Overcoming Creative Resistance

In this one, we will go through:

• My approach to overcoming Resistance

• Objections to adapting AI to creativity

And as always, at the bottom, you have a selection of the news of the week to stay updated and spark your curiosity, as well as cool tools and lessons that can enhance your life.

That’s damn right!

(approx. reading time = 6 minutes)

Resistance refers to the inner reluctance to pursue your true purpose or what you're meant to do in life, as described in the book “The War of Art” (find it here)

The big truths about Resistance and the primary reasons why people struggle:

• Humans inherently resist change, often showing reluctance to adopt new methods or tools.

• It's not about a lack of talent, but about overcoming internal barriers.

• We have to break the misconception that doing what you like in life comes effortlessly, without hard work.

Why Learn This: Overcoming creative resistance can unlock your true potential, leading to not just greater productivity but also a more enjoyable and fulfilling creative journey and life.

Why now? AI can assist us in the process, making it more exciting, enjoyable, and fulfilling.

Expect to experience a liberating transformation in your approach to art and work.

There are two options to confront big changes and potential crises in life and society:

1. Be negative, catastrophic, and against change, or

2. Embrace change and take advantage of the opportunities that come with it. In Japanese, 'crisis' also signifies 'opportunity.'

Let's go through my approach to overcome Resistance and redefine the creative process, adapting a positive mindset towards the future.

1. Recognize and Define Resistance

- Identify personal barriers, procrastination patterns, and internal resistance. Dive deep into understanding the deeper meaning of this Resistance.

Do you resist hard work due to a negative mindset, or perhaps perfectionism driven by a need for acceptance and respect stemming from low self-esteem?

- Fight it. There's no single solution; patience, curiosity, acceptance, and time are needed to understand and address Resistance.

For me, perfectionism and dissatisfaction were key issues, reflecting self-doubt and a desire for external validation. It takes time to overcome these. After nearly 30 years, I've embraced imperfection in art.

- Study Resistance, put a name on it if you will. Have a clear understanding of how it can affect us in our professional and personal lives.

- The professional approach.

I started creating content as if it were a job, with the goal of not taking any of it personally. This mindset helped me to start, and I don't think about what other people could say, focusing solely on the process with the end goal of falling in love with it. I even named it "Game of Iterations" to make it more interesting. Look forward to creating your own!

2. Transform Creative Processes and Systems

- "Enjoy the process, not the fruit of your actions," advises the Bhagavad Gita.

I think of my systems as well-oiled machines requiring maintenance.

A good way to start is by focusing on what feels good instead of what you want. Being productive FEELS GOOD. Putting systems and processes into action FEELS GOOD. Expressing yourself FEELS GOOD. Seeing how the machine you have created is working FEELS GOOD.

- Find your "thing" and focus on expressing yourself.

Using the thing I like doing as a vessel for self-expression made all the difference in the world. Expressing myself is what I am enjoying now, not the specific art or tool used.

- Clarify what your goal is in this new era of opportunities, and make sure you understand the holistic reward of what you are doing.

Not knowing if the effort and time I put into something is going to be rewarding in some way is a big reason for the appearance of Resistance. The upcoming future has given me a clear goal in life (how to survive the AI era and help others do it) and excitement and hope for what the future awaits.

It is also the right moment to upgrade yourself. I struggle to express myself, so I write because I know it will improve my communication skills in the long run. I still struggle with creating content a lot, but little by little, I am enjoying little parts here and there. And it FEELS GOOD.

It is important to put time into something that will make you better and upgrade you in some way.

- Evaluate and assess progress with the mindset of gamifying the results and data of your hard work, adapting strategies, and incorporating new AI advancements as needed.

3. Embrace AI Assistance

Introduce AI tools and methods to overcome these barriers, alongside traditional creative strategies.

Future benefits of AI tools:

1. Enhanced self-awareness and understanding of personal barriers to creativity. AI can be our teacher. Grammar correctors point out my errors, I focus on them, and I learn to avoid them later. It is not the tool that is bad; it's how we use it.

2. Increased Productivity: The fluidity and speed of the processes inspire me to beat procrastination and achieve steady progress.

3. Greater Creative Freedom: It is easier to brainstorm ideas and iterate fast. Less fear, more artistic exploration. Besides, AI should help us take ourselves less seriously. Let me expand on this point: AI will elevate the quality of our creations if we use it well, but it should be for personal enjoyment, not to impress the world. In a world of 8 billion people where everybody will be able to generate masterpieces thanks to AI, stressing over being perfect or the need to be "the best" is going to be non-sense.

4. Inner Confidence: Trusting one’s own creative instincts and taste.

5. Joy in the Process: Finding pleasure in the act of creation itself. Gamify the process.

It is important to:

• Structure your workflow in simple steps and identify how AI can assist you. Steps I can automate and deliver, steps I enjoy or dislike, steps I need help with where there is potential to learn, etc.

• Cultivate curiosity for new tools.

• Improve communication skills for efficient AI interaction. Learn Prompt Engineering for effective communication with AI.

• Focus on imagination and articulation. I would suggest that you work in your capacity to imagine and visualise ideas in the most detailed way possible and in your ability to put them into words.

Once you redefine your motivations and goals, you'll find your unique expression, and using a tailored, enjoyable system, you'll overcome Resistance.

Objections 

Should we be careful when adapting AI to our lives and processes? of course. Every big power comes with big responsibilities. Let's see 3 perspectives.

• Preferring short-term rewards over long-term development.

It is important to understand that the arena we are living in, social media (governed by a short focus span and instant gratification), seems to praise the ones that produce quantity over quality.

Are AI assistance and automation turning us into productivity-focused individuals, leading us to overlook the importance of quality? Are we going to employ AI as a partner in the creative process to enhance and expand one’s artistic vision, or use it as a money-making machine, slave, or master?

The possibility of automating systems so we can see results and iterate faster isn’t bad in itself; it gives us more time to work on our ideas and fine-tune them. I really appreciate the time, effort, and care put into ideas, and I hope that this approach will survive in this upcoming digital world.

• Will AI diminish the creative effort?

Are we not supposed to suffer through the process of creativity? (read Nick Cave’s open letter to ChatGPT for an interesting view on the matter here) I used to think that, but now I see this was a crunch to not go deep into the problem itself. I am not talking about doing things with no effort, but putting the time more efficiently.

AI could be a companion that helps us with our creative blocks, with the expansion of our concepts and knowledge, and shows us how to do better. The difficulty I faced in the creative process wasn't about lack of effort but rather my unawareness of Resistance and its causes.

For some, the difficulty in putting into practice ideas and the struggle of making them happen are what motivate them; for me, it made me hate the process.

• Over-Reliance on Technology: Fear that AI assistance will replace human creativity.

Ignoring the balance between technology and human intuition could be the end of the "human touch."?

A lot of people will over-rely on AI to complete the entire creative process, leading to a loss of personal expression and authenticity.

As far as I am concerned, AI is making me feel more creative, increasing my personal involvement in the creation process. Creativity is a feeling, a state of mind, and an attitude; it shouldn't be solely focused on the product itself.

Will this over-reliance make us interact with fewer humans? Yes.

AI assistance and automation will reduce the number of people you will work with. Teams will become significantly smaller, management inefficiencies will decrease, and new opportunities for solo entrepreneurs will emerge.

We have to be aware of the importance of human connection and collaboration. We will have to be open to adapting new ways of interaction and make a conscious effort to cultivate our creative interactions with our community and colleagues.

Also, remember, the points mentioned above don’t necessarily have to be negative. This is not a problem with the technology itself; the problem remains in our conscious choice of how to use it.

I've never really been into robots and new tech, I've always been into entertainment. But a huge wave of fresh opportunities in the technology field is on the horizon. Besides, there is a sense of emergency and, why not, survival. The job market is going to change, and AI will take all our jobs. Probably, but we will adapt as we did in the industrial revolution.

AI is not going to disappear. It feels like we have opened the genie's lamp, and now we will not be able to put it back inside. The best solution is to study and adapt AI, be positive, and see the good in it. Alternatively, from a less positive viewpoint, the same approach works. It's like the old saying goes: if you can't defeat them, align with them to avoid being crushed.

Thanks for your time.

My News Picks

• Mental image reconstruction from human brain activity

• An AI influencer earns $11,000 every month. Could this be what influencers look like in the future?

• OpenAI wants to buy brain-like AI chips, says a secret letter

• GNoME is significantly accelerating materials discovery, demonstrating AI’s potential to completely transform research

• DNA typewriter technology would create self-monitoring cells that could revolutionize our understanding of biology

• Welcome, Gemini, Google’s GPT rival. But is it already a fake advertisement?

Cool Tools

• Learniverse creates your learning universe for your unique goals.

• iMeanShopping is an AI-powered shopping assistant that automates deal finding, price comparison, and data extraction

• AnimateAnyone is a groundbreaking deepfake technology that transforms static images into realistic full-motion videos.

• RemoveWatermarkAI is watermark removal, duh.

• Analogenie creates analogies from your inputs.

• Zelma enables anyone to find, graph and plot education data

Educational

• Create a custom GPT, everything you need to know.

• A use-case example for writing books with GTP

• Intro to Large Language Models by Andrej Karpathy

And that’s all. I hope these insights, news, and tools help you prepare for the future!

Have a really nice week.

Stay kind.

Rafa TV