ve taken from the environment compels us to give something back? Maybe that’s the impetus some of us need, to simply pay back that debt, even if it means no financial gain – the type of gain we’ve come to think is the point of it all. Instead, maybe it’s about giving something back to the timeline so that, maybe one day, something or someone somewhere will use or build upon. Just as we have.