The Art of Going pro: living professionally

The last two install­ments addressed two key issues related to suc­cess as an artist. The first install­ment pre­sented the core issue fac­ing artists today.That  issue was described as a lack of  uni­fied iden­tity that clearly frames the mean­ing of what an artist is and how that blurred iden­tity is reflected by con­fused lump­ing of any­thing hand made into  artists, arti­sans, crafters and ven­dors regard­less of the end product.

The sec­ond install­ment pre­sented an argu­ment for fur­ther clar­i­fi­ca­tion to help artists see them­selves dif­fer­ently so their buy­ing pub­lic can more eas­ily iden­tify and cat­e­go­rize their own pref­er­ences. In order for both artists and pub­lic to gain clar­ity a case was made for a new lan­guage that could serve to help artists develop a uni­fied vision of them­selves as pro­fes­sion­als much as archi­tects, doc­tors and lawyers have.

While the lan­guage could frame what an artist was it still needed fur­ther refine­ment to the level of defin­ing a code that per­forms sim­i­larly to when we con­jure up the vision of an archi­tect. That vision is grounded in its’ own code which helps us dif­fer­en­ti­ate an archi­tect from a builder.

Today, I’m going to intro­duce some thoughts about that code and what it might look like for pro­fes­sional artists. Much of the first part of the code frames the actions of a pro­fes­sional in gen­eral so we can first under­stand what a pro­fes­sional is and how being pro­fes­sional is dif­fer­ent from being ama­teur. As I pro­ceed I’ll refine the code frame­work to apply dis­tinctly to artists. How­ever, before I begin, let me be clear that I am focus­ing on artists because that is the focus of this blog and not because arti­sans or crafters are do not deserve sim­i­lar con­sid­er­a­tion. In fact most if not all of the ele­ments attrib­uted to an artists’ code could also apply to arti­sans and crafters in ways that apply to each respectively.

To start things off today we need to first take a look at what exactly a pro­fes­sional is in more gen­eral or con­cep­tual terms. Then in the next seg­ments we’ll see how we can adapt those con­cepts to arrive at a bet­ter pic­ture for pro­fes­sional artists.

Liv­ing Professionally

The pro abides

The pro is in it for the long haul, she is com­mit­ted to her jour­ney. She endures because she is com­mit­ted to her muse in doing so she takes on adver­sity as just another part of life another chance to learn and grow. She learns how to use adver­sity to her advan­tage stow­ing away her learn­ings to help with the next inevitable bump.

She abides by the belief that life is not a flat line…it just is. She choses to accept life as it comes not as drama but as every­day hap­pen­ings. This belief struc­ture gives her the strength to know that her abil­ity to choose can­not be taken away nor dis­counted unless she lets it happen.

She is extremely dri­ven she doesn’t need oth­ers to define her real­ity nor affirm her exis­tence. She also knows her lim­its and is not afraid to ask for help or out source work that will dis­tract her and detract from her own work.

A Pro lets go

The pro knows that change is con­stant and that attach­ing him­self to a par­tic­u­lar out­come is a dis­trac­tion because the future can­not be con­trolled. So instead of wor­ry­ing about whether some­thing will or will not hap­pen he does he focuses his efforts on the present because he can con­trol the present.

He also knows that let­ting go of attach­ment does not mean giv­ing up effort or actions, he knows it means that if his effort does not achieve the out­come he had hoped he can always adapt and retry. By let­ting go he frees him­self to adapt to chang­ing con­di­tions he could not have antic­i­pated, He knows being able to adapt is impor­tant to success.

In let­ting go he knows that his final goal/objective may not look like  it was orig­i­nally envisioned.

The Pro embraces honesty

The pro knows the impor­tance of self hon­esty, she owns her con­se­quences with­out judg­ment. She elim­i­nates judg­ment from her vocab­u­lary because she sees it as a destruc­tive dis­trac­tion that can can­cel out growth and creativity.

She uses self respon­si­ble lan­guage by acknowl­edg­ing that feel­ings and emo­tions are not fact and do not define the future. When a project doesn’t turn out as she envi­sioned she doesn’t call it a mis­take. Instead she re-evaluates her orig­i­nal assump­tions and con­cepts and adjusts accordingly.

Above all else she is hon­est with her­self and others.

The pro is not perfect

The pro rejects the con­cept of per­fec­tion­ism instead he knows that the most impor­tant thing regard­ing his work is to get it into the hands of those who want it. In doing so he works hard to make sure the final prod­uct is the best it can pos­si­bly be with in the time frame of its’ completion.

His motto is “fire, aim, aim” because he know that adjust­ments are the key to hit­ting the tar­get. He knows if he focuses on aim­ing he will never fire or when he does fire he will have lost the oppor­tu­nity to hit his tar­get. He knows that “ a half good prod­uct is bet­ter than a half– assed prod­uct” and his obses­sion with per­fec­tion is yet another dis­trac­tion from achiev­ing success.

The pro is a marathoner

The pro knows that the only way to fin­ish a marathon is to focus on the next block instead of the fin­ish line. She knows if she pays to much atten­tion to get­ting to the fin­ish line she will lose what is right in front of her. By run­ning her marathon one block or one mile at a time she keeps her inter­est high and focused.

She knows also that break­ing her tac­tics into small deci­sions helps her rec­og­nize and cor­rect mis­judg­ments in pace that could lead to her hit­ting the wall to early. Small deci­sions allow for small incre­men­tal adjust­ments that will more likely lead to her suc­cess. Small deci­sions also allow her to mon­i­tor her sys­tems more closely and adjust to unex­pected events.

Up next…

We’ll con­tinue this dis­cus­sion next week as we fin­ish our exam­i­na­tion of the best habits a pro­fes­sional.
In the mean time:

• What can you add?
• What would you change?