There was a lot I wanted to share last week, but with emotions running high given all that is happening in the world, I decided it was better to take a moment to reflect rather than react. The post below is not what I originally intended to post, but hopefully a helpful lesson that can help guide you through these (and other) challenging times.

Some friends and I have recently been exploring how to best process everything that life throws at us. Between a creaking economy, wars where innocent people are dying, societal pressures, or whatever it may be, there is constantly something swirling around and consuming our minds.

And yet, so few of us take the time to learn the tools that can help us process the daily chaos that is life.

I always thought of myself as a relatively open minded, spiritual guy who was resilient and able to cope well with hard things. What I realised during the pandemic however, as I lay on the floor with a stress-induced herniated disc unable to move, was that I was not *coping* at all. I was *avoiding*. 

Now, I didn’t arrive at this realisation on my own. I had help. My wife knew I wasn’t happy but wasn’t sure why, so encouraged me to speak to someone. 

As I lay there, I got out my phone and messaged my therapist back in Australia, “Hey, do you have any time for a few sessions, please?”. 

This moment was the beginning of a big unlock for me, and helped me start attacking my problems head on, rather than avoiding them. I had spoken to my therapist some years prior, and she helped me process issues I was facing at the time, but what I was experiencing now was completely different and I didn’t know how to handle it. 

As I started therapy again, I learned that I am responsible for my own life and my own happiness. Not only that, but the most important thing I could do to protect my happiness was arm myself with the tools to process what I was feeling, rather than bottling things up and letting them consume me. 

So, I took my therapist’s advice and started journaling. 

At the start my journal had no structure. I would take myself for a walk to the nearest park, sit on a bench, and just free flow with pen to paper. I would write some things that seemed insignificant, and others that I’d been carrying around for years. It made little sense at the start, but the release felt incredible. All of a sudden I saw my thoughts in front of me and could start to make sense of them.

2 and a bit years later, I’m still journalling and after much trial and error, I’ve found a structure that helps keep me grounded. My hope in sharing this is that it might help someone else, especially during these particularly turbulent times.

How I journal

I use journaling in two ways. The first I do daily to set up my day by bringing focus to the things I’m grateful for and reminding myself of the things that are important to me, and the second I use weekly or ad-hoc to organise my thoughts. 

01. Setting up my day

The first thing I write when I start journaling are three things I’m grateful for. This might not sound like much, but it immediately centres my thoughts and my day around happy things. 

Here is what I wrote this morning:

1. I am grateful that my nephew is healthy.

2. I am grateful for weekly plans with good friends.

3. I am grateful for the opportunity to be working on something significant.

There is nothing too large or small to be grateful for — just write whatever comes to mind. The important thing to practise is identifying things in your life that are going well or that make you happy. 

I then follow my gratitude with affirmations. I write about 10 things that I want to remind myself of every single day — the things that are important to me but are easy to lose sight of in the face of stress and overwhelm. 

Here are some of my affirmations as an example:

1. I am capable of doing anything I put my mind towards and trust myself completely. 

2. I am creative and am proud to share my work with the world. 

3. I am focused and high output at work.

4. I am light and present with my friends and family.

I have found there are two types of affirmations that work for me. The first helps me counter my limiting beliefs (examples 1 & 2 above), and the second reminds me of how I want to show up in different situations (examples 3 & 4 above). 

Don’t over think these. What works for you may be different and will likely change over time. In fact, changing your affirmations shows your awareness is shifting and your priorities are evolving as a result. This is a good thing.

02. Organising my thoughts

I find it easy to get lost in thought. At any one time it feels like I have a million ideas, tasks, or memories fighting for space in my mind, and it can easily become too much. There are three exercises that I use to help keep my mind organised: the brain dump; zooming in; and zooming out. 

Brain Dump

The brain dump is as it sounds - a free flowing stream of consciousness with no plan. Whatever comes to mind gets transferred to paper. The point of this is literally just to clear my mind of everything, without any regard for trying to organise things. I use this when I’m feeling particularly overwhelmed.

As soon as my thoughts are on paper, I find I have distance from them and am able to analyse them more objectively. Don’t use this exercise to process any one thought, however. You can use the next two exercises for this.

Zooming out

I use this exercise to give me perspective on the things that are important to me. I tend to do this toward the end of each week to check in with my priorities. It’s very simple - I just write down the following questions on a blank piece of paper and the spend about 5-10 minutes answering them:

1. What are all of the things that I’m working on?

2. What is the most important thing to me right now?

3. Where does everything else sit relative to my most important thing?

4. What can I park to help me achieve my most important thing?

5. What is taking up more space in mind than it should?

By the end of this exercise you should have a pretty clear idea as to what you want to continue doing, and potentially more importantly, stop doing. Everything you say yes to is inadvertently saying no to something else. Sometimes we need to say no to things we want to do to be able to do the things we really want to do.

Zooming in

The last exercise in my toolkit is zooming in, and luckily, this is the easiest of all the exercises. I use this exercise to go deep on one single issue or priority, and write down everything that comes to mind. The output of this exercise is different depending on what I’m interrogating. Here are some examples:

1. Interrogating a decision: I might write a pros and cons list or decision tree.

2. Interrogating an issue: I might write down all the things I know about a situation, how I’m feeling now, and how I want to feel.

3. Interrogating something I’m working on: I might write down a list of tasks that need to get done and rank them in order of importance.

As I mentioned above, journalling is a hugely personal thing and what works for you may very well be different to what works for me. The only thing I know for sure, however, is it is something everyone would benefit from doing.

If there are any exercises that have helped you either through difficult times or on a daily basis, I’d love to hear them.

Until next time.

Matteo x

MOOD

This week’s playlist is some ambient background music I play when journalling at a cafe.

We spent 2 nights in Antwerp last weekend and I may have fallen in love with the city.

Though I try to avoid having expectations of places before I visit them, I had heard a lot about Antwerp’s rich design history so I was excited to explore the city. Let me tell you, it exceeded both of our expectations.

As we walked towards the historical centre from our hotel, I was transfixed on the architecture that lined the streets. From incredible stained glass windows on art nouveau terraces to modernist buildings with interesting tile patterns and homes with vertical gardens as their facade, each building felt unique yet none felt out of place.

This was the general sense I got from Antwerp - individualism, in design at least, is encouraged.

I was speaking to a local who owns a beautiful fashion label about the rich design culture of the city, and she explained that “Belgians tend to not care too much about what other people think, so they’re probably more willing to do things their own way than in other cultures”.

This was a good reminder of something I’ve been fighting with for a while - the idea that the best work happens when we act from a place of intuition rather than playing by the rules.

The deeper we got into the city, the more energy I felt to keep exploring. We clocked over 20,000 steps each days, zig-zagging between shops and galleries.

Something I was taken back by was the level of curation that went into everything. You could tell people cared about what the world you were stepping into when you entered their store or cafe.

An easy example were the collectable furniture stores that were all meticulously organised like galleries. You got an immediate sense of the value of each item and the importance they hold in the general design discourse.

The best street for furniture in Antwerp is Kloosterstraat, though my favourite was Modest Furniture, which is in a different area. I was also sad to not visit St Vincents as they were resetting their space for a new exhibition. While you’re on Kloosterstraat, make sure to check out Christiane de Bot, which is an incredible glassware store and sadly not on Google Maps, and grab a soup from Take 5 Minutes in Paris.

Another highlight was the KMSKA - Royal Museum of Fine Arts, which only recently reopened after 12 years (!) of renovations. Their modern masters collection was incredible, with so many artworks that felt familiar but were by artists that I’d never heard of. The gallery was honestly overwhelming as, unlike most large galleries, all of these pieces felt worth spending a few minutes in front of. By the time we got to the old masters section we were too exhausted to appreciate anything more. Sorry Rubens.

One final tip I’ll leave you with is if you’re planning a long weekend, go Friday - Sunday rather than Saturday - Monday. A lot of the shops and restaurants are closed on Sunday / Monday, so do your research ahead of time. The Axel Vervoodt gallery at Kanaal, for example, is only open on Saturdays between 11AM and 6PM. Madness.

So, it’s safe to say Antwerp is a world class city and you’d be mad not to go. If you want a detailed rundown of what to do and see, DM me or better yet follow my wife’s travel guides - she is the best travel planner I know.

Until next week.

Matteo x

MOOD

This weeks’ mood is a nod to the conversation I had with the owner of La Collection (mentioned above) who spoke about Belgians being willing to give things a go.

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FINDS

This week’s finds is a summary of the 5 top places (in my humble opinion) to check out in Antwerp and 5 places I’m saving for next time.

Favourites

1. Food: Beni Falafel

2. Shop: Monar

3. Gallery: KMSKA

4. Furniture: Modest Furniture

5. Hotel: Hotel August

Next visit

1. Food: Blueness

2. Shop: Panoply Books & Records

3. Gallery: Axel Vervoodt Gallery at Kanaal

4. Furniture: St Vincents

5. Sight: Sint-Annatunnel

Hey everyone,

Last week I wrote about how this year has flown by and the finitude of time. This triggered me to go back through my notes and take stock of some of the things I’ve learned this year, so I thought I’d share them here with you.

For me the calendar year is a useful tool for measuring progress, but I don’t believe in new year resolutions in the conventional format. If you want to make a change, your new year can start tomorrow - don’t wait till January 01. I’ll dedicate a follow-up post to the framework I use for planning.

The lessons I’m sharing below have been distilled over the course of this year. Most Saturday mornings, my wife and I take a walk through Hyde Park and discuss some of the things we’ve faced in the week. Once a month, this conversation is focused on shaping these experiences into lessons. It’s been a useful way to make sense of our work and the world we’re living in.

The most important thing we’ve both implemented in parallel to these walks is actually writing things down. We’ve both developed a daily practice of journaling in the mornings to quell the chaos in our minds and set ourselves up for the day. We each take completely different approaches, though the outcome is the same — a clearer, more organised mind and a general sense of happiness.

But, we’re not here to chat journalling. We’re here to share life lessons. If you have some of your own worth sharing, I’d love to hear them.

Matteo x

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Life lessons

1. “Perhaps the most important thing you can learn to do as an artist is learn to trust yourself.” - Jessica Yolanda Kaye

2. “Failure is the information you need to get where you’re going.” - Rick Rubin

3. The stories we tell ourselves shape our reality.

4. Don’t save your special things for special occasions.

5. When someone means something to you, let them know.

6. Don’t fool yourself into thinking that the way you do something is the right way simply because that’s how you’ve always done it.

7. Enjoy the process, not the outcome.

8. Be clear about your priorities. If you commit to nothing, you’ll be distracted by everything.

9. “For every hour you spend learning something, spend an additional hour putting it into practice.” - Jim Kwik

10. Don’t take yourself too seriously.

11. How you do anything is how you do everything.

12. Take pride in the things you do and give them everything. Don’t leave anything on the field.

13. “Earn your Saturdays.” - Matthew McConaughey

14. The single reason people, including myself, don’t engage with creativity is fear.

15. You can both be happy in where you are now and not be complacent in life.

16. To understand ‘what’ it’s all for, you must first identify ‘who’ it’s all for.

17. Everything in life has an opportunity cost - learn to say no to things you want to do, so you can say yes to things you really want to do.

18. Ask yourself if you’re being dragged or driven to understand whether you’re operating from a place of alignment or conditioning.

19. Creativity requires embracing the discomfort of the unknown.

20. The moment you accept you know nothing, you open yourself up to everything.

21. Bake in time each week for reflection. You can only turn a boat when you’re going slow enough to do so.

22. The less we rely on our brains to remember things, the more we can use our brains to process thoughts. Write things down.

23. The more you try, the luckier you become.

24. You are the only person who can create the life you want for yourself.

MOOD

I spent a lot of time this week designing some new features for Portaire, so opted for sounds to support deep work. This playlist goes quite hard.

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FINDS

• I love the idea of simplifying my system of notebooks as I’m constantly rotating through Moleskines based on what I’m writing. The reMarkable has been on my wish list for some time now.

• I’ve been using Cosmos to save and organise images and quotes I find on my travels across the internet. It’s simple and beautifully designed.

• I’m a big fan of the For Scale sub stack and loved their piece on Architectural Digest tours.

• PAD London is on until Sunday — it’s my favourite design fair in London.

• I’m obsessed with the speakers that Friendly Pressure builds. My dream is to have a room dedicated to an amazing audio system.

• I’m off to Antwerp this weekend, so will share my own list for design lovers next week.

I spent this week feeling very sorry for myself, nursing a bug that took me down from Sunday to Thursday. This rendered me incapable of doing or thinking anything productive - which I’m not used to.

This also meant I wasn’t able to keep to my morning ritual of getting to a cafe nice and early, ordering a cold drip, and getting about drafting my newsletter. This made me quite sad, as writing has become an important part of my routine. I find it super satisfying getting my thoughts down in some coherent form. Its a cleansing of the chaos in my mind.

Something I did spend time thinking about this week between cold sweats, was that it’s already October. I googled it, and as of the penning of this post, Christmas is only 11 weeks away, which means I’m flying back to Australia in 10 weeks (this may have been a contributing factor to prolonged cold sweats).

The realisation this year has flown past (as they always seem to), was reinforced when I stumbled upon this gem from Eddie Murphy, where he puts it all into perspective for us:

75 years is nothing and I’ve already spent 33 of them.

This video came at quite an interesting time for me, as for the past year or so I’ve found myself grappling with a deep sense of unrest in the trajectory of my life.

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Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely love my life. I live in an incredible city on the other side of the world to where I grew up, I have a beautiful wife, a healthy and supportive family, an amazing group of friends, I am fortunate to travel more than most, and I have a great team in my business that make each day an absolute pleasure. Someone asked me he other day what it was like being 33 and I told her it was my best year yet.

That said, I can’t help but feel there is *something* missing.

I am a deeply creative person, yet what I’ve come to realise is that I’ve starved myself of any real creative pursuit or hobby. I became so focused on establishing a career and building my business that I neglected any creative impulse, deeming it unproductive. I identified as creative, but presented as anything but.

So, as I approach my 34th year, I want to be more intentional in cultivating my interests and finding my creative edges.

I want to get my hands dirty in different types of design. I want to learn more about industrial design and architecture, and want to bring physical objects and spaces to life. I want to continue writing daily, and I want to continue learning about myself along the way.

So, what are you going to do to make your remaining summers more meaningful?

Matteo x

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MOOD

I curated this playlist in Shoreditch, so hopefully you can hear the decidedly differently tone to any playlist I’d typically curate in Notting Hill.

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FINDS

Each week I collect a bunch of interesting links from across the internet and share them here so you can sound more interesting at your next dinner party.

• I’m an avid cook, but I’ve never had my own kitchen. They’ve always been supplied to me by my landlords. This idea of a modular kitchen by TERMINO that you can take with you from home to home is quite a vibe. I still don’t have space for it, sadly.

• A timely poem on enjoying the little things:

poetryisnotaluxury

A post shared by @poetryisnotaluxury

• Beckham wore it well.

• A note on why the best things in life require a degree of embarrassment.

• I heard the term “neuroaesthetics” for the first time this week and it suggest that beautiful things, from art to the smell of nice flowers, can have a positive impact on us. So filling your house with nice things is actually in the name of science.

• Go deeper on the design decisions behind Nuevo Tokyo’s VIEWFINDER camera.

• Perhaps the real work of art isn’t the iPhone 15, but rather its pricing strategy.

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For the longest time, dinner parties have been my favourite thing. Having people come together over a meal, particularly one that I’ve cooked, has become my go-to social arrangement.

I have my family to thank for this. Growing up, my Nonna was in a constant state of preparation - the only times I remember her not cooking were when she was telling my sister and I to keep eating. My mum followed, with our house becoming the default after-school hang for me and my friends, largely thanks to the easy access to breads, cold cuts, and dips that seemed to replenish themselves. I also spent countless nights out for dinner with my dad, where we’d sit for hours chatting and playing chess.

Mealtime was always, in one way or another, ritualised.

Now, even for the meals where we’re not entertaining, my wife and I make an effort to set the table and put on some music. On the occasions where we don’t set the table—like last night, where I cooked a bowl of pasta and ate it standing in the kitchen, while we discussed our Substack strategies—there is a noticeable difference in the enjoyment of a meal.

It sounds simple, but the ritual of intentionally preparing your space for a meal is powerful. It pulls you out of the routine of work and chores, and makes you present for the other person and grateful for the morsels in front of you.

This realisation, as profound as it is, led me to another question — why do we only set the table with our ‘nice tableware’ when we’re having people over?

Perhaps there is this sense that special objects, tableware or otherwise, are more delicate, so sparing use is playing the long game. Or perhaps we hoard these objects to signal to others just how good our taste is.

Whatever the reason, I’ve decided we should be using our nicest things even for the most mundane meals.

So, in an effort to re-inspire mealtime, I’ve created a playlist to set the mood and curated some objects worth sitting in front of, with or without food. If we all had more special things to place on our tables, we might spend more time around them.

Enjoy x

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Mood

Objets

Left: Bronze flatware by Izabel Lam. Right: 70s Cutlery Set from Boga Avante Shop.

Left: Alpaca Silver Egg Cups also from Boga Avante Shop. Right: Dippy Egg Cup by Achille Castiglioni.

Left: Alessi Pulcina Espresso 3 Cup Coffee Maker. Right: Metal Coffee Cups by someone talented.

Above: This incredible Cake Lift by my friends at Studio Shand

Above: @studiokyss 925 Heptadecagonal Shuki & Shuhaidai / Sake Ware (but pour anything our of this and it will taste better).

My name is Matteo Grand and I’m a product designer based in London. I’ve helped some of the best brands in the world launch and improve products, and I’ve also started my own software business for interior designers, called Portaire.

This newsletter will hit your inbox every week, and is my way of making sense of the world. I’ll share a thought I’ve had in the week about creativity and design, and a bunch of links I find inspiring for whatever reason.

And now, back to the show…

Flawed beauty

Over the last couple of years, I’ve developed a love for sourcing furniture.

Our couch is a 70s sofa I discovered on Facebook marketplace in Rome. Our arm chairs are Gothic thrones from vintage markets outside of London. Our ceramics, pieces we’ve collected on holiday and carefully smuggled home.

Our Finnish dining chairs are a little stained, our coffee table a little faded, and our antique frames chipped. Each piece is unique, at times impractical and uncomfortable, but with each imperfection comes a patina that can’t be recreated. Each piece has character and a story to tell.

The Japanese call it wabi-sabi, meaning “flawed beauty” and this approach to collecting has trickled into our everyday (secondhand coffee table books, vintage jackets from Portobello market, antique glassware, etc).

It seems the more of these items I collect, the more I’m drawn to this idea of permanence.

This is somewhat ironic as for the past 15 years I have made my career in tech — a world in a constant state of flux. Here, design is inherently temporary. Software is constantly upgraded, websites optimised and no phone should last you more than 12 months.

And to be fair, this same mentality has crept its way into the physical world too, with fast fashion and interiors selling trends on seasonal cycles. Bouclé might still be acceptable had the likes of H&M Home not discovered it.

And though I love innovation, I find myself disconnected from the disposable nature of it all and becoming increasingly aware of the role designers play in propelling trend culture.

Perhaps it’s time we switch our focus back from timeliness to timelessness.

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FINDS

Each week I collect a bunch of interesting links from across the internet and share them here so you can sound interesting at your next dinner party.

• I stumbled across The Tyre Collective at Material Matters during during London Design Festival and was blown away by their concept of capturing and recycling tyre debris. Apparently tyre dust is the second most abundant micro-plastic in the ocean.

• Venezia FC are a masterclass in branding and are selling the life I want.

• The iPhone 15 is cool and all, but I’m going long on the Nokia 8000 4G.

• This catalogue of fake people wearing fake turtlenecks is both reminiscent of an early 2000s year book AND way better than using stock imagery in your next project.

• Webflow have FINALLY opened up an app marketplace, making it way easier to make websites with a little more horsepower. I built the MVP for Portaire (my business) using Webflow and spent countless hours hacking together a pastiche of tools, so this is happy news.

• The best way to create timeless design is to see what has endured through time, and the Trend List has done a great job of cataloguing the “most current” in graphic design since 2011.

• Portaire (my business) interviews Norm Architects about what it means to bring sensuality into a space.

• Learn from some brilliant designers how they think about timeless design and what they do to fend off trendy.

• Studio Haos have get it.

• Don Norman on why good design makes you happy (video below).

It’s incredible how many people have the answer for us. 

When we’re with friends, family, or colleagues, we’re given opinions of ‘what is best for us’ or encouraged to do one thing or another, and when we open social media, we’re told by strangers where to go on holiday, what to wear in the streets, and how to grow our businesses. 

Society seems to have a plan for us, constantly reminding us what’s right and wrong, what’s good and bad, what’s art and what’s not. It can be so overwhelming that it’s hard to know what thoughts or opinions are our own. 

These forces establish the rules that we live our lives by. Some we choose to live by consciously, but most shape our lives in ways we aren’t even aware of.

The thing with rules is, they inherently direct us towards the average – the way everyone else does things. If we’re aiming to have an exceptional life or to create exceptional work, these rules can’t apply. Average is nothing to aspire to.

If you take a moment to look at all of the people or brands that have left the most profound impact on society, you’ll notice that they fell into the zeitgeist by breaking the rules. They did something beyond the standard conventions, and we all took notice. 

The best architects challenge how structures are formed and how energy flows through a space. The best designers challenge how you feel in a home and how to communicate an aesthetic. The best brands challenge how you feel about yourself, the best musicians challenge how you interpret sound, and the best artists challenge how we see the world. 

The irony of me offering you any advice right now is not lost on me, so instead I pose a challenge. My hope is through this, you’ll uncover some assumptions or beliefs that aren’t serving you. What you do with them is up to you. 

Challenge

Step 1: Observe

For the next 24 hours, try to notice the things you think and do throughout your work day either out of habit or because that’s what you’ve been told is right, and list them in a blank note in your phone or on a piece of paper. Nothing is too small to jot down – capture whatever feels right.

Step 2: Analyse

Take a new piece of paper and divide it into four columns with the following headings:

1. Behaviour

2. Source

3. Benefit

4. Notes

Once you’ve done this, start by rewriting your list from the day before as a list in the Behaviour column. Now, for each item in the list, work through each of the columns answering the following questions:

1. Source - Where did I get this behaviour from? Myself or someone else? 

2. Benefit - Is this behaviour serving me or limiting me?

3. Notes - What do I think about this behaviour? Do I want to hold onto this behaviour? What could I replace this behaviour with? 

Once you’ve gone through the list, you should have a pretty clear indication of who your biggest influences are and where you face limitations. Bringing awareness to limitations is the first step to moving past them.

Below is a selection of rows from when I did the exercise.

Step 3 - Continue (optional but recommended)

If you found this useful, consider making it a monthly or quarterly routine, or use the framework to audit other aspects of your life. 

Final note 

This exercise can be quite confronting, as we all live quite a large part of our lives on auto pilot. When I did the audit I was surprised by how many of the things that are ‘good for me’ are actually limiting when I analysed them against what I actually value. 

The easy path would be to look at your list and get discouraged. Rather, try to frame each row as an opportunity. Pick the one that you think you’ll be able to overcome the easiest and start there. Once you’ve tackled your first, move onto the next one, and so on. Don’t rush it - do it in your own time. 

​​"The work you're making isn't so good, okay? It's really not that great. It's trying to be good, it has ambition to be good, but your taste - the thing that got you into the game - your taste is still killer..." - Ira Glass

I stumbled across this video of Ira Glass of This American Life talking about the taste / ability gap, and it made me think deeply about my own journey becoming a designer. 

Glass argues that when we are young creatives, what gets us started is our refined sense of taste. He goes on to describe how at the start, our taste is far beyond our ability to produce, which can leave us disappointed as we start producing work that doesn’t live up to our own standards. We can be quick to see this as proof that we aren’t, in fact, cut out to be creative.

My first experience of ‘designing’ anything came about by accident. It was mid 2010, I was working in my family’s publishing company as a studio assistant, and the iPad had just been unveiled.

All of a sudden, an industry that had always focused on the printed word faced an existential threat – digitalism. 

At that time I was studying computer science, so my role at the company quickly changed from photocopying things and filling the dummy book, to working out how to transition our publications online. 

It was an intensely exciting challenge, but it meant I had to design things. I had grown up around designers and other creatives, but never considered myself to be either. 

As the months passed and I iterated my designs based on the ever changing scope of one’s first project, I remember feeling this deep embarrassment every time someone asked me to see progress. I knew what I had designed was functional, but it definitely wasn’t beautiful and I had no idea of how to make it better.

My taste was far better than my ability. 

I was lucky that when the print deadline finished, the Art Director had some time to help me. He was gracious and sat with me for hours teaching me how to bring to life what I saw in my mind’s eye using InDesign and Photoshop. Primitive tech by today’s web design standards, but my taste / ability gap was slowly closing.

If we visualise our ability on a spectrum from ‘novice’ to ‘taste’, as each of our tastes are different, I believe there is a threshold we each need to cross in order to prove to ourselves that we are worthy as creatives.

This threshold is different for each person, and I believe it is closely coupled with one’s ability to sit with discomfort, but there is only one sure way to reach it, and that is through practice.

Once we reach this threshold, things all of a sudden become easier. You become confident in playing and making mistakes, and you start to build your abilities more quickly.

What’s more, is that as you progress right along the ability spectrum, your taste will start to change and move itself further along to the right as well. You will likely find yourself facing new resistance, which is a clue that your threshold has likely also shifted. 

This constant push and pull creates a force that keeps you and your work in constant evolution.

Now, if you’re anything like me, quality is your key metric. But what I find comforting about seeing this spectrum visualised is it reminds me that every rep counts. Quantity (practice) is the way to achieve quality.

So, if you’re ever having a moment of perfectionism or self doubt, try and reframe the fear or negative self-talk and remind yourself that this is part of the practice. 

Have you ever caught yourself trying to make something perfect before you’ve even had a chance to put it down on the paper in front of you?

It happens to me all the time. I even caught myself in the act while writing this piece.

I’ve found that this tendency to jump to the editing stage before I’ve even completed my draft is a form of perfectionism – my need for things to be neatly packaged and presented in a certain way.

Before I’ve even started writing, designing, or creating, my brain is trying to pre-empt what the best version of this thing might be and how others are going to perceive it. 

This means that I’m effectively trying to side-step the creative process and arrive at the final destination. The inherent assumption operating is that I’m able to compute all of the possible combinations and permutations of what I’m trying to express, account for all of the serendipitous realisations I may have along the way, and spit out a masterpiece. All in my mind.

I can only guess this is driven from a fear that what I may observe in my draft might be so woeful and embarrassing that even glancing at it would plunge me into shameful doubt.

The reality is, however, that drafts serve a critical role in the creation of great work.

They offer you the opportunity to clear your thoughts and interact with them as an observer. Drafts provide the platform to try again from a different angle, and act as a frame for comparison. 

It might be that your first draft ends up being the best of the lot, but you couldn’t possibly know until you let yourself go through the motions.

When people in my team (myself included) come up against writer’s block, the first thing I ask is “are you trying to edit before you’ve even drafted?”

I’ve found this simple question changes one’s relationship with the work. It gives you permission to give things a go.

So, next time you feel blocked, ask yourself, “am I editing before the draft?”

The act of creating something, anything, is deeply personal. 

Whether you’re designing a piece of furniture, painting a canvas, curating a space, or putting together a mood board for a project, the process carries a lot of personal attachment.

Further, when you’re being truly creative, you are not responding to a brief, you are responding to emotions that move through you, using you as a vessel to come to life in one form or another.

So when someone comes along and says, *‘I think this would look better over there’*, or ‘*this little details isn’t quite working for me’*, it’s only natural for us to get defensive and see this as a personal attack.

This is a primal instinct — a survival method. We all want to fit in and be liked, so when someone takes a red pen to our work, it can easily feel like they are taking a red pen to us, assessing whether or not we belong in the tribe.

I often over identify with the work I produce and whilst I have been working on detaching myself from it, feedback can still be hard.

But, the reality is that everyone has an opinion and often these opinions will be in conflict with our own. So, learning to both give and receive feedback is a life skill that will not only make putting work out into the world more bearable, it will help make the work be the best it can be. 

So, how can we change our relationships with feedback?

Here are three simple things I try to remind myself of in the face of feedback that help me navigate the turbulence.

1. You are not your work

Historically, I over-identified with my work. This means I end up drawing a lot of my energy (both the good kind and the bad) from my work. Reminding myself that I am not my work helps me regain perspective and separate my worth from my work.

2. Understand who it is for

Often, working in a creative field means you are producing work for someone else, such as a specific client, a customer segment, or even just your boss. Their wants and needs are individual, just like yours, and your job in this instance is to create something that resonates with them, not you. Having said that, I do believe you should always start by creating something that truly excites you, as this will have the best chance of exciting others.

3. You are learning

Every time someone speaks, it’s an opportunity to learn. If you approach their feedback with curiosity, you will unlock so much more than just what the person is telling you. Ask yourself things like: What is this person’s worldview? What frame or context are they operating from that I wasn’t previously aware of? What expectations did this person have before seeing the work? What is my own insecurity surrounding this? Why is my ego flaring?

Finally, perhaps the most important question you can ask yourself is ‘how important is this feedback to the success of the work?’

We can be so quick to become defensive that we forget to check in with our own intuition. Sometimes forgetting the audience is in the best interest of the audience.

So, next time someone gives you feedback, take a beat and check in with yourself. 

Do it for the work.

I am, without a doubt, a perfectionist. 

By this I don’t mean I need everything around me to be perfect, though that would be nice, wouldn’t it?

Perfectionism, as I understand it, is actually a fear of or an unbalanced relationship with failure.

It is obvious why so many of us are like this. We were brought up in a school system that handed out A for the right answer and rewarded true compliance with an A+. The world was black and white. You were either right, or you weren’t.

What this way of learning teaches us is that there is little room for exploration. There is a proven path for whatever it is you might want to do or be in life, and your duty is to follow it by the book. Anything short would be a failure.

This way of thinking quickly permeates all aspects of our decision making and shapes our experience of the world. It’s achievement oriented rather than experience orientated. 

Why paint if you’re not going to become an artist? Why design a chair if it might not be better than the one you’re already sitting on? Why learn to box if you’re not going to fight? Why start anything if you might not be any good at it? 

I have a better question. What do you value more – getting it right or giving it a go?

The truth of it is, you’re never going to be the best at anything on your first attempt, but that’s not the point. The point is to allow yourself to do the things that you enjoy and find purpose in the process rather than the outcome.

Picasso was thought to have created around 147,800 artworks during his 78 year career as an artist. That’s around 5 artworks per day, every day, for 78 years. 

To offer some perspective, only between 100 -150 of these works are considered to be masterpieces.

Had Picasso allowed himself to be consumed by perfectionism, he would have stopped the moment he felt doubt that his next work might not be his best work.

So, next time you feel that resistance, ask yourself: what do you value more – getting it right, or giving it a go?

I am a strong believer in the power of words. The way we use them both internally and externally shape the world as we know it.

When we're kind to ourselves and kind to others, we are happier and life is more full. When we're hard on ourselves and unpleasant to others, the opposite is true.

It's no surprise then, that the labels we decide carry can either propel us or limit us. Labels are, after all, simply beliefs put into words.

There are a few words that people are quick to label themselves as either being, or not, without truly understanding the true essence of the word and how this label might shape every moment in their life.

One such word is ‘creative’.

For most people, being ‘creative’ is measured by a very specific output or skill, such as being able to paint, draw, or sing. This narrow lens quickly forces people to make a judgement - I’m not creative because I can’t {{insert skill here}}. 

Obviously there are some people that have a natural talent for these skills, but the truth is anyone can develop them so long as it is important enough to someone to do so.

I’m lucky that I’ve always identified as a Creative, even though I’ve never been particularly skilled at making art or music. I’ve been able to carry this identity because I’ve always understood creativity to simply be a way of thinking. It is the outlook that you bring to any situation.

What I call being ‘Creative’, Rick Rubin, a man who’s spent far more time thinking about this than I have, calls it being an ‘Artist’. Rick says that “living life as an artist is a practice. You are either engaging in the practice, or you’re not.” 

We live in a society that both measures and rewards things in a very linear way. If you demonstrate an aptitude for maths or science from a young age, they call you advanced and put you on a path to deepen your skills. This is compounded when your painting in art class is graded poorly. It’s decided - you were put on this earth to go into finance. 

It’s with this mindset that people wrongly associate as being an artist or not, or creative or not. As Rick says, “we tend to think of the artist’s work as the output. The real work of the artist is a way of being in the world.”

A quick aside

Even though I consider myself a creative person, I’m a perfectionist and a workaholic, so I starve myself of the space and time to explore the boundaries of my own creativity. 

This newsletter is my attempt to reconnect with my own creative practice and hopefully encourage others to do the same. I will be sharing things I’m learning, things I’m thinking, and things that inspire me along the way.

How do you relate to the idea of being a ‘Creative’? And how do you cultivate your own creative practice? I’d love to learn about your experience. Just reply to this email - I promise to read it.

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