Category: Workflow

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Exhibit setup – behind the scenes

Panoramic view of Siena. Italy.

When my wife and I came back from a 3-week-long trip from Italy in 2009, we brought back about 15,000 photos, which now seems like not a big deal, but at that time it was a huge amount and a logistical challenge in terms of storage, processing, etc.

Now, as I was re-visiting them 7 years later, to prepare an exhibit at a local coffee shop, the challenge was to select just a few images from that set and to decide how to display them them next to each other: what sizes to print, for example. So I chose my favourite photo from the entire trip – the Florentine sunset, and printed it as the larges gallery wrap I knew we would be able to display – a 24 x 36 in canvas. We brought in to the cafe, held it against the wall, and at that point in became apparent what other images would work, at what size, how to position them relative to the main print.

The rest was, as you can see in the video, a matter of sticking the hooks to the wall, after double- or triple-checking the measurements, and voilà – we have a personal exhibit!

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On creating mental models

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At my daughter’s art studio, “4Cats”, there is a poster that half-jokingly lists the benefits of art education. Among these benefits are improved study skills and a possibility to make a fortune of selling your paintings.

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There is another skill that did not make the list, but which is taught through the practice of art (or any other creative process) – it is what psychologists call “creating mental models”.

Charles Duhigg wrote an entire chapter on this in his book “Smarter Faster Better.” According to him, some people are better than others at creating mental representations of current and future events. In other words, they continually narrate a story to themselves as they go about their day. By doing so, they work out a model of how the world works. The more detailed the story, the deeper the focus that these people are able to maintain. Also, when the life events actually unfold, people who are good at creating mental models are capable of making better decisions, because they already fave a forecast of the event, which can be compared to the real situation. Duhigg quoted Andy Billings of Electronic Arts, who said that modern companies are looking for people, who habitually tell stories, because this trait is an indication of the person ability to apply analytical observation to their experiences.

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As it is the case with many useful traits, creating mental models is a true skill, rather than an innate ability. In other words, it can be developed through practice. In fact, this is what children do when they play make-believe games, play with toys and, particularly, when they practice art. In regular, structured art lessons, the teacher outlines a plan for the process and then provides feedback on the progress at various stages. This way, the children are taught to imagine the final painting/drawing/sculpture, at least in some detail, and then compare what actually emerges as a result of their work to the mental images.

So art really is good for everyone – both to those, who create it, and those, who consume it – because it involves storytelling at every stage. And telling stories, it can be argued, is the most effective way of communication.

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Decluttering the tollbox

Portrait of a girl with camera.
Portrait of a girl with camera.

Consciously limiting the set of tools used in a given creative project is an effective way of focussing on the most important message. Artists often choose to limit their palette of colours for a particular painting, or even de-emphasize the role of either form or colour, as the Impressionists or the Cubists did, for example. Likewise in photography, it might be beneficial to work around the limitations of your gear instead of lugging around an enormous set of lenses and camera bodies.

I have been often referring to Cal Newport’s “Deep Work” lately, and he has an important point on using only a limited set of tools. There is a cost associated with adopting and using a new tool in your typical workflow. There are tangible resources, that are required to learn the new tool or technique, to keep it sharp (figuratively speaking), and to make decisions regarding whether using this tool would add to or detract from the process and the product. In other words, adopting and using a particular piece of gear or a technique has both advantages and disadvantages. A conventional craftsman would not adopt a new tool, unless it offers a net improvement of the process.

There is another benefit of limiting our toolset. If we don’t have many tools that have an overlapping set of capabilities, we learn to use the tools that we do have more effectively, i.e. we utilize them fully. This increases the efficiency, or return on investment, of these tools.

I find this happening with my use of iPhone camera apps. I have three of them – the built-in Camera, the Camera+ and the ProCamera. They are slightly different in terms of functions, and each is slightly better than the others at a particular aspect of the workflow. For example, I find the native Camera to be the best in terms of the synchronizing with the Photos app, instant sharing and shooting panoramas. The Camera+ is the most convenient for shooting in general – using pick focus and pick exposure, etc. (although lately it has been giving annoying delays and lag on my iPhone 6 Plus… Hm-m-m, this might be a good excuse reason to buy a faster phone…) The ProCamera is most convenient for shooting video. Having said this, the native Camera app is reasonably good overall, and not having to make decision on which app to use might make a difference between capturing a moment in time or missing it.

Old truck selfie.
Old truck selfie.
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How to go down in history: being the first or the last

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In a recent interview, Chuck Klosterman, the author of “Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs”, mentioned that while it is difficult to predict, which musician/artist/scientist would be considered the most historically important figure of the current period many years from now, it is unlikely that it would be someone, who is considered as the leader of his/her field right now. Klosterman suggests that in order to have retrospective historical weight, an author (or a piece of art, scientific work, etc.) needs to meet at least one of the two criteria: he/she/it needs to offer true innovation, i.e. to be the first the first ever in the specific field, or he/she/it must represent the culmination of the development of the field that changes how people think, i.e. to be the last in the field – the finishing touch that completes it and points to a fundamentally new paradigm.

Basically, history likes those who are are either the first or the last in their area of work.

This concept has some parallels with the strategy for creating innovations outlined by Cal Newport in “Deep Work”: be on the leading edge of your field and then look just beyond it using patterns similar to those that exist (and are already known) in other fields.

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Of course, following the Newport’s strategy does not guarantee that the future generations will pick your work as singularly significant. However, stepping beyond the leading edge of your field gives you the chance to be the first in a completely new area, while getting to the leading edge gives you the chance to be the last in your field – the one who applies the unifying finishing touch to the existing body of work.

There are a couple of implications of this concept. First, you cannot be a narrow specialist. In order to apply known patterns from other areas, you need to have at least some knowledge of the fields beside your own area of expertise. As Miyamoto Musashi wrote in his famous “The Book of Five Rings, “Develop intuitive judgement and understanding for everything.”

Second, you cannot be a pure generalist either. You need to specialize in something in order to develop the deep expertise that would enable you to do cutting edge work in this area. Becoming an expert of that caliber is, of course, the hardest part of the process.

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No big deal

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At my daughter’s birthday party, which was held at a local art studio, the children were reminded about one of the “rules” of conduct at the studio. The rule was “No big deal!”, as in “If I accidentally get paint on the floor, it’s no big deal” or “If I mess up my clay dragon and have to redo it all over again, it’s no big deal.”

For a creative process to be effective, it is important not to take things, particularly your own work, too seriously. That is why it is sometimes useful to choose disposable media for your work to avoid putting excessive emphasis on the result, where the process is inherently more valuable. Julia Cameron wrote in “The Artist’s Way” that in order to make art, we must be ready to make bad art, at least initially. I heard some writers say that if you work for hours to write a thousand words, and then end up throwing out everything except the last couple of sentences in revisions, the hours spent on this should not be considered a wasted time – writing the text that was ultimately thrown out was a necessary step in creating the last two good sentences.

In other words, it’s no big deal that it takes longer than what we thought it should have taken to create something of value. We should just accept it and enjoy the process. After all, they said at my daughter’s party that the main rule of the art studio was “Have fun!”

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Analytical observation: why we like what we like

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Last year in Milan, I saw two exhibits related to Leonardo da Vinci’s work. One displayed his original notebooks, and the other, Leonardo3, showed models of his engineering designs. What impressed me the most is how much Leonardo was able to accomplish, both as an artist and as a scientist, by simply observing nature. When I think about it a little deeper, though, I realize that he was not “simply” observing the phenomena that interested him – he was was simultaneously analyzing them.

Cultivating the skill of analytical observation of everything that surrounds us is tremendously useful, even just as an exercise in concentration, which, in turn, is a basis for any deep work. One effective way of doing it is to start with things that genuinely interest you and to try to answer the question “Why am I interested in it?” For example, if it is a movie, a book or a piece of art, instead of engaging with it as a form of escapism, it would be more productive (and, arguably, more enjoyable) to think about what makes the object so interesting while we are watching/reading/observing it.

In fact, I think there are three questions that set up a framework for analysis on any piece of creative work, from a piece of art to a scientific paper. Cal Newport identified them as part of his process of reviewing technical papers.

  1. What is the main point of the work (what makes it good/interesting)?
  2. What makes it different from other works (books/photographs/research projects)?
  3. What techniques were used to achieve the result?

Perhaps, applying this framework to our everyday activities, would put us at risk of making everything we do too mechanical, robbing us of the joy of doing thing purely for fun, without any agenda. On the other hand, this can be a way to a more mindful way of doing things we like and in the process learning about these things and about ourselves.

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How to quit

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“Men at forty
Learn to close softly
The doors to rooms they will not be
Coming back to.”
― Donald Justice

When I first started practicing kendo several years ago, whenever I would meet with Japanese sensei, they would ask: “Why did you begin doing kendo?” Being a foreigner, the answer was always easy: I like Japanese culture, history, food, etc. Recently, I heard a a different question: “Why do you still practice kendo?” My first reply, which I thought was quite funny, was “Because samurai never quit.” Seriously, though, I find this to be a much harder question than the first one, just like sustaining motivation for practice is more difficult than obtaining it initially.

I think this is true with any activity that you have been doing for many years and that has become a big part of your life. You do it “seriously”, as people would call it. Dan Heller even introduced a gradation of levels of seriousness with which amateurs pursue their activities (it was photography in his case): beginner photographer, serious photographer, insanely serious photographer,.. After a while, you begin to realize just how large the part of your life that you are devoting to your activity of choice (photography, kendo, ) really is. It takes a lot of time, money, mental and emotional resources. Becoming any good requires both quality and quantity of practice. I am not saying that the benefits are not worth it, but whatever you invest into the activity does add up, both in the positive and in the negative sense.

You might wonder, “Just imagine how much time I would have if I quit that thing that I have been doing”. Wo-o-o-o… it’s a very un-samurai-like thought, but after all, some of us are also scientists or at least (think that) they like logic, so let’s think it through.


First of all, you might not have to “quit” per se to be able to claw back some time and mental resources. You might be able to dial down the amount of practice, because your experience should enable you to maximize the quality of practice during the remaining sessions. The returns on increasing the amount of naive practice, to borrow the term from Anders Ericsson, are rapidly diminishing anyway, so you might as well replace it with deliberate practice.

Second, even if you quit a highly structured practice regime that has been incorporated into your routine over the years, you might not be able to immediately reclaim all the freed-up time in an efficient manner. For example, when I have a looming deadline on a work-related project and decide to skip a kendo practice in order to get some of the work done, I typically find that the uninterrupted chunk of time that is typically devoted to kendo becomes fragmented by interruptions (usually, procrastination that manifests itself in one form or another) that exist because a routine for alternative work has not been established. So unless you are prepared to quit something for good or at least for a substantial period of time (like taking a six-months sabbatical from your usual activities, which would allow you to genuinely try something new and to make a new habit of it), it is actually not worth doing if your goal is to free up time for other projects.

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Capturing everything

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“…survival lies in sanity, and sanity lies in paying attention.”
Julia Cameron “The Artist’s Way“

The idea of taking notes to capture the events of our lives is controversial from the standpoint of present moment awareness. On the one hand, the vary act of note taking can be distracting from the experience itself. On the other hand, it can serve as a focusing tool.

In a recent interview, a comedian Mike Birbiglia said that an advice that he would give to his younger self was to write everything down in a journal “because it’s all so fleeting”. Basically, I think that the value of journaling boils down to cultivating the skills of observation. Julia Cameron in “The Artist’s Way” makes a case that paying attention is a key skill in any creative endeavour. Perhaps, it is a key in everything: relationships, work, memory, creativity, etc.

Last year, I went to the Leonardo3 exhibit in Milan, where Da Vinci’s notebooks were displayed. Those were e-copies; the real ones were displayed at the Santa Maria delle Grazie, which is also the cite of “The Last Supper”. My most prominent impression was of Leonardo’s incredible ability to observe nature and to learn from it. If I think about it a bit more, it becomes apparent that he must have been very generous with his time. He must have had sufficient patience to just look at things (e.g. turbulent water flow under a bridge or frogs swimming in a puddle) and figure out why they look and work the way they are. After all, Leonardo did all his work before computers and productivity tools. Yet undeniably, he had been tremendously productive. I think that perhaps, it was a conjunction of two key factors: patiently paying attention and diligent capturing of his experiences and observations.

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Active waiting vs. procrastination

Moss Street Paint-in, July 16, 2016.

I have a copy of Robert Boyce’s “Advice for New Faculty Members” sitting on a shelf on top of my desk at home. As I was looking for an excuse avoid working on a research paper, I decided to flip through it. The book has been tremendously helpful during my first yeast at the university in terms of setting a framework for best practices in allocating time and efforts in teaching and research. The most effective practices are all laid out there in plain sight, supported by (sometimes too much of) statistical data.

Regarding writing in particular (as this is what I was avoiding) the first point that Boice makes is that it pays off not to rush into pouring words on the page. Instead, the best writers wait until they have sufficiently played with the ideas and supporting material in their heads to actually have something to say in their manuscripts. I was quite pleased with this idea: my procrastination was actually supposed to be productive in some indirect way.

There is a difference, however, between “active waiting’, how Boice calls it, and simply avoiding work. The former is a conscious, mindful process. It sets the stage for more efficient work.

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In my experience, active writing is absolutely crucial in a creative process. Photography or painting are great examples. Without some planning and taking time to create a mental representation the photo shoot or a painting season becomes a mindless going through the motions, a naive practice, to borrow a term from Anders Ericsson.

In kendo, the active waiting is formalized in the pre-practice ritual in the form of mokuso, a brief period of group meditation. Ironically, the meaning of it is not often discussed in modern dojos, as we are too focussed on getting to the practice itself, i.e. to literally just going through the motions.

Moss Street Paint-in, July 16, 2016.

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Purposeful practice

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Anders Ericsson explains in his book “Peak” that simply repeating things over and over again does not lead to controls improvement (in fact, it is a recipe for stagnation). Ericsson differentiates between “naive practice”, “purposeful practice” and “deliberate practice”, in the order of sofistication and effectiveness. Basically, repeating something without focusing on a specific area of improvement is naive practice. In contrast, purposeful practice requires analysis of one’s progress and working out ways through or around the roadblocks that inevitably occurs once the current limit of ability is reached. The powerful message of Ericsson’s book is, of course, the argument that people’s minds and bodies are adaptable in way that a “natural” limit or ability can, in fact, be expanded. This means that we, in a sense, can increase our own “talent”.

Naturally, it would be great to spend our days with purpose, i. e. having a clear and specific goal to work towards. in the words of Annie Dillard, “how we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.” This is easier said then done, though. First, the really high-level goal is quite elusive – after all, we may be talking about the meaning of life. Second, it can be argued that continuously operating in the productivity mode is, ironically unproductive in the long run.

However, in specific situations, for example, developing a photography technique, it is quite easy to practise purposefully. All that is needed is a clear, attainable goal (e.g. learn to recognize and act upon photo opportunities suitable for using a phone camera in daily life), and a measure of progress (e.g. number of photos taken each day and, perhaps, feedback from peers on the selected ones).

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