Black and White: Creation and Destruction

After working for more than 10 years in the business of creativity, I've learned my share of doing good work and work I'd rather not talk about. In both cases, one has to be ready and willing to do whatever it takes to deliver. This is, after all, a business venture.

My mom used to say to me that having the mind of an artist does contradict the coldness precision of the business minded individual. And while I love my mother, she really doesn't know what she's talking about. It's all the same thing really - in a matter of perspective and when you look through a different set of eyes. A spreadsheet is a canvass to a person of numbers and a calculator is his brush. I don't need to explain that anymore, now to business.

So let's begin. Lesson number 1: Creation and Destruction. Whatever it is you're doing, to you it is a work of art - whether you deal with numbers, binary codes or marketing strategies. It's all the same. And when you've spent more than half of your lifetime thinking about it and how good it sounds, all it takes is a critic from the powers that be to send your piece of work down in the dumps. And since you don't want to waste any more time on it, you salvage whatever is left and try to make gold out of the trash.

My suggestion to you, if you truly value your work - don't. Trash it. It has served its purpose and it failed - miserably. Whatever you've learned in making it, use it to create the next brilliant thing. But never resurrect the dead back to life.

I've learned that the hard way. After writing the piece that I've been writing for so long, I realized that I was never happy with it. I did spend so many months, coffee and cigarettes on it and felt that it was all a waste. So, I did try to get some bits and pieces off it and tried to rewrite my second piece. A couple of months later, I was still unhappy.

Why, you ask? Because I was working with trash.

While we consider ourselves to be creators, bringing things to life from nothingness, I think we all should learn how to destroy. Remove everything that reminds us of the past work and start with a clean sheet. Some of those thoughts that we have put on paper are still there anyway in our head. But once we have cleared the table of all the mess, then the thinking process will be much more fluid than before.

That is the one and only thing we can salvage from the past. To learn from it. So, if you have a bad idea, throw it. If it had any value you would remember it and use it on the day it is needed. But at the present, it is nothing but trash. It could be of use to someone else, but at that point it is nothing. Better to destroy any evidence of it, shred it to pieces and forget it. Something better is waiting to be created.

And if it doesn't work: destroy.