Advice

The Result Isn’t The Thing

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com, Steve’s Tumblr, and Pillowfort.  Find out more at my newsletter, and all my social media at my linktr.ee)

In a recent discussion with Serdar – which seems to drive no small amount of my posts apparently – we were discussing writing and results. Both of us being writers, we’ve both put out a lot of, well, product in the form of books, blog posts, zines, and so on. We’ve also encountered many people who somehow can’t get product out, endlessly not finishing things.

(Also I hate calling my writing product. I also hate calling it content. But I digress, possibly enough to have a followup blog post.)

My terminology hangups assigned,I kept thinking about how people wanted to finish product (ugh) but never got to it. Never got a book done, couldn’t get a blog post out, and so on. They would talk about finishing but never get it done. Yet product was on their mind.

This got me thinking about how the focus on product is a problem, because product isn’t writing. Product is the result of writing. It’s the result of a process.

To write you have to write. Put pen to paper, finger to keyboard, and do it.

Except you also have to plot. You have to write things down, make plans, possibly throw them all away. You have to come up with what to say be it a mystery or the narrative you tell in a business advice book on textiles.

(Trust me, any good nonfiction book has narratives, it’s how humans think).

But to get to all that plotting you also need ideas. Brainstorming. Thinking things up. Trying things out. Breaking down in frustration and eating pastries when they don’t work (apple fritter is my preference here).

Then once you do all of the above and get something written you have to get beta readers, edit, run it through legal. If you’re self-published there’s formatting, covers, setting up, marketing.

Then, only then, do you have a product (again, ugh), because of a process. The actual book, the actual blog post, or wherever, is a small part of writing and publishing. Also by the time you’re done you’re probably on to something else, possibly to avoid thinking about the book you just put out.

But the product is just what a process produces, and unless you’re into the process you won’t get out the product. Endless speculation on the final product keeps you from getting it done. I say this having written any number of things, some stunningly mediocre, but at least they were done and real. And yes, I moved on because I love the process of writing.

I think the endless enchantment of the end result deceives us. We feel it can’t be reached, we feel it must be a certain thing, or we can see it but not get there. But it misses that you just keep going keep trying, keep putting one metaphorical foot in front of the other, and write. Yes it may not be what you expected – it probably never is – but it’s done and out.

I also think this is why the fascination with AI is so powerful for some people. They imagine product dropped in their lap or made for them, ready for a bit of editing and then delivery. But the thing is that’s not the process, the real lives experience, the building of skill, the you saying something. It’s not about being a writer.

And if you want to be a writer, you embrace the process (sometimes gingerly) and write until you’re done. Or done enough. Or just disgusted so you toss it out into the world. But it’s done.

Steven Savage

This Meeting Didn’t Need To Be An Email

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com, Steve’s Tumblr, and Pillowfort.  Find out more at my newsletter, and all my social media at my linktr.ee)

There’s a joke we’ve all heard – and probably repeated – “this meeting could have been an email.” It’s popular because it’s true, we’ve all had the meeting that could have been an email, and let’s be honest we’ve probably held those meetings. We’re all part of the problem.

But I’d like to argue that this joke wrong in some cases. That meeting didn’t need to be an email. That meeting didn’t need to exist in any form – email, chat, and so on – and that’s the real issue.

Am I going to analyze a joke about having too many meetings? Yes I am. If you don’t like it, send me an email.

So let’s take a look at this joke. We wasted a bunch of time getting people into a room, virtual or otherwise, to discuss things or share data. Some of us probably didn’t need to be there, certainly some of us didn’t want to be there. The end results probably could have been done in an email, not necessarily even a chain, just one.

The joke isn’t quite as funny when you analyze it, is it?

But here’s the thing. The meeting in question – or the email in question – is held because something had to be settled or something had to be done, or something had to be cleared up. Be it a meeting or email, something had to be done because something else didn’t.

So the real question is what was needed to avoid the meeting or the email that could have replaced it.

Was there some document that didn’t exist so people had to discuss it? Was there a signoff that could have been automated but is instead 5 people in meeting knowing 3 of them didn’t need to be there? Did people just not talk in the past and now you’re sitting in an actual room for hours because you could have done something earlier?

That meeting didn’t need to be an email. It needed to be a process. It needed to be an accurate help document. It needed to be a form in your software. It needed to be something that didn’t waste people’s time. It needed to not happen.

Now I am going to defend meetings as I schedule them as part of my job. But a good meeting is held when needed and should prevent even more time-consuming things from happening. A good meeting prevents other meetings.

But we shouldn’t just replace meetings with email. We have to make as many unnecessary.

Steven Savage

Grinding On In Hope

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com, Steve’s Tumblr, and Pillowfort.  Find out more at my newsletter, and all my social media at my linktr.ee)

2022 seems to be a line of unmitigated tragedy.  COVID continues to rampage, Russia invades Ukraine, the economy teeters, the news is full of bullshit, and there are multiple school shootings.  Even though we see hope in Ukraine, the other issues wear on us.

I’m sure you feel that grinding awfulness, and in time you want to give up.  I can offer you this advice – don’t.  Take a rest, take a break, get away, but don’t give up.

The one thing we can do is keep going in the face of all this awfulness.  We can fight for what matters, we can stick to what’s meaningful to us, we can not quit.  Quitting is the one thing that guarantees a worse world.

This isn’t just a moral statement, it’s a statement about meaning in our lives.  When we give up then we’re no longer ourselves, we’re a shadow waiting for harsh light to erase us.  In motion there is hope that what matters to us can continue to matter, to sustain, to grow, to return.  We need this motion not just to be good people but to stay sane.

Humans are a process.  When we stop, we’re just not people, just not ourselves.

So as hard as things are now – and I know they’re hard – don’t give up.  Keep going, even if “going” involves a rest for now.  Keep being you – that you, that process, might just get us out of this mess, or at least you.  Until we get out of this, at least you’ll be yourself when you’re in motion.

Steven Savage