Why It Feels Like the Right Time to Be Brave and Pivot

24/6/2018

Elements of articulated paper doll with post title:

6 months into my Make Something Every Week project (MSEW).

And I feel I’ve learned most of what this project - in its current form - has to teach me.

“{Pivot}...making a change in strategy, without a change in vision”. Eric Ries - The Lean Startup

My initial aims for the project were to increase my creative output whilst developing ideas for accessibly-priced products to complement my labour-intensive Artist’s Books.

As a by-product of this process, I also envisaged

improving my craft and honing my creative voice by working with the same materials I use for making my Artist’s Books
increasing my capacity to accurately assess the scale of projects before leaping into them
learning to avoid ‘function creep’ during the creative process.

Although I conceived of the project as lasting a year, six months feels like enough to see what it is and isn’t going to yield:

1. Increased creative output

I’ve definitely made quite a few ‘somethings’ over these last six months, but I haven’t made one every week.

The main reasons are:

not being able to adjust quickly enough from completing one project into making something different the following week
taking longer than a week to complete a new idea

The most productive weeks have been when I’ve made iterations of the same idea but, ultimately, I began to find that counter-productive. i.e. I was just making ‘another one’ in order to not have to think about starting something new from scratch.

But more important than how many products I’ve made, has been repeatedly going through the completion cycle.

I’ve got much more comfortable with calling, ‘Done’.

2. Accessibly-priced products

After not having a clue where I was going with the products, very suddenly (as is so often the way with these things), one day I just knew.

I’ll talk more about my ideas later as this is at the heart of my need to ‘pivot’.

3. Improving my craft and honing my creative voice

Six months of working with the same selection of card, paper, paint and glue have definitely taught me a lot.

I know what the materials will and won’t do and how to avoid most of the problems I hit at the beginning.

I’ve also learned some short-cuts to make certain aspects of my process faster - predominantly paint less, cut and stick more!

As for my creative voice, I feel comfortable with where it’s at. I don’t think much is going to change for a while. I’ve got hunkered in with a set of tools and motifs, and I find myself referencing my previous work in new pieces - a sure sign that my voice is consolidating.

A selection of items I made during 6 months of Make Something Every Week © Cherry Jeffs 2018

4. Improved capacity to assess scale of projects and avoiding ‘function creep’

I’ve learned that my difficulties in assessing how long a project will take, and function creep are two sides of the same problem:

That large projects are not ‘a thing’ but rather a series of sub-projects, each with its own set of tools and procedures.

As I’ve gradually got better at acknowledging the completion of a sub-project as something worthy of DONE, I’m able to more realistically assess the timescale for the completion of the ensuing sub-projects.

So why is it time to pivot?

Reading Jon Acuff's book, Finish recently, helped me recognise my tendency to carry on doing something because I’ve said I would.

This is one of my personal ‘secret rules’ that I let derail me.

“...perfectionism loves to distract us, and what better way than confusing your real goal with some fake secret rules.”Jon Acuff - Finish: Give Yourself the Gift of Done

The book reminded me to ask,

“What’s my real goal?”

Turns out making something every weeks wasn’t the goal.

The real goal was to find accessibly-priced products to complement my Artist’s Books.

It was simply that by making something every week, I figured I could cycle through a lot of ideas quickly.

So great, that worked! I now know broadly what this first range of products are going to look like.

“Make sure that what you’re chasing is actually what you want to catch. As you progress with your goal you should continue to come back to this gut-check question because it’s really easy to get off track despite your best intentions.”Jon Acuff - Finish: Give Yourself the Gift of Done

In the blogpost I wrote in January after my first month of MSEW, I wrote that I was,

“...excited to see where the project leads me...inevitably not where I imagine it will!”

At that time, I was thinking primarily of products I could sell alongside my artist’s books in fairs.

But since then, Etsy has been leaping out in front of me over and over - in all different contexts - and somehow the decision to open an Etsy store seems to have made itself.

Once that decision formed in my mind, then downloadable products seemed the obvious way to go.

I can’t guarantee which country I’ll be in at any given time, so packing up and posting stuff is just not an option.

I’m no stranger to making downloadable products, and I’m certainly not in the market for a third party distributor at this stage.

What my pivot looks like

While I’d like to keep up the brisk pace of completion that 6 months of MSEW has given me, my focus for the next 6 months will be to complete as many downloadable products as I can ready to launch my Etsy store.

Will I still be calling the project Make Something Every Week? The jury’s still out on that one ;)

UPDATE: Having got my direction clear in my mind, I decided to postpone working on my downloadable products until 2019. I had other digital projects to complete in 2018 and, due to an old repetitive strain injury, I have to limit the time I spend on my computer.