One Of The Most Important Lessons In Graphic Design

Summary

In this enlightening session by Kittl, the focus is on the crucial lesson of patience in graphic design and creative processes. The discussion unfolds with 7 thought-provoking questions, aimed at helping creatives navigate through impatience and the struggles of immediate gratification, further diving into personal experiences and shared advice on managing tensions between perfecting projects and knowing when they're complete. The engaging dialogue highlights the importance of strategic goal setting, breaking down large tasks, and the influence of comparing creative paths with others, all wrapped in a therapeutic narrative to promote self-awareness and betterment in creative careers.

Highlights

• Patience as a creative is discussed as a therapeutic and humbling process. 🧘‍♀️
• The challenge of delayed gratification in the creative industry is explored. ⏳
• Set big goals but focus on immediate, achievable tasks to prevent being overwhelmed. 🌈
• Manage the tension between perfecting work and actually finishing projects. ⚖️
• Writing ideas physically can improve focus and clarity during the creative process. ✍️

Key Takeaways

• Patience is a key skill for creatives, aiding in long-term success rather than quick wins. 🌟
• Delaying gratification can lead to bigger rewards in the creative process. 🚀
• Managing expectations and breaking down large goals into achievable tasks is crucial. 📆
• It's important to schedule creative time and avoid multitasking to maintain focus. 🎨
• Physical note-taking can enhance ideation and prevent distractions from digital tools. 📝
• Stop comparing yourself to other creatives to avoid discouragement. 🚫
• Setting timelines and seeing visible progress, like doing chores, can boost motivation. ✅

Overview

Kittl's insightful video touches heavily on the theme of patience in the world of graphic design and creativity. By guiding viewers through seven reflective questions, the conversation aims to develop a deeper understanding of how patience plays a significant role in the creative process, presenting it as a therapeutic exercise.

The host shares personal anecdotes, revealing struggles with impatience and the lessons learned from these experiences. Topics like delaying gratification, unrealistic expectations, and the pitfalls of constantly comparing oneself to others resonate throughout, serving as a reminder of the multi-faceted nature of creative journeys.

By the end, valuable advice on how to manage impatience is given, such as breaking tasks into smaller, achievable steps, setting personal timelines, and finding motivation through small, physical accomplishments. The session concludes with an invitation to viewers to reflect on their own processes and strive for personal growth within their creative paths.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 01:00: Introduction and Theme Discussion The episode focuses on the theme of patience, particularly in the context of creativity. The discussion acknowledges the challenges of maintaining patience but also highlights its importance in the creative process. The host approaches the topic from a personal perspective, engaging the audience in a therapeutic exploration rather than offering professional psychological advice. The segment includes seven questions intended to guide listeners in reflecting on their own experiences with patience.
• 01:00 - 02:30: Patience in the Creative Process The chapter "Patience in the Creative Process" explores the importance of taking time to reflect and thoughtfully respond to creative challenges. The discussion involves a process where viewers are encouraged to write down their thoughts in a notes app or record a voice memo as they pause the video after each question. The facilitator, Graham, is guided through a series of questions with the possibility of sharing responses as the test subject. Additionally, there's a brief, light-hearted interaction about new glasses, inviting viewer engagement and feedback about their appeal.
• 02:30 - 07:30: Ontime Studio and Impatience In this chapter, the focus is on the concept of patience, especially in the context of creative work. The discussion revolves around the common desire among creatives to complete projects and assignments quickly, earn money, and be valued for their worth. However, the speaker emphasizes that patience is a crucial skill, particularly for graphic designers, suggesting that developing patience can lead to better outcomes in creative endeavors.
• 07:30 - 13:30: Rushing Projects and Consequences The chapter discusses the concept of creativity beyond tangible skills such as painting. It emphasizes the importance of delaying gratification, which is closely related to patience, as part of the creative process. The speaker suggests that sometimes sacrificing immediate success for long-term benefits can be more rewarding. The chapter also promises to address seven questions designed to help readers better understand and motivate their creative processes when things do not go as planned.
• 13:30 - 25:00: Managing the Creative Process This chapter explores the theme of impatience in the context of managing the creative process. The speaker reflects on pivotal moments in their career where impatience affected their projects, asking the audience to consider similar experiences from their own careers. It prompts reflection on how impatience has influenced creative and professional development.
• 25:00 - 35:00: Techniques for Staying Patient The chapter titled 'Techniques for Staying Patient' discusses instances where impatience has overcome individuals. It opens by inviting people to reflect on moments when they were consumed by impatience, noting that many can name several situations or at least one prominent example. The narrative hints at these instances being recently impactful, particularly highlighting experiences that are 'brand related.' The conversation is anchored in personal stories, aiming to connect with listeners through shared experiences of impatience and its challenges.
• 35:00 - 44:00: Tension Between Perfection and Completion The chapter explores the internal conflict faced by the speaker in balancing the desire for quick success with the reality of the journey, emphasizing how this tension can lead to paralysis in progress.
• 44:00 - 60:00: Advice for Managing Impatience The chapter discusses managing impatience in the context of building a clothing brand. Graham shares his experience of wanting quick success with minimal effort in creating a faith-based clothing line over the past six to eight months. He acknowledges that the initial months involved administrative tasks like setting up an LLC and other business essentials.
• 60:00 - 74:00: Final Thoughts and Encouragement The chapter discusses reflections on previous experiences and future aspirations. The speaker references a past video they made about a product drop and the associated sales, expressing a desire for quicker and larger success with less effort. This reveals a conflict between their expectations and reality. The impatience they felt led to moments where they considered quitting, highlighting the emotional challenges faced during this journey.

One Of The Most Important Lessons In Graphic Design Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 Today on the show we are talking about patience. We are talking about patience as a creative. How it is difficult, how it can help you in your process. But this is going to be more of a what would I say therapeutic time for? You're going to be helping me both of us. I'm not I'm not a therapist. I'm not a licensed psychologist by any means, but I have seven questions that I want all of you
• 00:30 - 01:00 watching to just think through and write your answers down either in your notes app on your phone or a voice memo. You can pause the video after each question. I'm going to be facilitating facilitating the questions to Graham and then maybe I'll give my answers as well on your test subject. Yeah, but I I'd also like to highlight that you got new glasses. I did get new glasses. You guys can let me know. Are you vibing? Comment down below on a scale of one to five. One to vibe. Do you one to vibe? Do you like them or should I go back to my
• 01:00 - 01:30 original ones, which would be kind of hard to do because this prescription is new. But we are talking about So, we're talking about patience. I think that this might be one of the hardest things for creatives because we want to get done with projects fast. We want to get done with assignments fast. We want to make money. Uh we want to make perhaps more money. We also want to be valued for what we're worth. Um, but I did a video a couple of weeks back about how I think that the number one skill any graphic designer can have or really any
• 01:30 - 02:00 creative is not necessarily a tangible skill like painting. It's actually to delay gratification, which I think is closely related to patience. being able to forego something super successful that might happen in a moment versus long-term investment to get a big reward. But we're going to go through these seven questions and it's just going to help us think about our own creative process, maybe give us more motivation when things aren't going our
• 02:00 - 02:30 way, like when we don't get the fast win or the quick win. So first question, have there been pivotal moments in your career career just not necessarily here at KD just over your entire creative career pivotal moments in your career where you were impatient and it got the best of you? So you can think back to any kind of creative projects or could be personal, could be work. Do is there anything that stands out specifically
• 02:30 - 03:00 where impatience definitely got the best of you? Can name several. Okay. I mean, you can name a few or you can name one that popped into your head. Well, I mean, the the biggest like the largest and the most prominent example for me isn't very long ago. I mean it's just brand related for me. Um okay with
• 03:00 - 03:30 with Ontime Studio and building that I think I've not allowed myself to view it as a journey essentially and have kind of wanted it to be like a quick and easy success. M and I think the way that it got the best of me is that it kind of paralyzed me in a sense to where and and it's kind of a a a
• 03:30 - 04:00 double doozy because I wanted to have success with the least amount of effort. And for those that don't know what we're talking about, Graham's building a clothing brand. So that that's what you meant. I've been I've been building a clothing brand. And you wanted it to be a quick a faithbased clothing brand. And I've been building it for about the past seven or eight six months. Six to seven months. Six to eight months. Um I mean of course the first two months of that is like get like tax like getting an LLC and opening a business thing. And you
• 04:00 - 04:30 actually have a video on the channel talking about the first drop with the amount of sales and everything you made and all that stuff. But you wanted it to be a quick one. I wanted it to be bigger faster. Um, and I wanted it to be more successful with less effort. And I think that just boils down to expectations for me. So, what did the impatience do? Make you want to quit or like Well, it definitely made me want to quit. Um, I
• 04:30 - 05:00 think I think it made me question the vitality of everything other than the impact of what I like what I was doing had on the business. Like I would I would be like, well, oh, the algorithm just doesn't like it or, you know, it's not getting enough eyes, so I need to run ads. M and so I would my my first instinct was to
• 05:00 - 05:30 get defensive and and re place uh blame on something that wasn't directly related to me when in reality I mean it's very apparent and very clear for anybody that knows me that I wasn't putting my full creative spirit into it and it wasn't like it wasn't fullyfledged Graham like It wasn't me and it was trying to be kind
• 05:30 - 06:00 of like a cheap imitation of something else. And for it to be fully a creative representation of me, it needed to take more time than I gave it. Yeah. Because my creative aspirations run very deep. And I also have the another reason why I needed to allow myself to be patient and the process to be patient is because I like so many different things that I
• 06:00 - 06:30 can't just I can't just pick one uh you know flippantly and move forward with it which is essentially you know here's how it really affected me is I flippantly chose a vibe that I didn't care about at all really like it wasn't a deep rooted you weren't passionate I wasn't passionate about you liked it, but I liked it. I thought it was cool. So, like essentially I chose kind of like the old money aesthetic, but the only thing that I knew about the
• 06:30 - 07:00 old money aesthetic was the designs themselves. Not like everything that goes behind it. Not everything that goes behind it. The marketing, the photography, the world building, the like the website, the the messaging that makes it work. And so I essentially was trying to bake together faith-based faith faith-based purpose- driven brand mission with old money designs. And like it just wasn't very like crystal
• 07:00 - 07:30 clear to the audience. And so I mean it gave me like a lot of anxiety. I was talking about it or thinking about it all the time and I would just check Shopify all the time and I would see the green light pop up two three visitors at a time and then they would just go away and it would make me sad. You know, you can't especially when you're in the beginning stages, you can't just you can't watch the like that's with anything. I mean that's a big deal for
• 07:30 - 08:00 people that are posting reals or YouTube videos. like you can't just post it and then sit there and watch it the thing cuz you're going to go crazy, you know. Another example is when I worked for my previous agency that did mostly creative work for churches, I would just have a heavy day and I would allow myself to be impatient with projects and pump out stuff that was
• 08:00 - 08:30 subpar. And the way that it negatively impacted me is I had to do a bunch of revisions on them and it ended up taking longer than it would have if I had just done it well in the first place. That's actually the next question. And and the hard part about that was not only being patient with the work itself, but being patient with the uh client. Yeah. The recipient and like understanding where they're coming from fully so that I can deliver to them something that they like better. Yeah, that's actually the next
• 08:30 - 09:00 question. So, have you ever rushed a project where there were severe consequences? Severe is a very severe word. Um, I mean, the most severe consequence is that like maybe one client out of like 60 or 70 dropped, you know, and it was like a lower tier client. Not not to say that any of them weren't important, but I mean it wasn't but they weren't like they weren't max it wasn't a big financial hit and like they were kind of
• 09:00 - 09:30 a problem client in the first place anyway. Like sometimes we would hit right on the mark what they wanted and they would still just find something wrong with it and and send it back. I send it back. Yeah. S is on top. I send it back. Yeah. You know, so but kudos to whoever gets that reference. Comment down below if you get it. But the but the consequences in general like you already mentioned like at the previous place where you were doing um you
• 09:30 - 10:00 know several projects a day pumping them out like if you are getting impatient and you're like I'm going I'm just going to throw this out it manifests itself as more revisions you know and so that wastes more time and then you get more impatient. What was the question again? Have there ever been? Well, it it's the question is rushed a project where there were severe consequences. Well, I mean there were severe I would actually say there were legitimately severe consequences with my personal brand in more so not well financially too because
• 10:00 - 10:30 I I in a way made hasty decisions and have probably lost lost some money to learn lessons which you know in the long run is going to repay itself. And so it's it's important to like zoom out a little bit and think long term and not just short term. But my piece is essentially what it costed me because I was pumping out work that it was subpar and then I would look at my feed or scroll through my posts and then equate
• 10:30 - 11:00 that to me being not a good creative when in reality I just wasn't doing my best work. And so for that, like that that for me like made me really anxious and kind of like doubled down on trying to like find quick fix solutions to like band-aid over what I was doing that wasn't necessarily working. Yeah, good point. Which is tough. So yeah, it was costing me my peace. That was the severe consequence.
• 11:00 - 11:30 Well, that's not worth not having, you know. So that makes sense. All right. I hope everybody is following along. That was question two. We're going to question three now, which is a little bit more technical. In which parts of the creative process do you find it hardest to remain patient? So, you're welcome to kind of this obviously is going to look different for you versus us depending on what it is you do creatively, whether
• 11:30 - 12:00 it's service work or products or whatever, but generally there is some sort of process. So which parts of it do you find it the hardest to remain patient? Probably like like ideiation and like and like mood boarding. Well, I mean it's fun. It's finding ideas is fun when you're not going to be using them for something. when you are you want to
• 12:00 - 12:30 like get a couple and then like you're really eager to like not taking long enough to like refine the idea refine the idea refined the you want to get it you want to get the design out I want to get the roll on you know get it I want to freaking go you know and it's just see it is is essentially you know a call back to my first problem which was that I left the ideation phase too soon without a clear enough vision vision. And so that's what led to all of
• 12:30 - 13:00 my harsh consequences and and lack of peace. But that's what I find to be the hardest thing is like instead of like making a logo and then like sitting with it for like 3 weeks and like seeing if I like it and using it in a bunch of contexts, I like made this script thing that was like kind of like just the old money font vibe and was like, "Yeah, it looks like some of the other stuff that I've seen, so I'll just use it, you know?" Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. I'd say for me it's more of at
• 13:00 - 13:30 the very end like I'm definitely okay hanging out in ideiation and exploration for a long time. I think where I don't remain patient is right at the end where I got to do the backend work to get something up. Whether it be a YouTube video, a product on my shop, a digital product on one of my stores, like I have a hard time remaining patient going through that what I would call grunt work. Like I just want to do a
• 13:30 - 14:00 little description, like maybe a couple tags, half half bad word, my title, and throw it up and like maybe work on it later. See, that's so interesting because like I like the product's done or the design is done. I don't necessarily mind that like interesting. Well, a practical example is for example at at the at the agency that I used to work at, we would always send, you know, if if like let's say a
• 14:00 - 14:30 church needed to do a sermon series and they needed to have multiple sizes of it for their screen and then their social and then their newsletter and then their website. So they had seven, eight different sizes of it. We would always send them the screen size first, just 16 by9 and and like you you approve it before I build out all these sizes and layer all these uh artboards and like name them and and make sure the PSD file is all tidy for you and whatnot. And
• 14:30 - 15:00 then once it was like we we just called it building finals. Yeah. Are you building finals for this year? You're just giving it the the the remaining sizes. I loved it. I just put the music on and I just made different sizes of stuff and named all the layers and just because No, I don't want I don't want to take the design and have to like because I would have to do that for my for my digital products. I have to do that for the thumbnail. I would say that as creatively freespirit minded as I am, I still love a very like
• 15:00 - 15:30 um bullet point list task item outline of like what I'm supposed to do. You definitely do for the day. Like I just I need you definitely do. I need a bullet point check. Like I need a check or like turn this design into these eight sizes. Yeah, I would I'd love that. Interesting. You know, maybe you should do a video explaining to people how you would turn one into like a different size. So like how you would start with a title but then also do a story size and then a 4x5 and then Yeah. Like a website size 5x4 or whatever. Yeah. And it's
• 15:30 - 16:00 interesting. I Yeah. I just want it to be up and make me money. I don't want to have to like do Maybe you should Maybe you should hand off the YouTube uploading and keyword research and stuff to me. You can teach me how to do it. Well, for KD, it's not that big a deal. I meant for kind of like my own shop. Oh. Um, all right. Going on to question four. Are there any specific
• 16:00 - 16:30 like techniques is maybe a strong word, but maybe like routines. Like are there any specific techniques or routines you use to stay patient and avoid burnout? Oh, dude, I've started writing stuff down. Okay, explain. Physically with a pen. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like I have my book. I just have well this one this one says staying on track. This is my just like notebook of like you know if I if I go into a day
• 16:30 - 17:00 and I don't have like a list I'll like make a list for myself. Yeah. Same I do that with my book. But I also have another one of that same notebook that just says ideas on it or like creative ideas or something. And I'm going in a new direction with the brand where it's like very cinematic, story driven reels that are like kind of hyper creative and have that dreamy effect and like every scene just has some sort of interesting
• 17:00 - 17:30 creative element. And like when I say cinematic, people think like, oh, it's going to take like thousands of dollars. No, you're talking about kind of old vintage cinema. Yeah, old vintage cinema but like broken down, easy, fast creator content where like the frame changes like the scene and frame changes like every 3 seconds and there's captions on it and whatnot and like all of those ideas for for content I just write them down like in the notebook and then I'll put a little check box the lesson or the
• 17:30 - 18:00 ritual is is is physically writing it down because everybody has some sort of task manager like monday.com or notion or Trello or whatever but there's something about for me if if it's another thing that's digital it's another thing that I have to manage instead of something that manages me like writing it down in a way is more helpful for me because I don't I don't have to learn how to use a new software I don't have to have login credentials for that software I don't have to save a
• 18:00 - 18:30 tab for that software I don't have to open that software open my book and cross open my book and cross it off and here's the main thing is that it keeps me focused on the ideation and the the critical thinking process of writing that idea down, not getting distracted doing it on my phone or on my laptop, but I write slower than I type. And so I think better as I write and so the idea is like more formulated as I'm writing
• 18:30 - 19:00 it down than if I typed it. And then like everybody has probably a hundred ideas that they've that they've got lost in translation in a note that they don't know where it is or it's in tandem with other notes or like then it got deleted or you have like a bunch of saved reels of content ideas but they're not in folders. Me too, you know, which I actually did start a folder for my brand of like content ideas and whatnot and stuff to to kind of pick at. 100% writing stuff down has helped me a
• 19:00 - 19:30 lot because it just it helps me be patient because good the for the thinking is way better when I'm writing it down. Yeah. I think for me uh I also am an avid. I have a I have a similar book. It's a little smaller and I write everything out and cross it off when it's done. But I I like to take walks because I I can't be distracted because I'm not at my computer. So it gives me an easier time of being patient. Um, right. Because it's like I I can
• 19:30 - 20:00 only but take this walk and think through what I'm gonna do before I like do it. It's interesting because I um role play as a multitasker when I am not one. And what I mean by that is that I like I put on a multitasker costume and say that I am one when I really suck at it. No, you can't do And like I let's see I say I'm like rotating between four different things. Each one of those four
• 20:00 - 20:30 different things is going to have a problem at some point. It gets a fourth of your attention as well. And yes and then once I have a problem with something I'll switch to something else. But it that's not actually giving myself the space to create a problem solve because all of my energy and attention is going to that thing. And then once I run into a problem like that, I move to the third thing. And so now the first two things aren't getting any of my energy and attention into creative problem solving. And then I'll move on to the fourth thing. And so like I just cycle through different tasks and like
• 20:30 - 21:00 none of them ever get done. Yeah. It's my favorite analogy. If you chase 10 rabbits, you get none of them. Yeah. Like that's just how it goes. Unless you have nine other people on your team that can chase an independent rabbit. So that's that's when I'm doing stuff on my computer and I have an idea or something, you know, it's it's helpful for me or if I run into a a problem on my when I'm editing my brand content or trying to brainstorm just to go for a walk. Yeah. And I said that's a good
• 21:00 - 21:30 that's go for a walk instead of like going and watching a YouTube video or looking for references while I'm trying to like I just the the brain can only like comprehend so much true at a time. And I mean like I was better at this when I was working at that previous place because and it was more so walks because I would like get overwhelmed because I had like 30 projects due a day. Like I did 3,500 projects in one year. Yeah. Yeah. like it was a lot of work. Um, so I would get like really
• 21:30 - 22:00 really burnt out and need to go for a walk or if I was like doing a bumper, so I was working in After Effects and animating something and I didn't know how to like do a transition or something. I was actually pretty good at going and taking a walk. That's good. Um, which I need to get back into that. I think that would help. Yep. All right, everybody. Make sure you're still following along along with the questions. Moving on to question five. We got three left. How do you manage this is this for you is certainly going to be a big one probably for a lot of
• 22:00 - 22:30 people watching. So how do you manage the tension between wanting to perfect what you're working on and knowing when to call the project finished. Basically staying in revision mode versus being able to be like this is done. I need to move on. Do you give yourself some sort of allotted due date? Do you give it um after I share it with this amount of
• 22:30 - 23:00 people and I get this amount of feedback that I know I need to call this done or do you literally just revise, revise, revise, revise, revise until you're like, "Okay, it's done." I kind of stick into the revise feedback loop until I literally don't have any more time or energy to spend on it and then whatever it is at that time will be what it is. M. And so I think I guess I can So you you lean more on the struggling to perfect things then. Yeah.
• 23:00 - 23:30 Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean the the scenario that I provided first is an excellent case study for that because I kind of tried to not stay in something for too long and and try to perfect it and it actually didn't work out for me brandwise, you know, imagery, messaging, and like the overall look and feel was just not and that that might have been like that in tandem with a
• 23:30 - 24:00 little bit of imposttor syndrome, But Mhm. like I should have given myself way more time to just think about it and mood board and draft and look at ideas and you know get feedback before any large amount of money was involved for It's kind of a double-edged sword though because there is in that scenario there is wisdom in sitting on something for a long time. But there's also this
• 24:00 - 24:30 uh danger of if you keep editing something you will never be done. Like you can revise the crap out of something forever. Like you could change something like I could have kept editing my book for forever. I could have changed a sentence. I can I can let's say I I always I only ever do the same quantity of t-shirts, right? So every t-shirt I do, I always do the same quantity. Let's just say it's 20. I can edit one t-shirt
• 24:30 - 25:00 design for a year and make it the best flipping shirt you've ever seen. Yeah, but then you have 19 others. But I'm No, what I'm saying is like I make 20 of that one shirt to sell. Oh, and so I can work on that one design for a year and it could be the best freaking design you've ever seen in your life, but I'm only going to make 20- Now I only have one design and I've only made enough money from 20 t-shirts when I could make one a month, you know, and like let's just say I give myself the timeline of one week to create a
• 25:00 - 25:30 t-shirt design and then the other three weeks of the month to sell it, you know, and so like I've not been very good at setting timelines for myself of like this is how I want how long I want to stay in creation and ideation and if you give yourself that timeline that will also help you yeah schedule time to sit down and and do it. It's almost like I don't I don't know you have to you have to schedule time to be
• 25:30 - 26:00 creative. You can't just be like, "Oh, whatever time I have left over or I'm not working my 9 to5 or my kids don't need me or my spouse doesn't need me or the yard doesn't need to be mowed and the trash is taken out and the house is clean, the laundry is done and the dishes are done and the cars are washed and the garage is clean. Once all of that is all perfectly fine and good for 30 minutes, then I'll work on it." You have to like schedule time to switches. Now both my wife and I have done that to
• 26:00 - 26:30 where Tuesday evenings and then we're trying to find one other block of time cuz she wants to do a blog. Sure. Sure. Um is like our Tuesday evenings from like 6:00 to 10:00 are like our creative block time to where it's like immovable. Like it's like church on Sunday morning. Like nobody has to know what Graham's doing on Sunday morning. Nobody has to know. Nobody has to guess what you're doing on Sunday morning. They know that we're going to be at church somewhere
• 26:30 - 27:00 within the realm of 7 a.m. to 12:30 or 1, you know. And so like if somebody asks you to hang out on Sunday morning, you're going to say no. And most likely the people that know you aren't going to ask to hang out in that time block because you're going to you've made it immovable. I think for me the this whole back to the managing the tension thing uh or or knowing when to call a project done. I'd really be interested if you guys would be willing to share your all's answer to that question
• 27:00 - 27:30 specifically in the comments. I mean you can feel free to answer all of them in the comments but this one I would love to know from our users from our community how you guys manage that tension between perfecting something and calling a project finished. I think for me, I do a pretty good job of calling it finished when I get the uh when I open myself up to a select panel of feedback. So basically I'll share it with about three to five people and if I can get votes on
• 27:30 - 28:00 uh collect the feedback and get and then get votes on what would be done because at at that point I think I've I've I've moved a design project from needing to serve me to serve someone else. So I've kind of detached my desire from it and been like okay does this check the bullet points that it needs to check and does it serve its purpose? ask these four to five people. If they all give me the same green light, I'm gonna call that project. It's also different between like doing a project for a client versus yourself versus yourself.
• 28:00 - 28:30 Technically, client work, the client decides when it's done. Yeah. In a way, I think Yeah. But there's But you could also get stuck in what you would believe is your own deliverable date. Yeah. you could keep editing and refining something before you ever show it to the the client and therefore your client may get anxious because you're working on two months of this. Anyway, I would say I think I think I honestly need to up my personal creative standards for myself
• 28:30 - 29:00 because I I tend to call something done and move on to the next phase not when I love it, but when I don't hate it, you know, like like it's it's it's good enough to where I don't hate it. I don't have a problem with it necessarily, but I'm not like yes, you know, like I don't love it. And so I need to just I don't know I I need to work on stuff as long as I need to to
• 29:00 - 29:30 where I love it. Okay. All right. Coming down to the final two. This one's kind of it's in the same vein. Um so how do you respond when the creative vision is taking a lot longer than you expected? So we kind of just talked about the difference between continually perfecting something versus knowing when it's done. This is a little bit of a a similar but different part of the creative process problem where it's like you have
• 29:30 - 30:00 actually no control except for this thing to be taking too long. Like it is like the vi to to enact your creative vision whether that's getting your LLC information or getting the you know Shopify thing set up or for someone to create a capabilities deck or something like that. Like this stuff takes time and you can't I mean you can't there you can't rush it because it has to be done. So like how how is it maybe you can also provide more of advice on how you
• 30:00 - 30:30 respond when things are taking longer than expected. This is the delay gratification. I want I want you to answer this one first. Okay. So, when I'm thinking about how things take too long, I I want to always try to keep in mind the difference between immediate gratification like uh overarching future expectations and achievable goals. So like future expectations would be something like I want to make $100,000
• 30:30 - 31:00 from this branding get did my from my company whatever I want to make $100,000 this year. It's a goal. It's a high capital G goal but that's also a future expectation. That's not something you can actually achieve tomorrow. So, what I would like to do is take that future expectation, the goal, and then put the micro goals under it that's going to help me set up Shopify. That's one thing I can achieve today that leads me closer
• 31:00 - 31:30 to getting I don't I don't want to ever say you can't get $100,000. There's people out there doing it. Um, they probably didn't do it overnight. There was planning involved. That is the illusion to me though is that their success was somehow easier more easily gained. I think the illusion the mirage there is that it can certainly seem like that when the success is something like overnight.
• 31:30 - 32:00 What I think a majority of the gurus whether or not they will tell you or not tell you is the im immense prep work that happened before flipping the switch. Well, that's that's something that I talked nobody can see. What I talked about in in the previous video where I talked about starting the brand is there's so much stuff that you months worth of work that nobody is going to see or care about, you know, right? Until until you
• 32:00 - 32:30 actually like, oh, this person's made, you know, $50,000 from this like service and they just came on the scene. I mean, you don't know. Maybe they maybe they just broke even from making that $50 because they wasted people don't understand if if they're in the more design service world. You don't know if maybe they um separated from a previous agency that was downsizing and they took 20 clients with them. You don't know like any series of things could have happened
• 32:30 - 33:00 like it happens all the time. mergers, uh, dividing, you know, separation of clients. If it's a if it's a merchant type thing like what you're doing, you don't know if somebody had worked for a previous person's brand and they are getting funding to put into theirs. So, because they're an investor, like you have no there's an a million different ways that people aren't thinking about, they immediately just jump to, well, this brand is successful overnight.
• 33:00 - 33:30 Yeah. I mean another thing that kind of is frustrating or like you can use to validate your failure is a harsh term but like something that you can use to easily your shortcomings. Yeah. improperly validate your shortcomings is like one thing for me is like there there are massive brands that exist and and grow very very quickly but it's like you know
• 33:30 - 34:00 Kim Kardashian launching skims you know like she's literally it's it's like a shapewear brand like athletic like yoga pants and like sports bras and stuff but like she has the audience well she has the audience already or it's like you launched this clothing brand and it's one person but they know somebody that has 3.9 million followers that can a direct sponsor. They're just like all like you already have the connections. And so it's like it's frustrating for me as a person that has little to no following. Nobody knows who I am. And
• 34:00 - 34:30 I'm launching this thing legitimately from ground zero. And so I don't have, you know, I don't have the stakehold net worth to put 2 million, $10 million into something to launch it to make it big from the very beginning. You know, I have to actually start from like little tiny pea gravel baby steps. Yeah. like, you know, 20 pieces at a time, 30 pieces
• 34:30 - 35:00 at a time and do like local popups and stuff like until I actually gain a following to where like people talk about e-commerce thing actually makes sense, you know? Yeah. And the same can be said for service. I mean, you you got to, you know, we I've already talked to several people. You guys can go back and watch the previous podcasts with Nick and with um Edward and with TJ. like you you have to if if you're in the service specific industry, you know, you got to give some attention to content and the
• 35:00 - 35:30 touch points like it's like the same thing goes for the e-commerce world for the service world. Like you have to if you don't have the audience, it's the same song and dance. You will have to build it over time. Maybe that means starting a YouTube channel. Maybe that means people have a TikTok that they never wanted to have again. It just depends, you know, unless they want to cold call all day. Yeah. Um, but that's what I would say about responding to, you know, when a vision takes longer than expected, whether that's your creative project, whether that's something like the success of a brand,
• 35:30 - 36:00 maybe it's uh getting clients if you're in the service industry, like just manage your future expectations with your immediate realistic goals. What can you achieve that will help you along the way to reach that future goal, that future expectation? I think I mean Jordan Peterson talks about it a lot to where he's like you can have your big
• 36:00 - 36:30 goals and that's great, but you can't just say tomorrow that I want to run a marathon by one year from now. like that can't be your only goal because you won't ever do it because it's too big. It's not achievable. And so you have to break down those goals into smaller goals and those goals into smaller goals. They have to be they have to be easy enough that you will do it and that you can do it, but just just challenging
• 36:30 - 37:00 enough to where it presents some sort of challenge so that when you accomplish it, it makes you feel good and you get some sort of gratification out of it. And so I could be way better about breaking up my goal sets and like, you know, I don't know the best way to organize that. maybe like notion or something, but well, yeah, any any sort of way will do. Um, all right, you can also let us know your answers to that in the comments. All right, last question. Everybody, gear up. Stay with us. We're coming to the end
• 37:00 - 37:30 here. What advice would you give to a fellow creative who is struggling with impatience and feels discouraged? Knowing for you that you have been in those positions as you've already previously described from the other questions. People that may be ending up where you have been impatient, discouraged, maybe feeling like what to want to quit. What's the advice you're going to tell the
• 37:30 - 38:00 creatives? Stop comparing. Stop comparing. That's a big one. Just straight up. That's a big one. I mean, I do that all the time. Like I still do that. That's advice to myself. That's not just advice to the audience, but I mean like I I'll I I'll go and I'll look at, you know, Cart Blanch's brand or this brand or that brand and I'm just like 86,000 followers, 90,000 followers, 144,000 followers, two 400,000 followers, you know, and like I because the situation like the level that
• 38:00 - 38:30 they're at right now seems inachievable for me, it makes it feel like impossible and and paralyzes me versus like I can't make them the goal. I have to set goals for myself. I can use references and influences. So if you like a creator's page or a creative agency's page or a brand's page, you know, consume their content, their designs, their vibe,
• 38:30 - 39:00 their visuals, but just don't even look at their follower count. Like don't take that into account. don't take into account the amount of likes and comments and shares on their videos. Just consume the reference content and like try to write down maybe like one uh thing about that that you like without taking into account, oh well this one this reel got 3.9 million views and I can't make a
• 39:00 - 39:30 reel that got 3.9 million views so I might as well not even try doing something similar. So like screw the view count. Yeah. Comparison paralysis. Yeah. Just just stop doing that, you know, which is I'm saying that to me. I need to consume the references, consume the ideas, mood board the ideas without looking at the impact that other people's interpretation of that idea had for their for their entity, you know, and then comparing it to mine because
• 39:30 - 40:00 like there there ain't no assurance that I don't do that same thing and it won't get a lot of views, you know, but I can't just assume that if I do something similar for my brand that it's not going to work because of the success of the idea. If you think that the idea is cool and that it locks in and that it, you know, is right in line with you want to do, I just would I would would try to do it, you know, don't good don't compare.
• 40:00 - 40:30 Yeah. Yeah, maybe you have something as well. No, the last thing I'll say I think about just encouragement and advice is to really a consistently ask yourself if you need to get up and like go touch grass. I think that if you're coming to that point where you're so impatient and you're so discouraged, the likelihood of you having stared at the screen or your phone for too long is very evident. Yeah. Uh, and so, um, it's also hard for
• 40:30 - 41:00 me sometimes when it's cold outside. Sure. Because like when it's cold, I don't want to take a walk. When it's cold, you know, my wife and I tend to not go for walks or or go to a park or do those things that help you detach. And so, like it the easiest thing to do when it's cold outside is to stay inside and watch YouTube or Yeah. But this can be something else. It can be folding your laundry. It can be doing the dishes. It can be cleaning the window or
• 41:00 - 41:30 cleaning the shower. Probably clean your room. Many of you probably need to either, you know, scrub your your flower your flower your shower floor or you need to finish your laundry or put it put it from the washer most likely or clean your room or something or your closet something. I mean, I'm heavily influenced by my surrounding when it comes to my creativity. Yeah. if the space is clean and and and free of clutter. But I think that what I'm coming back to the point here is like doing something like whether it be going
• 41:30 - 42:00 to the gym, taking a bike ride, going outside to walk, doing the laundry, doing the dishes, these are all easily achievable things that are not hindered by any sort of digital presence and they will be complete once you do them. And I think it when you when you complete something, it motivates you to move forward to the next thing. So I think that I have I mean I think I have more advice that I'm going to do in a much bigger longer kind of supportive video
• 42:00 - 42:30 later. But that would be my immediate more practical. The the stop comparing is very very important. And then on the practical what can you get up and do? I would say um break your goals down for sure. Break your goals down and also manage your screen time. The paralysis that I have is like let's say my goal is to have the website be done. Yep. That's a that's a big goal, you know, and maybe it's work on this page. Maybe it's work on this header,
• 42:30 - 43:00 you know, or like work on this copy for this page in this hour block of time. But I don't I I'm bad at breaking down those goals. And so like you just want to be like I always be like done. And so like when and then you have to backtrack and do it while it's the goal that I set before myself which was too big of a goal in the first place is not achieved then I feel like a I'm like forcing failure on myself by not just giving myself a smaller goal to have ticked off you know. Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely.
• 43:00 - 43:30 Sucks. I got to get better at that. We all do. Yeah. All right. I hope you all have enjoyed this little creative therapy session. Uh again, not a licensed therapist. Never claimed to be. This was just a kind of helpful on our own. We wanted to do this conversation about impatience, delaying gratification, making goals. So, I would love for you all to have answered those questions on your own time and maybe share one of the most influential ones in the comments or if there is a topic
• 43:30 - 44:00 in the subtopics that we talked about, feel free to comment that down below and we can do future videos. Yeah, that'd be cool. pick one question. Yeah, pick one question to answer and if there's something else you want to learn more of um or something else that you think you would find helpful, drop that below so we can check it out. Everything you need to find in terms of other extracurricular links and things like that is down in the description. If you're new to KD and this is your kind of first interaction with us, KD's actually a design tool. You can learn all about it on our
• 44:00 - 44:30 YouTube channel. I won't keep you here much longer. I thank you so much for watching this video and we will see you in the next one. Bye. [Music]