The paradox of being creative but lazy

Every day, you wake up with a million artistic ideas. A book you could write, a business with your friend, a song you could start. So you start planning, writing it down, thinking it out, watching, and observing others to plan the perfect strategy only to just not have enough time in the day to start. Your ambition is so strong that you won't settle for anything less than perfection. But in pursuit of perfection, you forgot the most important part to just fucking start. Trapped in this perfection paralysis, where now your ambition has morphed into self-sabotage. No matter how badly you want it, you spend hours scrolling, consuming, planning, researching, and thinking while making little to no actual progress toward the thing that you said mattered most. And then every internet guru tells you you're lazy, not good enough. You need to grind more. Pick up yourself by your bootstraps or optimize your life where this thing or that thing before, "Oh, they so conveniently sell you a course on how to do so." They are wrong. It is not that you're lacking in ambition, but you are addicted to perfection. When the idea for a project is so perfect in your mind before it even exists and infinite number of possibilities, the dream is exciting specifically because it hasn't been tested by the harsh realities of the world. But in an imperfect world, nothing is perfect. So to bring the idea to life almost feels like you're ruining it, because it can never live up to the version of it you created in your head. So instead of creating, we collect ideas. Instead of building, we plan, instead of making imperfect work, we stay trapped in an endless cycle of preparation. It's a strange contradiction. How can somebody be so ambitious, yet so unbelievably unproductive at the exact same time? That is the paradox of being ambitious, but lazy. And why the same dopamine system that keeps you glued to your phone or your computer screen is also the thing preventing you from doing the best creative work that you're most capable of. So how do you break out of this cycle? Being so ambitious in the morning, yet so lazy, and tired, and just can't get seemed to get the idea out in the afternoon. Well, that is exactly the question we set out to solve here today. Welcome back to Nikki at night. I am your host Nikki Reardon, and this is a random video topic that was actually inspired by something I saw on TikTok, a video of the same title. By this YouTuber named Lindsay, and I think is what it says. I'll put her at and everything on screen. And it's just one of those videos that stuck with me. I find it very interesting when you can consume like 100 TikToks a day, and not remember any of them tomorrow. But if there's one you're still thinking about a week from now, it's like, there's got to be a reason for that, right? And her whole take about this, you know, paradox of ambition and laziness and productivity and creativity was so interesting to me. Because there's many things about it, I agree with, but also some things about it that like I saw in a completely different way, which was so fascinating. And I've always wanted to like one of my life dreams is to write a book, kind of like my own version of like the artist's way for the creative act by Rick Rubin. Or I was a thought of like starting a sub stack in the past, where I do like a sort of weekly like artist statement, like very artist way type by where it's like something we all do together all the time. I don't know. I was just feeling inspired. Hey, it happens sometimes, you know. So how do you escape from this paradox of being ambitious, but lazy? The problem manifests itself differently and different people that I have tried to like boil down into four different archetypes. Number one, the perfectionist, number two, the potentialist, number three, the strategist, and number four, the overthinker. I think we're all a bit of each, but I'm going to walk through them one at a time. And I think you'll really realize like which one resonates most with you. Let's start with the perfectionist being a perfectionist is just another form of procrastination. And in imperfect world, nothing is perfect. And the version of the thing you created in your head is always more exciting because it did not have to face the harsh realities of the world and the imperfect society that we live in. Like perfection is a fictional concept. It is entirely subjective. What is a perfect song to you is not a perfect song to me is not a perfect song to Betty Sue down the block. So to pursue this idea of perfection is like chasing after the Loch Ness monster, like it's just you will never find it. You will never get there. And what's so interesting about perfectionism is I feel like it is especially a plague for very talented, intelligent people because you are good at what you do. So much so that the bar of expectation you have for your output is higher than everyone else, like you won't settle for anything less than this idea of something great or perfect or amazing. And that actually prevents you from having output, like the more skilled you become, the less you feel like you can actually make things and get them out because the standard that you hold for yourself increases in tandem with skill. That is why the price of perfection is to never even start because you get trapped in this idea of the right time or the right thing or the right way or the right hook or the right visual or the right. And you're just you're just not starting. You're just procrastinating. And it's a very, very tough thing to do because then there's eternal what if right. Well, if I had done it this way, then it would have done better if I had done this than that and like you just have to let it be good. It's not perfect. It's just good. I think it was a high school English teacher said this to me and it's a quote that stuck with me for years. He said, don't let good be the enemy of great. A lot of people chase perfection and greatness and the thing being exactly how they had it in their mind. But it's just very good. Something that's very good is just good. It doesn't have to be this fictional idea of perfect or this thing that you have created in your brain. It is just good is just good. And so often people are willing to throw away good to try and get to perfect when perfect doesn't exist. That is why I think you know, again, this when you talk about like the archetype of the perfectionist that I see here is like the first paint stroke is always the most difficult. You don't know what the rest of the picture looks like. You don't know how the colors need to blend. You don't know what is the perspective of everything else on the page, right? And it feels so difficult to take that first stroke, but like you can go back and repaint it. That's like a very tough thing is that life feels so finite, and it feels like all these things that we do are so like out there, you know what I mean? And that you can't go back, but like the first step of your career, it doesn't have to look like the last step of your career. You know, sometimes you just have to make the thing exist before you can make the thing good. And it's a very tough thing again, especially when you're when you're good at something and you have a standard that you hold yourself to or a thing that you're trying to achieve. But you are letting good be the enemy of great, you know what I mean? Like just make something that's good and you and perfection will come as a result of progress. So how do you stop being a perfectionist? Number one, you have to learn how to make bad art. It is a skill that is difficult to internalize and like lead with of like I am going to make something bad today and I don't care. Like I am going to make something that is intentionally not the best it could be. I'm not going to try to make the best it could be because I understand that like I need to make progress today. My goal was not to be perfect today. My goal was to be better than I was yesterday. I think when you frame it like that, you know, you will achieve perfection. You know, I also think was especially with creative work. Like so much of the best things happen by accident. There are an infinite number of stories about an artist that had their biggest song that they almost didn't put on the album. Or how they made this song with this beat and then they scrapped it for three years. But then they found that beat again later and then made a new song on it. You know what I mean? Like everything is like a piece of the puzzle that is contributing to this larger image of your life. And trying to like be like I'm not going to put any pieces in the puzzle until I know exactly where every single one is going to go perfectly is not the fastest way to finish the puzzle. Like you will not get there and also it's way more difficult. Taking it in chunks and just understanding like I don't need to know how these things connect. I just need to do them. And like one day they will make sense and like contribute to the same image. Um, is I think what the sort of quote unquote solution to perfectionism is. And I think like placing restrictions on yourself is so important. You know, I am a big believer in placing an intentional time restriction. If you are working on some video or song or whatever, you're like in two hours, it will be done. Like the version I have in two hours is what is going out. And forcing yourself, like actually holding yourself to those standards. I think you'll be surprised how more creative you can be when you channel yourself and like focus the stream of consciousness to this one source. Um, I think actually ends up making everything better. Number two, we have what I call the potentialist. This is somebody who is so excited and creative and into so many different things that they have so many options that they can never seem to pick one. It's very when I said in the beginning, right? Like you want to do everything so you end up doing nothing. You are full of ideas yet you somehow never finish any of them. You are addicted to potential because potential isn't When the idea lives in your mind, they are perfect and exciting and limitless before they even exist. So to bring one of those things into reality always feels like a negative emotion. It feels like you are only experiencing the gap between what is and what was in your mind. When what's in your mind is not real. And instead of feeling like you gained something by making the one thing, you feel like you lost something because you could have made it in 50 other ways. This is something called the paradox of choice. It is a psychological term, popularized by the psychologist's name is Barry Schwartz. It is this idea that the more options we have, the less satisfied we feel with our decision. This phenomenon occurs because having too many choices requires more cognitive effort, leading to decision fatigue and increased regret over our choices. The very fascinating example of this that I love is Trader Joe's The Grocery Store. Trader Joe intentionally utilizes this psychological phenomenon that they call the paradox of choice, where if you were to go into any other grocery store and say, "I want chocolate chip cookie dough." You will walk up to the aisle and you will see Pillsbury, the croat were brand, Nestle, all the chocolate companies. Then there's a new, there's a Reese's Peter Butter one, then there's like there's 50 options in front of you. If you go to Trader Joe's and you want chocolate chip cookie dough, there's one. There's literally one that you can buy and they have said that they believe this reduction of options actually makes the consumer more passionate and excited and confident in the things they buy from the store because I want a cookie so I got cookie dough. It's not like I want a cookie so I was debating between what size of chocolate chip cookie and then also do I want Reese's but also like, "Oh, my friend that might be coming over, I don't know if he can eat punny punny but I don't know." When you add in all these factors you start to the what if sets in and this is, I think something we hold in all of our lives. There is the classic Sylvia Plath and the fig tree analogy that I think describes this phenomenon in life so well. I'm going to read sort of the poem too. This is a big on Tumblr for the girls that were in there. It's a classic. It's got very famous on the internet, this poem. She says quote, "I saw my life branching out me. Like the green fig tree in the story." From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future, beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, another fig was a famous poet and another fig, a brilliant professor, and another fig was EG, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantine and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion and beyond and above these figs were many more figs, I couldn't quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree starving to death just because I couldn't make up my mind of which figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest. And as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle, go black, and one by one they plodged to the ground at my feet. And this is the potentialist to a core. It is somebody who looks at life in its opportunity costs. Like to do this thing means that I didn't do this other thing. To make this thing this way means I didn't make it that way. The solution to this is you learn more by doing than thinking of doing. So much of the creative process is trial and error. People view life trajectory in this sort of like line graph type way. When in actuality again, I think it's more like a puzzle. Every action you take puts another piece into the board. And it might take a long time before these pieces connect with one another. But they are all contributing to the same picture. You might do something for three years that makes you meet this one person and then three years later that one person brings you this work opportunity on this thing. Or maybe you get some job which makes you move to some city and you hate that job and you do it for two years. But in that city you meet the partner who you end up marrying. Right? Like so many of these things like that you don't understand how they connect. You don't understand how like the potential of each thing is not quantifiable and attempt to do so is just agonizing. It's agonizing yourself. You're like only looking at things in what could have been instead of understanding that like I am on the path to what will be no matter what. It's a very tough thing to realize, but when I go back I think about so many moments of my life that just had to be that way. You just had to fall out with this one friend because that made you meet these other group of friends that are now the closest people you've ever had or you know how having your one significant other break up with you made you learn a lot about yourself. Whatever. Like you don't know. You're trying to apply this very finite solution to a world of infinite possibility. And that's just not how it works. That's just not how it works. So like you have to understand that like there is this trial and error. Like yeah you didn't choose those other things that doesn't mean you can't choose them later on. It also doesn't mean that choosing the thing you did choose was wrong. Sometimes you go down a path to quickly realize why that path was not meant for you. Learn what you didn't like about it and then you take that experience into 20 other things for the rest of your life. Right? Like life experiences are cumulative. We look at them in this very like hyper individualized way, but it's it's that it's it's you don't know what is like building the foundation of your life. And again like when talking about happy accidents in the work like to deny yourself starting or making something or making something bad, you deny yourself the ability for accidents, the ability for luck so much of life is fucking luck. Like so many random things just happen well or happen bad and like that's life. But if you do nothing, you get none of that. And like you have to understand that like yeah, maybe there is this lottery system luck system to aspects in life. So like get as many lottery tickets as you can. Don't focus on like, should I pick this number or like should I pick that number? Like you don't know the any number is just just get as many as you possibly can. And like that is how you have the highest probability of success. Number three is what I call the strategist. You are a thinker, not a doer. You love to write a list, take notes, put together a slide deck, anything you can do to rev the engine of your brain until oh, the day is over. I guess I'll actually start tomorrow. Your preparation has become just another form of procrastination. You spend so much time thinking about the idea. You never actually do the idea. And that is because you are confusing preparation with creation. There is this book I love called Atomic Habits by James Claire. It's a very famous book if you guys have read it. And he talks a lot about this idea. He describes it as motion versus action. We get that rush of dopamine when you do things like plan or strategize or organize those are activities he describes as motion. Like you're helping yourself, you're getting momentum in a little bit. But motion is not action. Action is the work that is required to finish the product. Motion would be me writing this Google doc for the video today. Action is me looking at the camera right fucking now. Right? Like one of those things is necessary. The other one is helpful. People love to focus on the things that are very easy and feel very helpful. And you get that instant dopamine hit and that like rush of achievement. Again, when you are like the strategist archetype, I feel like you like that process. You are maybe very type A or you just like to organize things or you enjoy those aspects of creativity and the planning and the strategy. This is the one that I very much feel like I am the most. I am very much like this at times. One of the solutions that like really changed my life is to have missions instead of goals. I think the entire way we set goals is completely wrong. For a lot of people there, like my goal is to make this amount of money. My goal is to get this amount of followers or have this amount of streams on the song. Or have, right? Like we view goals only in the sense of output. And I want you to shift your goals to inputs, right? Instead of I want to have 100,000 followers. It is I want to make five videos a week because the output you cannot control. You cannot control it. You don't know when it will happen. And so like to set your goal on it is not really doing anything. But to set your goal on inputs on the actions required to achieve that result. Very doable. Like if you make five videos a day every week for 10 weeks, you'll get there. Like you will get there. Like it's a very, very attainable thing if you actually stick to that. That builds like real foundation and real routine. You know, I think another interesting thing about goals is that like they're very unfulfilling. So often in life you have a goal, you achieve it and it feels great for like two weeks. And then by week three that euphoria has worn off and it's your new norm now. And you have to set a new goal in order to feel excitement or achievement. And so the goal didn't really get you anywhere. You know, because it's not built. and he's sort of like lasting impact, right? But when you focus on these inputs, right? Like if you actually achieved the goal of making five videos a week, sorry, and you did that for four weeks, you have built a habit in your life of like discipline and regimented like scheduling that you will then carry on with like all of the other things. And then again in the month two, it's then you figure out how to make them good, right? Like you just step one is making them exist in a finite schedule. Step two is making them good, right? Like the people view that those two things have to happen in tandem, but I completely disagree. I have made many terrible things. I continue to make terrible things all the time. I, one of the things that I think I'm proud of myself for is I will make terrible shit all the time, you know? And like I take pride in that that I don't focus so much on the outcome. I focus more on like channeling the idea into existence. It sometimes takes four or five times before I like the existence of the idea becomes a good idea. But I don't think it would have gotten there without that, right? Like you learn more by doing than thinking of doing always. And to not do means that you will not learn and to not learn means that you will not improve and to not improve is when you, again, you feel this burnout and you're like stuck in place all the time. Our type number four is what I call the overthinker. This is someone who has such a fear of being perceived or to be seen trying. You spend so much time and energy thinking about how people will react to the work that it prevents you from doing the work altogether. This paradox isn't I don't want success badly enough. It is I want success so badly that I will protect myself from the possibility of failure by not even starting. There is no such thing as failure. And what you need to realize is there is no such thing as failure only data collection. Every action you take in life will inform the next action. Even when it's negative, you learn what not to do. There is this misconception that when you do something, it is either a failure or success and that those are like mutually exclusive events. When in actuality, it is like failure until success. Failure is a part of succeeding. I want you to remember when you learned how to ride a bike at like seven years old. You got on it and you fell over a few times and you scraped your elbows. But then scraping your elbows taught you how to not fall over anymore until one day you rode the bike and never fell over again. You could have made a PowerPoint presentation about the bike. You can stare at the bike. You can study the bike. You can call your other friends. You know how to ride the bike and ask them to describe it to you. But at the end of the day, you fucking learned by falling over. That is how you learn. Failure is a part of success. So, scrape your fucking elbows, dude. Scream down as much as you can, as quickly as you can, and as many aspects as you can. Because like that is the fastest way to achieve the result you want is to just do it and suck at it and then learn how to not suck at it, right? Through that process. So many people, you know, the overthinker is trapped there. They're trapped with this ability to have the work be seen poorly or to be seen trying at something that they're not a master at yet. And that anxiety petrifies them into just never starting. But then by never starting, they guarantee the failure that they're so afraid of. And that's what's so fascinating about it to me. It's like, like, well, yeah, you can make something and it might be good, it might be bad. And it might work, it might not. But if you don't make anything at all, you're not going to go anywhere, you know? And like, that is just the reality that you have to internalize. And when that's when I think like a lot of ambition tends to die, I say, like, complacency kills ambition. Your dreams are going to die, not because you gave up on them or went through some huge rejection, but because your life got comfortable, because you got a stable job with a great income, you stopped looking for a job that fulfills you creatively. Because you have great friends, you stopped trying to make new friends. Because you're feeling creatively fulfilled, you stop experimenting with new forms of creativity. Because you are happy, you stop looking for a new source of happiness. Like, complacency and comfort is just this slow death of all our dreams and ambitions, where it's not sad. Like, that's why, you know, it actually feels very good. It feels like all these things are surrounded by this positive emotion and like, you gotta, and like, so much so that you lose track of like, what your purpose was in the first place. And then you fall into that trap of feeling very, very good until one of those things in your life doesn't work out the way it does. And which is inevitable, you know, maybe it's a job, but you get laid off or it's a partner who you end up breaking up. And then you're hit with all of the reality all at once, right? Where you're like, holy fuck, I got just got laid off from this job. Now I'm stressing being unemployed. And also I spend the last three years gaining experience and something that I actually don't even want to fucking do for the rest of my life. So now you're double fucked. You're fucked because you're like scared about jobs and move on. And then you're like, am I behind? And how do I start this thing? And I didn't think of dooba. That is where the overthinker, again, is like, is trapped, right? They thought so much about the thing that it scared them, that they never did it. So they got complacent. So they never took the actions required to go where they want to go until eventually something happens. And it hits them all at once. It's a very tough thing. So how do you get unstuck? Like in general, in all aspects, like, how do you stop feeling that creative burnout? I feel like I have a decent solution for this. I don't know. Maybe I do, maybe it'll help you. Maybe this is just me. I very much believe that like human beings are momentum based creatures. Like when you are up, you are up, you know, like you had a great day with your friends. You guys hung out and then you wake up the next morning in a great mood and your coffee tastes better. And you go on a walk because you're, you have energy because you're in a great mood. Then because you went on a walk, you have all these endorphins from the sun. And then you go to work with such a positive attitude. Like everything is like momentum based inversely. We get into some deep, negative, fucking spirals, dark, depressive spirals, right? Where like you had a really bad day at work. So when you get home, you're very, very tired and feeling sorry for yourself. And then because you're tired, you don't go to the gym. And then because you didn't go to the gym, you feel even more insecure about yourself, which goes for your triggers. And maybe your trigger is like you eat junk food for dinner. And then you wake up the next morning and you're like, wow, I feel like such a failure because I ate so poorly yesterday and I didn't go to the gym and I didn't do that thing. I was going to say that I was going to do. And now you're starting the day having to catch up on all that and then you're in a bad mood because you're behind and then you're stressed and like, then you have to go to work again, right? Like do you see like every work constantly in this like spiraling, right? Like either up or down, I think like the momentum of the last action of life, like kind of drives your perspective of the next thing. When you find yourself in one of these weird spirals, especially the negative ones, you have to like, man, you factor a positive feedback loop. Like you have to literally stop what you're doing, stop everything and like figure out how to how to make it positive, right? And I think a big way of doing that is just like building momentum today. Sometimes you might not be able to start today. That happens. Like it just happens. If you say that five days in a row, you're fucking procrastinating and like, you're shit together. But one day's fine, right? And when you're having that one day, where you just like, can not fucking get it together and get it started, you have to manufacture this positive feedback loop, right? Maybe you go to the gym, maybe you clean your apartment, maybe you do your laundry. Maybe you have a FaceTime with your mom who you don't talk to in a long time and it cheers you up or you talk to your friend about this thing or you go in the park or whatever. You are undoing the negative spiral and like forcing it back up there. And sometimes what you have to do is just like create momentum today and decrease the friction of tomorrow. Yeah, maybe you couldn't start physically. Maybe you do those things that I said, decreasing the friction of tomorrow. You're like, you know what? I can't start today, but I am going to do every household tour that I have to do tomorrow. It's that tomorrow when I lock the fuck in, there's nothing to distract me or no obligation I have besides this thing. That, you know, is how you can like make today help tomorrow. And then the other thing I always say is like you cannot expect new outputs in life without doing new inputs. If you want to have new types of friends, a new job, new anything, you have to do new things. Like you can't just expect yourself to magically have this well of inspiration and ideas. If you are doing the same shit that you've done every day for the past six days when you didn't have ideas, it's just never going to happen, dude, like literally never, right? Even if it's like you are trying to brainstorm and force yourself to do something and like going to a coffee shop that you normally don't sit in and just sitting there for an hour while you do that thing. Any sort of like new input will create new outputs. They might not be your desired outputs at the at the beginning or whatever, but like when you are at that place where it feels like you can't output anything at all, start doing new inputs. start finding new. ways to make the task fun and enjoyable. Find a way to pair something you don't wanna do with a really, really positive stimulus, right? So, I'll give a random example. I don't know, I fucking love coffee. Every morning when I wake up, the first thing on my brain is coffee before I even, the second my feet hit the floor, I am getting dressed to go to the coffee shop by my house, right? Like that is why I'm getting out of bed in the morning. And it's like, if you had that way, if that feeling, like, okay, bring your notebook and sit in the coffee shop with your coffee to brainstorm five video ideas and write them out and script them all out, right? Like while you're drinking your coffee, so you're pairing this thing you don't wanna do and would procrastinate with this thing that you seem are very, very excited to do, right? Or maybe you're trying to exercise more. So you're like, okay, like, you can get up and go to the coffee shop, but like, you gotta walk there. And like, that's the reward, you know what I mean? You're taking this thing, you don't wanna do and pairing it was something that you do want to do. And in doing so, you make the negative stimulus not as negative, you know what I mean? Or at least you attach some feeling of like, worth or desired outcome to it that makes it a desirable behavior in the first place. And this is also what I was saying earlier again about like, I'm a big believer in like building systems of your life. Like when I was talking about goals and how, you know, like goals, they end, they're very finite, right? But like, when you do, when you have these input-based goals of like, you know, I'm gonna make five videos a day or whatever. Like, even if you don't end up making five videos a week, six months from now, like, if you do it for four months, you at the very least have like, built, I'm used to waking up every morning and I'm used to creating and ideating and putting something out in the world, right? That is a piece of you. You will take to the other aspects of your life. But to not do anything at all is not helping you at all. In conclusion, you are maybe not as lazy as you think you are. (laughs) You are very ambitious, you're very talented, you're very smart, you have big dreams and ideas and a vision of what you want your life to be and that's fucking awesome. That's so much better than these boring bitches who just don't do anything with their life at all. (laughs) No, like that is exciting and worth celebrating. Also with that comes discipline, you know? Like, I say this is somebody with, I am before though I get the comments will, I thought that was ADHD or I thought that I have this, but maybe I mean, same, I'm medicated. I have a violence prescription. Like, I have ADHD. You can still have a discipline problem. (laughs) You can, I know, I'm sorry, it's hard to hear. But it's the truth, you know? And like, that is okay. Like, don't try and ignore the problem. Try and find the solution. I think it's like, what is the thesis of this video? And I hope it's helpful in some way, right? Of like, really diagnosing, not just, I don't start, why don't I start? Why do I feel that way? What is holding me back? And how can I implement actions to get there? Did that make sense? (laughs) I don't know, I hope so. Thank you so much again to Lindsay and the YouTuber, Lindsay, Lindsay, Lindsay and, (laughs) who have this video topic. It was really, really awesome. And it inspired me, you know? Hey, kind of on theme of the video. (laughs) But yeah, thank you all so much for coming this week. I love you very dearly. Hey, happy Fourth of July. Also, it's my birthday week, I think, at the time it's coming out. I was born on July 3rd. I don't know when this is coming out. Love you, bye.