The Progress Principle
A couple years ago I was in between jobs. It was summer, in Seattle. Being the hyper active person I am, I wondered then if I could possibly take the summer off and enjoy life, the garden and the studio. I wasn’t sure.
One day I went to the studio. I have a small studio, a detached building, on the backyard of my house. From inside it’s easy to see not just the glorious garden in Seattle summers, but also to encounter hummingbirds, blue jays, and the occasional rabbit passing by. So, I went to the studio and started painting. It’d been a long time since I had. When you haven’t done something for quite some time you feel clumsy. And I did. However, I did finish a small painting in one afternoon. And it wasn’t bad. So, I posted in my social channels. I went back to the studio the next day and I finished another small painting in the afternoon.
And I posted them to social. Friends and family liked it and I began asking the same question over and over again: “Are you selling them?”
“Are you selling them?”
I wasn’t thinking of selling them. I was just making them. But that question made me start something that would teach me much about collective generosity, the power of one, and… agile product development. Yes, I know.
“Motivation determines what you do. Attitude determines how well you do it.”
The plan
I decided to make one painting a day for one hundred days and sell them for one hundred dollars each. And I will donate all sales to a non-profit organization in downtown Seattle that is helping the most vulnerable in town experiencing homelessness.
To be able to make it happen I needed a plan, I needed some rules:
Size matters: The painting had to be small enough that I could possibly finish in one day.
Medium matters: The paint had to dry fast enough to be able to ship it within 48 hours.
Content matters: The content would be inspired by new events represented by familiar iconography.
The paintings dimensions were within 4-14 inches. The medium was acrylic that dries within a few hours. And as for the content, I was inspired by more events than I could have ever imagined, from current events like the disastrous flooding in Houston to personal memories triggered by the act of making these paintings. The iconography emerged to my brain from when I was a child rediscovering the so many phases of symbols and experiences and memories, layer after layer. Symbols, techniques, teachers, books, movies, friends, all were converging day after day in the journey I was in.
The journey
Making a painting a day was amazing. I could see how that consistent practice and daily pressure was improving my technique every day. I was getting faster, the paintings were getting larger, the images more sophisticated, the craft was better one day at a time.
““An ounce of practice is generally worth more than a ton of theory.””
Posting the new painting in social every day became a responsibility. People were anticipating the new image every day, and they liked them, commented, engaged with the images and encouraged me to keep going. It was like a marathon. Every day was a little more fatigue from counting how many more days I had to keep creating at a really fast pace. It was also intoxicating to realize how much I was learning, how much support I was getting, how fast the paintings were selling, how much love and generosity my friends and beyond were giving, how much complicity. It was magic.
The results
I finished one hundred paintings in one hundred days. I sold most of them at $100 each. I was able to give a big fat check to an amazing cause. I reconnected with friends I hadn’t seen in a long time. I connected with many new people I didn’t know before. I became a better painter and a better person. And, I haven’t stopped going to the studio since. I committed to keep going, since then without the restrictions of having to ship every day, but with the wisdom that showing up is all that matters.
And…
All of it is also applicable to how we approach getting things done at work. Think about it as daily sprints. What if we had to finish a feature every day?
The size of the painting = MVP
The medium = Code that can be shipped
The content = A balance of existing and new is the right test
The point is to practice, to ship and to learn. The time frame is of course flexible. One day or one week are reasonable as long as they stretch us and make our muscles hurt a little bit every single day. Because that’s the sign of continuous learning and improvement.
And here are some of the paintings from that journey.
