“Stay hungry” isn’t near as fun as staying curious

This is not your typical post.

What follows is an online-offline exchange with one of the best creative minds in the business right now — Greg Walter of 2Tall Animation.

His sports-related animation studio has become a sought-after partner across global sports leagues and their teams with millions of eyeballs on the content they create. And for someone who I assumed owned the cheat code for timely, buzzworthy creative content, I didn’t see this question coming — at least not from him.

The question he posed online to fellow creatives is below, and what I feel strongly, via my own creative practices, is simply one way to respond to it.

I talked with Greg about this before posting to get his blessing on sharing insights from our exchange (slightly modified). Frankly, I would’ve responded publicly in the app, but found I had more to say than the tiny window afforded. I also think a lot of hard-working, thoughtful and creative people who have been on the scene for a while can glean some helpful takeaways here. At least that’s my hope.

GREG:

To the Gen Xers, the children of the 80s, the greying ass-kickers who are still at it, still risking, still creating… what are your tricks to staying sharp, creative, and hungry?

ME:

Greg, I saw your post and it got me to thinking….

While I lack any tricks or life hacks, I interpret your question as being about “more work” or new work – and, I don’t know about you, but I’m feeling drained by “feeding the beast” and doing “treadmill sprints” more often than I’d like to admit.

So I have to stop looking at this as “work” and, instead, as curiosity. A curiosity that I trust will feed new ideas that become the energizing work we “get to” do — not just have to do.

I know, curiosity = buzzword, so let me explain my take.

My version of curiosity isn’t surface-level and business-relevant hot takes of saying, “dang, look at Agency X killing it over there. Why didn’t we think of that? How can we riff off that?”

No. What I mean is:

Go hang out with younger people.

In particular, I’m looking at people who are 15 to 29 years old (and young 30s). And here’s why:

The age range reveals an interesting learning loop. 15-year-olds are starting to think for themselves, breaking away from parental molds and “discovering” who they are, their likes and dislikes.

A lot of it is peer-induced, but it’s the beginning of noticing trends. Trends that, like all trends, once existed in a different time, different shape or container, and are now recycled for a new generation. This to me is a well of fascination.

They fall in like and then in love with things borne of the 80s or 90s or aughts often without knowing the origin source, because it has a new twist on it just for them. So looking at them and through their lens, I see things of my past differently.

We have a choice — we can be the old farts who say, “I remember when Don Henley sang Boys of Summer back in 1984” and shake an angry fist at a cloud when we hear a cover of it; or we can embrace The Ataris version that is faster, more punk-pop, swapping out a Dead-head sticker on a Cadillac for a Black Flag sticker (which, arguably, I’d prefer). It’s the same dang thing slightly tweaked for a new audience. And I realize I can love them both.

It’s the sharpness and clarity of old becoming new again. That makes me hungry to learn more. To ask “what if” more. Pursue more.

Same is true for college-age people and those post-college young adults entering the workforce and adulting, what they are willing to work for (and not work for), their questioning of purpose, value, commerce – a more cerebral, personal awakening that isn’t solely material, but feeds their choices.

The more time I spend with those younger than me by a good stretch, the more alive they make me feel, the more curious I become, the more I translate that into my work of creating and mashing things up. Because if the cliché of there’s nothing new to discover is only partially true, then it’s in the remix where all the next great inventions exist.

CASE IN POINT:
I would love to know what percentage of your younger audience consuming 2Tall’s basketball results content has a clue that it is a mashup of a Charlie Brown Christmas and NBA personas and outcomes. It’s like an Easter Egg for us Gen Xers, with a wink and a nod to say, I saw what you did there!

But that knowledge isn’t necessary for a younger jet set to love it. That’s feeds their hunger. Not just borrowing from the past, but making it relevant for today’s audiences.  

Funny, when I get together with some of our long-time friends, I’m often more energized in hanging with their college-age kids. Talking and experiencing music, culture, whatever. It’s absolutely life-giving when you have a curiosity mindset.  But if I reduce my exposure to those my age, we digress into easy and comfortable territory, talking about the trials of aging, our latest health issue, stress, problems, because we’re on the same chapter together. While it can be comfortable, it also can be life-draining.

I think the more bold, the more crazy, the more inspiration from the unlikeliest places, the better. That’s where genuinely fun and interesting ideas come from.

Maybe your NBA playoff results look totally different — or don’t exist at all — if you and your team aren’t mining your childhoods, or rewatching a Charlie Brown Christmas with your kids.

So, how many other cultural levers can we find and pull and borrow from to make an old thing totally new?

This is what stirs the creative juices, IMO.

Not another brainstorm in the War Room.

Showing up and being present in the lives of those a generation or two behind us has so much give-and-take value for both side. There’s so much to glean and rethink — if we’re listening and paying attention. Because everything we’re looking for isn’t mysterious and hiding. It’s residing in our past memories and histories, waiting to be rekindled in a new way.

You’re already there. You’re leading the way in many respects.

Keep leaning into that grab-bag of curiosities and what-if mashups.

And for all the geezers who live for the data over the art, you can feel confident knowing your delivering both.

GREG:

Holy Crap, Thad. This is an amazing take. Never thought about it this way before. And it's totally true. I love hanging out with 20 somethings, but I never thought about it this way. This is how we stay relevant, keep moving forward, and keep our edge - it's by being around people who are in that stage of life where they're testing, striving, remixing, rethinking in a way that 50-somethings generally aren't.

I love hanging out with my 50-year-old friends because it's comfortable.

But I love hanging out with 20-somethings because it's electrical.

Maybe that's why I'm one of the few who really likes having teenage kids. It's invigorating as heck.

The most important part of writing isn't the writing

I question everything I write.

Until I don’t.

That doesn’t mean I believe my drafts evolve into perfection.

Truth is I haven’t come close to writing the perfect piece, ever.

But what I’ve managed to learn over a few decades of writing is this:

The most important part of writing

is questioning and thinking about

what you just wrote.

This is the writer’s contemplative work that demands unmerciful scrutiny:

• Is this really what you mean?

• Will it resonate with the audience?

• Did you use a helpful example or accurate analogy?

• Did you allow jargon to slip in?

• Can you say this differently but better, quicker, more human and conversational?

• Is it reflective of the brand or individual you’re writing for?

• Would you want to read this?

• Does it educate or challenge what you think?

• Does it make you want to take action?

Here’s an accepted truth:

Anyone can write and putting words on paper or a screen is easy.

But not everyone is a writer – and that’s okay and also acceptable. Not everyone is an engineer either. Which is why it’s helpful for non-writers to understand how writers do what they do.  

Writing (the process) doesn’t look like

writing (the act) at all.

Writing is rooted in everything that is simmering before the first words are hammered out, after the first draft –  and second, third or seventh – or however many are required until you land on a draft worthy of being final.

Writing includes thinking, mulling, stewing, questioning, arguing with yourself, walking away and letting first words calcify, returning to test if they are strong or brittle, tearing elements down and rebuilding.

It looks more like sculpting than writing. That’s because it is art.

Writing also involves letting someone with zero subject matter expertise read your draft to find out if they can follow it, to see if it makes sense even if they don’t know the technical details. Because simplicity outperforms the bravado of expert posturing. Which is to say…

Good writing is hard.

It is never automatic, and never a given.

Writing something good, once, is in no way a guarantee that your next thing will be any good. It requires doing the hard work from scratch, all over again with no shortcuts, in hopes that it too might become good.

The myth of great ideas.

Great ideas (epiphanies!) rarely “just happen” in a first draft or any draft. It’s like the fleeing fireworks display in the sky – it’s looks pretty, briefly, followed by hazy residue once the twinkle fades as you await what comes next. Instead, great ideas are the tortoises in these races to the finish line, always plodding a bit slower than we’d like but worth it in the end.

In fact, epiphanies aren’t unexpected, out-of-the-blue thoughts or ideas at all. They emerge when you prune and edit everything that’s been taking up space – in your brain and on the page. In this sense, the epiphany becomes sudden, recognizable clarity as bloated language and jargon get removed.

The great idea emerges after carefully working and examining the entire landscape and finding it has been hiding in plain sight all along.

Good writing is never over.

However, at some point it needs to be ready or complete. Complete means as far as you can take it, as well as you possibly can, with what you know right now. Because a few weeks or months from now you’ll look at what you wrote and find yet another way, possibly a better way to say it.

For people who don’t do a lot of writing, this takes entirely too long.

For writers, there’s always a desire for more time to allow the best ideas and language to emerge and mature. And that’s because writers know what’s at stake, writers know what the right words can unlock.

These days a lot of written content feels disposable, unhelpful, noisy [add your descriptor here].

It feels like fast food: quick, convenient, seemingly necessary, but also lacking. And just like fast food, disposable content feels even less fulfilling after its consumed.

It doesn’t have to be this way.

Even the shortest post can have a powerful impact.

The deception is in how easy it appears (but now you know the truth).

Slow down.

Think it through (ask more Qs and then think some more).

And then write some really good sh*t.   

** For the record, I wrote and edited this piece across multiple days and sittings, challenging myself and what I believe about the process. Nothing comes easy.

*** The photo image is the cover of Steven Pressfield’s book of the same title and is a must read for writers.

Everyone wants creativity & innovation; few have the required patience

Photo credit: Duane Mendes via unsplash

I read a sponsored headline on LinkedIn recently that said – The Opposite of Inconvenience Is Innovation.

(Not quite true and it resonates as an AI headline, but I’ll withhold judgment).

Then you had to “unlock” their gated, six-carousel slide deck to understand their point.

To that I’d say: unlocking gated material on LinkedIn is the opposite of convenient.

Fellow creative and copywriter Mike Roe recently shared an article on the death of creativity. I was drawn to a particular claim about the near-uselessness of three-fourths of the brands paraded in front of us, and how we wouldn’t miss them if they disappeared.

Think about that: the vast majority of companies/brands are easily forgotten, including yours.

The premise here is that we’ve killed creativity — meaning we aren’t creating anything memorable — in lieu of being efficient with time and speed at the lowest possible cost.

That, friends, is how we end up with headlines and campaigns promoting products like the one above. And it is also how they falter because they fail to entice, and in turn expect something from us long before earning our trust.

What might’ve enticed me to open this sponsored campaign and discover their offering? Simple:

1.       Don’t lock your content on LinkedIn (be generous, be a thought sharer)

2.       Entice us with stories/snippets that will resonate, something like…

Opportunities are created more than they are granted.

Your team keeps looking for opportunities, but when was the last time you granted them time to create something that turned heads? Got people talking? Shook the industry?

Here’s the rub: creating takes time. This can feel wildly inconvenient. It is far from instantaneous. But it is worth it. Just ask the computer maker not named Dell, or Gateway, or Compaq, who put a jukebox in the palm of your hand, and gave you a phone that still functioned like a phone, but became your essential life assistant.

Innovation isn’t doing what you know how to do a little differently. That’s called chasing the market leader. And, whoa, talk about inconvenient.

Remember — you have a choice: to either keep looking for opportunities — or start creating them.

To be fair, maybe this was the same kind of sponsored content the company gated, offering me to dive deeper into their offering, their own unique solution.

But I’ll never know – because I wasn’t compelled to look.

Think of it this way:

How many times has your audience been dismissive or not compelled to look because the creative was rushed, roadblocks to engagement we intentionally set for the sake of data, and meeting the artificial deadline prevailed over doing the best possible work with a better chance of resonating? Have any of us ever been guilty of such a thing?

When we rush creativity (the very thing that leads to innovative ideas) we take away the power of its potential.

We’ve been conditioned to “box it up” and promise what it will do in terms of metrics, sales, and how it measures up on spreadsheet – literally putting it in a box. When we do this, we have succumbed to the antithesis of creativity. Everything begins to look the same. No wonder three-fourths of brands are forgettable.

We neuter creativity before it has a chance do its intended thing – which is to wow people, stop them in their tracks, and get them talking.

And yet that is precisely what every company says it’s pursuing, but typically with poor copy that falls on deaf ears.

READING OLD NOTES: gaining insight through reflection

I keep a stack of moleskine notebooks and serviceable knock-offs on a bookshelf in my writing studio. They are filled with meeting notes, doodles, writing prompts, sketches, and lists of peculiar word pairings that I imagine using in future pieces. There’s also some wise advice I’ve picked up and scribbled into the margins during this work-and-life journey.

I admit that once these notebooks are filled, I rarely pick them up or thumb through them again.

That is until recently.

I had been feeling anxious about a writing assignment and a personal project. I was struggling to start, to finish, to find the right words. They weren’t coming. More than writer’s block, it was a questioning of my abilities to perform my core work.

So I began thumbing through old words. Past projects. Thing that at one time seemed daunting. Things that felt important to commit to paper.

I wasn’t looking for anything particular. I was simply revisiting and reflecting on past experiences and old ideas.

And it made me stop and think: why is it that we scan old photo albums (or file folders) with a sense of wonder and excitement? Why does Facebook send us anniversary milestones of friendships? Why do we painstakingly curate playlists in Spotify from the 80s or 90s when there’s so much new music across any genre for us to enjoy? Why do we show up and honor, in our own special way, those whom we’ve lost?

Because we need to be reminded.

Reminded of what’s important and what matters;

what we’re striving for and what keeps us in the game;

what gives us life and purpose, hope and joy.

Looking for the right words and answers continues to be an imperfect and ongoing search. If not now, then assuredly later. And you, I’m assuming, will have your own specific search that demands resolving – from the mundane to the monumental challenges.  

As I thumbed through some old notes, I found some words of advice and inspiration, and a few that served as a kick in the pants to keep going, to pick ourselves up, to get better, and to never stop.

In some cases it was as if I was reading these points for the first time. For others, I had a different perspective thanks to the experiences I’ve has since I first scrawled the words.

Maybe these words – forgotten and tucked away in a notebook on a shelf, from writers, creators and, more importantly, doers – are exactly what I need to reflect on when the load feels heavy. And maybe you, too. Maybe these words needed some light thrown back on them to push us forward. Perhaps new eyes on these once-written, spoken and acted-upon words can breathe new life into whatever it is we need to do but haven’t.

I hope they are helpful, encouraging, or a kick in the pants. If they are, then write them down. Put them in a notebook. Add to them. And consider revisiting them from time to time.

Traveler, there is no road;

you make your own path as you walk.

As you walk, you make your own road,

and when you look back you see the path

you will never travel again.

– Antonio Machado // poet

“How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.”

– Annie Dillard // writer

“When we are merely competent, the value of our work is diminished until it can eventually be outsourced to the lowest bidder – making us a dispensable commodity.” (Don’t be merely competent. Be unmistakable.)

– Srinivas Rao // business author, podcaster

CRITICIZING IS EASIER THAN CREATING.

(shut up and get to work.)

“The trouble with comparing yourself to others is that there are too many others. Using all others as your control group, all your worst fears and your fondest hopes are at once true. You are good; you are bad; you are abnormal; you are just like everyone else.”

– Sarah Manguso // poet

“Emotion before evidence. Otherwise data will kill a good story on contact.”

– Todd Henry // writer, creativity consultant

“Keep being curious. Keep being a student.

As soon as you stop doing that, as soon as you stop playing,

you stop creating great things.”

 – Matthew Luhn // writer, Pixar Animation Studios

At the end of my suffering, there was a door.

– Louise Glück // poet

“If you listen to everyone, you will lose yourself.

You were hired for your expertise. Deliver that.”

– Ruth Carter // costume designer for Black Panther

But what if I’m not a real writer/artist/entrepreneur/etc.? Just sit down and do it.

What if my idea isn’t any good? Just try. Do it anyway.

What if nobody sees it? It’s not about who sees it, it’s about why you did it.

What if I’m stuck? When you’re at an edge, push through it.

What if this was a gigantic waste of time? Trust that it won’t be.

 – Allison Fallon // writer, coach, adapted from perspectives on writing

DARE. MIGHTY. THINGS.

Then do the work to achieve those things.