I often struggle with the age-old question: What do I want to be when I grow up? And no, I don’t mean in the sense that I want to change careers for the hundredth time. I have fully accepted that I am a performance coach by trade, and a systems and tools builder by business. What I do mean is that I struggle with what my creative outlet should be if money were no object.
In performance coaching, we ask this question to entrepreneurs in order to extract the client’s “big why,” or higher purpose. One of my mentor’s called it the “billion dollar question.” What would you do with your time if someone cut you a check for a billion dollars. Sure you would do some traveling, maybe some charity work. You would probably buy a bunch of expensive toys. But after three to five years of doing such things, what next? What would your day to day look like after you returned to your home. Not your new home, but your real home.
Why I feel like I struggle with this question is the same reason why most entrepreneurs might. We tend to visualize the result of doing something and focus on the feeling that result gets us, all the while bypassing what feeling the process of creating the result gives us. Want to create a YouTube channel? We get focused on the view count and the income potential of capturing people’s attention with our chosen subject. But focus on the process of content ideation, or the subtle art of editing and production? Outsourceable. All of it.
My wife is a classical musician by trade. She has also recently taken up group fitness instruction. She is even getting into reformer pilates. I see her wake up every day, and get right to “work” on whatever it is she is doing. For her music, preparing is mostly not for a concert. It’s the simple act of practicing scales in thirds, or slowing that orchestral excerpt down to .25x tempo that truly excites her. It’s the act of watching the same reformer video on YouTube for the hundredth time, learning every single move down to the smallest motion, that she obsesses over. I have so much admiration for the attention to detail I see her give her vocations, that it borders on jealousy.
For me, I haven’t found that thing yet. I do things outside of work… cycling, play guitar, reading, writing… But I haven’t found the process I obsess over yet. And part of me believes there are some things I haven’t given enough of a chance. I often envision what it would be like to cycle a race and finish, but the truth is, cycling fulfills a need for adventure for me, not a need for self-improvement. The mental and physical benefits of intense cardiovascular work coupled with the beauty of God’s creation… that’s why I cycle. Not to improve. So what does that say? Must obsessing over the process involve getting 1% better? Can’t it simply be about doing the thing?
I know one thing for certain. I get out of bed every day and can’t wait to create something. But the reason I get out of bed is not the something that I’ve created yet, but rather the artful process of creating the thing.
My advice? Obsess over the process of creating.
Nardis Prose 
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