“To not do anything because it can’t be exactly how you imagined in your head on the first run will hinder you immensely.”

“Tools that make hard things easy can make us less likely to tolerate things that are hard.”

-Clive Thompson, in his Wired article on automotive automation

Personally, I long for a future with self-driving cars, but Thompson makes some great points in his article.  More important is the above sentence, which sums up a paradoxical challenge of modern life. In a society where we’re much less worried about subsistence and survival, concerns of comfort rise to the top. Unfortunately, in the quest for ease and luxury, trying to find ways to do less can have an overall negative effect on our ability to do things that are still difficult.

Striving, working hard, taking the road less traveled — whichever turn of phrase you prefer, it seems there is still a lot of value in embracing the hard things of life. “The hard” is often more satisfying, growth-inducing, and life-changing.

Hexanine partner Tim spent a little time talking to Chris Green of Freelance Unleashed, about the joys and challenges of building a design firm.

Here’s a snippet:

Be a designer because you love it. This profession is a little crowded with people who thought design was just cool, or who believed that this was a more practical path to an artist’s life. But Design with a capital D needs people who get jazzed about strategy and beauty combined.

What’s the difference between trying hard to impress someone, and just being plain impressive?

The first allows a lack of confidence to push you into action, even if it’s unwise or hastily-planned. The second is just a state of being, allowing some internal strength, competence, or other compelling quality to shine. The harder you’re trying, the less impressive it will probably seem.

“I often think that presentations are more difficult than the work itself. A presentation has to share just enough of the process so that someone who has not been a participant can understand the ‘inevitability’ of the solution, and that the solution is the culmination of a rigorous and systematic investigation of all reasonable possibilities. It’s surprising how hard that can be sometimes.”

-Saul Bass, from Saul Bass: A Life In Film And Design

(Hat tip from David Airey’s LogoDesignLove)

Sure, we all have to eat and pay the mortgage. But it’s easy to become a creative mercenary if you’re merely chasing lucrative markets or the next profitable, exploitable space. The wise and happy path:

Either figure out how to get deeply excited about the work you’re doing, or find a way to integrate your already-existing passions into your business. The world doesn’t need more creative hired guns; it needs more people who truly believe in what they do.

After buying a new iPhone 4S this week, I’ve been reflecting on the chief person who helped create such a wonderful device. Steve Jobs. And that led me to consider one of his central tenets, that things in life, creativity, and business were either “insanely great” or “total shit,” and you can guess which side his opinions and ideas fell on. That is arrogance, not confidence.

There is a difference between the two. Arrogance is binary. It demands My Way. I’m right and you’re wrong. My idea is awesome and yours is utter crap. Confidence, on the other hand, shows trust in your own abilities and intelligence, especially if you’re right. But it also allows for the fact that there are other views, other options, and myriad possibilities beyond your own to consider. We would all be wise to suss out the difference.

It’s probably no surprise when I say that our blog, and Twitter account have been relatively quiet of late. Between moving into a new office, and a slew of new projects and proposals, we’ve barely had a chance to slow down, ponder, and drink in much of the outside world.

I speak for myself in saying this — that in the headlong rush towards the end of the year, I’ve barely been able to fit in daily tasks, much less the time to think deeply into open spaces. And I think my creative brain has suffered.

Sure, the analytical side of me has had a field day with proposals, strategic planning, organizing, and the like. But between this, and the demands of life (we are expecting our first child in March!) I haven’t been able to get enough white space.

It’s that white space that buffers, that allows the wandering mind to relax, unclench, and then meander through the vast storehouses of my subconscious. It’s the fun stuff, the joyous acts of creation, the hilarious whimsy that’s needed to refresh our creative parts, dare I say — even our deepest souls. That white space is so crucial in its many forms, the shower time where “next steps” and to-dos take a back seat to the aimless mind.

I need to clear off my plate, commit to ignoring the URGENT, and block out life’s steady thrum, in order to get some deep living in for the betterment of my creative heart and soul.

Even though I’m not a big believer in New Year’s resolutions (I think we can decide to change any day of the year), I’m publicly committing to something different in 2012, a renewed devotion to developing, nurturing, and creating more white space for myself.

Anyone else want to join me? (You just have to be really quiet.)

Everyone likes to make progress, but what does that look like? Doing things as they pop up, and making quick, iterative changes can sometimes be more soul-satisfying and profitable than putting all the eggs into one basket of “overhaul.” Sometimes the team needs to take small steps forward, doing things that are simple to do, in the name of incremental, forward motion. Momentum and inertia are as true in business as they are in physics. So, point out the small victories and the tiny landmarks on your way to the major initiatives. Both are needed.