How to progress SO Fast in Art it feels like Cheating

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Summary

In this video, Artwod explores the challenges of progressing in art, likening it to the predictable patterns of the Dunning-Kruger effect. Initially, individuals might be overly confident but lack the necessary skills, leading them to face a "valley of despair." By understanding and overcoming these short-term cycles of confidence and competence, artists can achieve consistent growth in their abilities. This video encourages persistence through the stages of learning, using realistic goals and consistent practice to avoid pitfalls that hinder artistic development and life goals.

Highlights

Navigating the Dunning-Kruger effect can illuminate the path to better artistic skills. 🌟
The cycle of naive optimism, valley of despair, and slope of enlightenment recurs daily. 🌄
Consistency is key: keep practicing even when progress seems slow. 🔄
Short-term learning goals are crucial, setting the stage for long-term achievements. 🏆
Frequent switching of goals can result in a lack of depth in skill acquisition. 🚦

Key Takeaways

Understanding the Dunning-Kruger effect can help artists recognize cycles of confidence and competence. 🎨
Short-term cycles in learning require persistence to overcome initial challenges. 🔄
Setting realistic, incremental goals aids in maintaining motivation and progression. 🏆
Consistency in practice is crucial for artistic and personal growth. ✍️
Avoiding the temptation to switch goals abruptly can prevent stagnation. 🔄
Learning happens through repeated exposure and practice, not instant mastery. 📚
Achieving big goals involves breaking them down into manageable pieces. 🧩

Overview

Artwod's video tackles a common struggle among artists: feeling stuck despite access to plenty of resources. The issue often stems from the Dunning-Kruger effect, where one's initial confidence quickly crashes into the reality of skill gaps. The key is to push beyond these lows by recognizing the cycles that affect learning.

The video emphasizes that these cycles aren't just for long-term learning; they occur daily or even hourly. Artists must understand that progress requires pushing through these Dunning-Kruger cycles on a frequent basis. This requires consistency—even if immediate results aren't visible, long-term success is built on these small, repeated efforts.

Additionally, the video advises against frequently changing focus when the going gets tough. Consistent practice towards specific, well-defined goals is essential, as it leads to lasting competence and eventual confidence. These principles, while focused on art, apply broadly to personal development and achieving success in any ambitious endeavor.

Chapters

00:00 - 00:30: Introduction to Stagnation in Growth The chapter addresses the common feeling of stagnation in personal growth, where individuals feel they are not progressing despite having the right resources and content. The speaker aims to explore the possible hidden reasons behind this lack of achievement, suggesting that viewers may be under an unrecognized influence that is hindering their growth.
00:30 - 01:30: Understanding the Dunning-Kruger Effect This chapter discusses the Dunning-Kruger effect, an important psychological principle that applies to various aspects of life, including skills like drawing. By understanding this effect, individuals can navigate life more smoothly and potentially reduce unnecessary pain. The chapter suggests that awareness of this effect can change one’s approach to learning and improvement.
01:30 - 02:30: Progression Stages: Naive Optimism to Guru Expertise The chapter explores the transition from 'Naive Optimism' to 'Guru Expertise' in learning and skill acquisition. It begins by explaining the Dunning-Kruger effect, where individuals initially have high confidence but lack the actual competence in a new area. The chapter discusses how this naive optimism occurs when someone is unaware of the challenges in a specific field.
02:30 - 03:30: Short-Term Cycles of the Dunning-Kruger Effect The chapter discusses the short-term cycles of the Dunning-Kruger Effect, beginning with an initial naive optimism when an individual feels overconfident after a small exposure to new information, such as watching a tutorial. This phase is followed by a drop into the 'valley of despair' as they realize the extent of what they don't know. If the individual perseveres, they enter the 'slope of enlightenment', where understanding grows more steadily. Ultimately, reaching a 'plateau of expertise', where progress continues but at a much slower rate. This process highlights the dynamic nature of learning and self-assessment.
03:30 - 04:30: The Importance of Consistency The chapter explores the concept of the Dunning-Krueger effect, typically perceived as a long-term phenomenon, and argues that it can occur on a weekly or daily basis. This effect is positioned as a barrier to progress, suggesting that many find themselves stuck due to a lack of consistent effort and understanding.
04:30 - 05:30: Applying the Dunning-Kruger Effect to Art Goals This chapter discusses the application of the Dunning-Kruger Effect in setting and pursuing art-related goals. When we first start learning something new, like drawing, we often experience naive optimism. This is due to exposure to oversimplified tutorials promising quick mastery, such as learning to draw professionally by following a few steps. This optimism stems from a lack of awareness of the full scope and complexity involved in achieving such high-level goals.
05:30 - 06:30: Avoiding Quitting in Short-Term Cycles The chapter discusses the psychological state of beginning a new task or goal, emphasizing the initial phase characterized by high excitement and confidence but low competence. It explores how an individual, motivated by optimism and excitement, embarks on a journey to learn and achieve their goals, despite lacking skills. The focus is on the learning process and the transition from confidence to competence as one endeavors to realize their goals in the short term.
06:30 - 07:30: Burnout and Insanity of Repetitive Failure This chapter addresses the difficult journey of self-improvement and the initial shock upon realizing the complexity of mastering new skills despite having access to resources. It discusses the psychological impact of setting ambitious goals, specifically the daunting distance between one's current abilities and the desired level of expertise, described here as the 'guru goal.' This realization often leads to a phase termed as the 'valley of despair,' where an individual's confidence is shaken by a newfound awareness of their own lack of competence. The chapter explores this phenomenon as a natural and expected part of the growth process, highlighting the emotional challenges that accompany self-doubt and the feelings of failure from repetitive trials.
07:30 - 08:30: Final Thoughts and Encouragement The chapter discusses the various stages of learning and personal growth, emphasizing the difficult phase known as the 'valley of despair.' This phase occurs when individuals have acquired some skills but realize that they are far from their ultimate goals. This realization can be disheartening, as one's current abilities seem inadequate compared to initial expectations. The chapter aims to provide both understanding and encouragement, acknowledging the challenges while motivating readers to persist through the difficulties. It serves as a reminder that setbacks and slow progress are natural parts of any growth journey.

How to progress SO Fast in Art it feels like Cheating Transcription

00:00 - 00:30 All right, here's a video I really wanted to make because a lot of you have the feeling that you're stuck in your growth. You feel like you're no longer progressing or you feel like even though you have access to the right resources and the right content, you still aren't achieving the goals that you thought you would be achieving. That's why I wanted to make this video because you might be under a certain like spell or effect that you're not even aware of. And so
00:30 - 01:00 I'm going to break it down. This isn't only about drawing, by the way. This is about anything you want to achieve in life. This happens to all of us. And the thing I really the thing I really like about this is that once you understand that principle, it's much easier to live painf free. A lot of you have already heard of the effect itself, right? It's called the Dunning Krueger effect. Simply put, if we have a scale on one
01:00 - 01:30 scale, we have confidence, right? This is your confidence in doing things, achieving things. And on the other scale, you have competence, meaning that these are the skills you actually have with the goal you have. Now what happens in the Dunning Krueger effect is that in the beginning when you set out to learn something completely new that you're unaware of what the difficulties in that area of expertise are. You you become very high in confidence because it's what they call naive optimism. You think
01:30 - 02:00 you know everything about what you need to learn because you saw one tutorial online. You're like cool got this. I'm going to learn this. Right? And that quickly turns into what they call the valley of despair. And then if we push through that, we come into the slope of enlightenment until again we hit sort of this very slow growing plateau of expertise. Right? So here we have naive optimism. Here we have the valley of
02:00 - 02:30 despair as as described by Dunning Krueger. And we have the slope of enlightenment. And then here we have guru level expertise. This is over a long period of time. At least that's what you see when people explain the Dunning Krueger effect. Now, here's my thing. The Dunning Krueger effect actually happens on a weekly or even daily basis. And this is why a lot of the times you get stuck in not
02:30 - 03:00 progressing. Here's what I mean by that. Let's say you want to be able to learn to draw professionally. Cool. That's a long-term goal. So that means that in the beginning and all of us had this, we saw something that we wanted to achieve like drawing in a certain way, painting in a certain way, and we saw tutorials online and like in five steps I'll teach you everything you need to know about drawing. And you watch that video and you're like, "Got it. That's all I need to do. So let's go." Right? So you start with naive optimism because you don't
03:00 - 03:30 really know what's going on. You're just like, "I have a goal. I need to reach that goal. don't know anything about what I need to do to get to that goal, but you found something and you're like, "Wow, I'm I'm optimistic. I'm so excited to do this because there's lot a lot of excitement going on." And so you start with that. So you're very high in confidence, but you're still very low in competence. You have no skills in that area of expertise. And so you set out to learn something. And then suddenly by learning it, by trying to learn it, even
03:30 - 04:00 if you have access to the right resources, by the way, you suddenly realize like, hey, this isn't as easy as I thought it was, especially given like the guru goal, cuz this is what you're setting out to to learn. You're like, "Wow, that's a big gap." And so what you end up going through is like the value of despair, right? So you become less confident in your abilities naturally as you should because you don't have any freaking competence. So you go down and
04:00 - 04:30 right you you go through these various stages right it's not like you drop down instantly but you go through these various stages and you start to realize that this is a lot harder than I thought that it was and you end up in the valley of despair. Now, the valley of despair is where you actually already have a bit of skill. That's important to realize, but compared to your goal, it's nowhere near you thought you would be. So, you actually are very low in
04:30 - 05:00 confidence and you have some skill, but it's not enough to justify sort of the goal you still want to reach. And so this is a lot of the times where people, any people, by the way, people that want to start a business, people that want to go to the gym, people that want to be an artist, here's where they quit, right? This is that quitting point for a lot of people. This is the quitting point. Now, if you push through it, which a lot of you watching this video, you've already doing art for a long time. So, you actually pushed through it. You realize
05:00 - 05:30 that you don't have all the skills you need in order to get to the goal that you want. So most of you I would say in the long-term goal so you guys are actually like here right most of you are which is great that's fantastic that's where you want to be that's learning but this is on a long-term basis now a lot of you actually are sort of like stuck at some point along this slope of enlightenment you realize that you're progressing you understand what you need to do to progress but still you feel
05:30 - 06:00 stuck now the reason for this and this This is something I've noticed and this is something I don't see people talk about a lot is the Dunning Krueger effect actually has very short-term cycles as well. So, it's not only a long-term thing, there's also a short-term Dunning Kruger effect. What I mean by this is that once you understand your long-term goal, you have other goals that you understand you need to get to to get to that goal. So let's say
06:00 - 06:30 in order to get to a lion decker level of painting, right? That's the ultimate goal for you. That's like I want to paint like lion dicker. Great. Now you understand because you've you've pushed through that valley of despair. You didn't quit art. You got through it. Like okay, I need to understand lighting. I need to understand inking. I need to understand form really well. So you actually create these sort of mini goals that also exist on this Dunning Krueger effect. And
06:30 - 07:00 here's the thing. Now that you're like, okay, I need to understand lighting. You start again because you're like naively optimistic. You're like, I got it. I need I need lighting because I'm on the I'm on the slope of enlightenment. I know where I need to get to. I know what I need to do and I'm starting to improve. You're like, I need to get better at lighting. Then you set out to do lighting again with naive optimism and reality sets in again. And this is a more for me a more dangerous reality
07:00 - 07:30 actually than the long-term one because you start to understand really well like wow I really need to know a lot about lighting in order to get to that guru level. So again you're starting to get bit more demotivated. your confidence goes down. And this is in a week, right? I'm talking about a week period here or even on a day. Like you set out a day, you're like, I'm going to learn writing. You start with naive optimism because you're like, wow, I'm going to just learn today. And again, reality sits in sinks in. And you get to that valley of despair much quicker because this is on
07:30 - 08:00 a short term. And in that valley of despair, what you're actually realizing is that, man, I'm nowhere near the lighting I need to get to get to my ultimate goal, right? I don't have the skills that particular skill I need to get to that lion decker level of painting. I don't have that at all. So you have some competence but your confidence is suddenly very low. And this for me is the most danger part. This is where a lot of you actually
08:00 - 08:30 quit. A lot of you actually quit here. What I mean by this is that you quit pursuing the lighting goal and you switch to another goal because you're like you're here right on the long term. You're switched to like then I guess I'm going to learn something about inking, right? Cuz I I also need to learn that so I'll just do that. And then you repeat the cycle. So you go with naive optimism into inking again and you realize like oh I'm not as good as
08:30 - 09:00 inking as I thought I was. Boom. valley of despair and you quit again. And this is what I mean with consistency. This is what consistency is about. I know that every time I mention consistency to people, to artists, they're like, "Yeah, I got it. Yeah, I draw every day. I got it. I got it, bro. I got it. I know what you mean." But usually, they're not consistent. They might be drawing every day, but they're not consistently working in this slope of enlightenment to actually get to their ultimate goal.
09:00 - 09:30 They always quit at the valley of despair when things get hard and they move on to another object, right, or subject. An easy one to understand is I want to be an animator. Ultimate goal, I know that in order to do animation, I need to actually learn how to animate simple things. I need to learn about storytelling. I definitely need to learn how to draw hands. So, you're like, "Got it. Gonna do hands." Naive optimism. You're like, "Shit, hands are hard."
09:30 - 10:00 Well, I tried today and tomorrow I'll go on with storytelling or something else because I did I did my part today and you're off, right? So, what you did is you actually quit in in the cycle before you got any expertise. And this is an important point. In order to or if we put this in gamification terms, in order to level up here, get some experience points, you actually need to reach a certain like point on this slope. And on
10:00 - 10:30 the short term, you actually need to reach this point. You actually need to have learned something new that gives you high competence and high confidence that you can repeat this over time. So coming back to hands, if you learn something new about hands of like let's say hands are and it can be a very small detail. Hands look that way when they make a fist, right? There's this sort of arch to them that I know that if I draw them that way, they look more natural than if I were to draw them as a box
10:30 - 11:00 like I used to do. That's a small Dunning Krueger effect that you nailed that you suddenly now know because you've drawn it a lot. But if you quit before you make that realization, you start all over from scratch again. And this is what is stopping your growth. That's the exact thing that is stopping your growth. Not only in art, but in life. Because life works the exact same way. And this is what I mean when I tell people if you know the principles, you can live painfree. A lot of people I've
11:00 - 11:30 get I get so many messages from people like Antonio, how the do you work so many hours and not get burned out, right? So, I'm not a big believer in burnout in in the sense that you get burned out if you if you stay here too long without actually knowing why you're there, right? I think a burnout is usually something that there's something it's almost like insanity is like trying
11:30 - 12:00 to do the same or doing the same thing over and over expecting a different outcome each time. That's sort of like the definition of insanity. Well, I think burnout comes close because you're like you're doing things you're doing things but in this sort of valley of despair you're not getting different outcomes and therefore you actually deal with a lot of pain and stress. However, if I put it back to working out training, I know the principles of what it takes to get good in terms of consistency. And it's the this exact
12:00 - 12:30 sort of Dunning Krueger effect on the short term and the long term. So, I know that I have to go through this all the time, but I actually have to push through it. And I know at the end of it, I'm going to learn. I'm going to get better. I'm going to better better better. Right? I'm always going to get better. And when you know that when you know that you're going to have to pass through station two anyway, then you live painf free because you know what what's at the end of it. And and I think that's super important that you start
12:30 - 13:00 realizing this. If you're someone that feels like they're stuck, they're almost at like a burnout point with art. I feel like you need to understand the reason why I say consistency is so important is that when you set out to go and draw and learn hands, you actually set out different days in the week for a long period of time or like at least a good amount of time to learn hands because you have to get past the valley of despair and into that slope of enlightenment. And I've I've mentioned
13:00 - 13:30 this in another video is that kind of perfectly correlates to what I'm saying about that short-term memory that you have when you learn something. When you only fill it a little bit, what you're doing here exactly is it's never going to flow over into that large hard drive where it actually needs to flow into in order for you to be confident and competent at the same time. So you need to do a couple of days of drawing hands. You need to get through this to really
13:30 - 14:00 fill it up so that some of that knowledge actually sprinkles over into your hard drive. And this is when you've acquired a new skill. However small it is, any sense of progress that you make is motivating. Okay? You any sense of progress you make here makes you high in confidence. But if you're here and you have this sense of, well, guess it didn't work today. I'll try something else tomorrow. All you're doing is
14:00 - 14:30 you're recycling this point. And that is what's making you frustrated. And I see this all the time with people. A lot of students that we have, I see it with sometimes members of my team that also want to get better at drawing is that you you get into this cycle of man, maybe drawing is not for me. And I that really hurts me. It hurts me. and not even drawing anything in life that people want to achieve. Whether it's getting fitter, whether it's wanted to start a business, whether just want to
14:30 - 15:00 just be good at their job, whether it's want whether it's about building better relationships, doesn't really matter what it is, but a lot of the times people stay stuck here on the short term, let alone the long term. A lot of the times people understand what they need to do to get to the long term cuz like it's like, yeah, do it a lot, right? Stay consistent, stay motivated. Awesome. So, the danger is actually in in the fact that on these shortterm cycles of the Dunning Krueger effect, you quit too early on even and this is
15:00 - 15:30 the thing, right? This is the the sort of up thing is like even if you have a perception of like, well, I did something today. It's just like it's it's a lot harder than I thought it was, but I did something, so I probably learned something. Like, I probably learned something. So, you quit and you do something else the next day. And this is where you lose more most of that knowledge. And this is why a lot of you guys stay stuck at like a station here or here. And you guys you haven't you have an eye on that sort of goal you
15:30 - 16:00 want to reach, but you're just like you're stuck and you don't know why. And I'm say I'm telling you a lot of the times this is why. This is why you're stuck. That's all it is. And that's all I have to say about that. Right? You can make that as specific as you want about what what goals you want to reach. And maybe that's a good thing, right? Maybe you need to make a scale like this. Put down your sort of guru end goal, but then write down these little blocks of what you now know you need to hit to get
16:00 - 16:30 to that goal. And also treat those as this Dunning Krueger effect. So if tomorrow or next week you're like, "Wow, okay. So I want to learn perspective. I'm not going to do it for one day because I know I'm going to be very optimistic about the fact that I know that I need to learn perspective, but once it gets hard, I'm going to quit and do something else. Don't do that. Set out to do perspective for a long period of time until you have that feeling, that confident feeling. That's only something you can feel. You're confident
16:30 - 17:00 that you learn something new that will stay with you almost forever. That's when you actually know you learned something. And when you know that then you can go on and learn the next thing. I wanted to make this video because I don't want people stuck in their artistic growth or any growth in life. So for that reason I wanted to make this video. I hope it helped you. Let me know if this resonates with you and give me like an example of what you think is has been a goal that you've almost always
17:00 - 17:30 been stuck in this sort of cycle and actually never got to learn anything new about that sort of smaller goal on your way to the big goal. All right. Very curious to to hear your thoughts and if if that really resonated with you. Cool. As always, stay creative and happy drawing.