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“Inspiration had to find me working.” - Picasso
Rami Essaid, CEO of Finmark, said this on my podcast and the quote kind of jumped out and spoke to me. All too often, I find myself loathing doing something like creating social media posts, getting a formal job, renewing my driver’s license… you get the point.
In this age of comfort with our phones attached to our hands we seek the route that is the most efficient and get bogged down once discomfort is felt. For instance, a string of attempting to get started on work went like this; I started in bed subconsciously looking at my desk in the corner. I knew I had a lot to get done but struggled to get started because of the mounting responsibilities I was avoiding. When older generations say that our generation is doomed or headed in the wrong direction because we have all these means of an easier life but can't seem to have our shit together is a perplexing statement. While we do enjoy easier means of learning, travel, and virtually anything you can think of from entertainment to socializing, technology also made us in part lazier or to seek the most efficient path. (Check out our conversations with Rene Morkos or Stefanie Pinsely for context).
Environments play an important role in how productive we are and we just have to make sacrifices in order to get the job done. Going back to the quote, I went to a cafe a day later and found that once I got on my computer, fifteen minutes in I was in a groove. It felt great to be focused and in a flow state. I felt inspired like I was finally headed in the direction I needed to be. Perhaps my room is not an inspirational place to work or a cafe is? Would I have found this inspirational gut feeling had I just gotten to work on the computer in my room? I would say it is less likely because I do not have the accountability a public setting provides. It’s probably why offices have been centers of productivity and why bedrooms are not. I think the process of getting in a state of productivity simply requires getting started. Once you find a flow, getting ideas and feeding off the energy you're exerting happens.
So much of the noise internally and externally shapes how we perceive ourselves and the tasks ahead. But I have found that the work dispels the brain fog. Lastly, inspiration doesn’t necessarily have to hit you like particles in the air coming down to you. When you feel excited or determined to get the job done while you have already started and there’s this sort of Jimmy Neutron “Brain Blast,” moment that to me is inspiration.
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