💎 Friday Gems (New Rules, More Creative Time, Mike Monteiro's Q&A)
Just Make the Fucking Thing!
Low Fidelity is a free weekly newsletter that provides fresh insights on mindset, mindfulness, and personal growth. Empowering you to show up, thrive, and achieve your full creative potential.
Hi everyone!
In this edition of Friday Gems:
💥 New Rules!
🖼️ 10 Ways to Make Room for More Creative Time
🤨 Just Make the Fucking Thing!
🧠 A gem of wisdom by Eric Fromm on being comfortable with being uncomfortable
🎵 A gem of a song: Parking Lot by Stimming.
Enjoy!
💎 New Rules
There comes a point in our lives when we take off the masks we have worn to blend in, to fit in, or to survive. The pressures of fitting in with our friends, family, and society weigh us down and make us forget what truly makes us happy and come alive. In moments like this we need new rules to help us get back in touch with ourselves.
’s New Rules resonated with me because they decided to live by their rules and not someone else’s whims or preferences, which is a trap we fall into if we don’t live intentionally. I also like that each statement starts with the proclamation, “I’m making new rules for myself” as a way to make the importance of it known.Here are a few of the rules that stood out:
I’m making all new rules for myself. I’ll say exactly what I mean and not what I hope everyone wants me to say. This will disappoint people I love, I’ll do it anyways.
I’m making all new rules for myself. I vow to keep breathing and keep not taking a drink one day at a time as my minimal efforts of aliveness. Everything outside of these two things is allowed to change at any time.
I’m making all new rules for myself. I will let myself use social media when I feel like it. I will deactivate sometimes, take long breaks, leave for extended periods of time, and no longer announce it. I will let myself pull a Michael Jordan and retire and come back better than ever, willing to say I needed that then but don’t need it now. I might even try a new sport.
I’m making all new rules for myself. The rules can change at anytime.
I loved that Cody’s list of rules ended with one of Sister Corita Kent’s rules, “THERE SHOULD BE NEW RULES NEXT WEEK”, as a way to stay on the path toward personal freedom.
Source: Monday Monday newsletter by Cody Cook-Parrott
💎 10 Ways to Make Room for More Creative Time
Life eats up our days with responsibilities, tasks, and work. There seems to be little time left for exploring our creativity.
I know this all too well.
Recently, I had been distant from my creative practice for a few months when I realized I needed to get back to drawing, painting, and making art, which brings me pure joy. I wanted to get back to my happy place. And that’s when I saw this post from
about how to intentionally make time for our creativity. Jo shares useful and ingenious tactics to overcome busyness, procrastination, fear, and doubt when it comes to finally creating more art.Each seemingly small moment in our day is an opportunity for us to try something new, as Jo points out in this tip:
Try something new. If your main craft is tedious and time consuming, you can still get a creative dopamine hit by:
Creating with found objects like twigs, flowers, pebbles, grasses and pine needles
Being more artful about arranging the food on your plate
Write a haiku about sights from your morning commute.
Doodle
Make a wall collage of mini sketches on post it notes
Use magnetic words on your fridge to write poetry or nonsense. (no affiliation)
Make random splashes of coffee, tea, or juice on paper and turn it into a drawing.
Make and sing a song about what you see out your window.
I have a bad habit of responding to emails immediately when it isn’t called for so this tip resonated with me the most 😅:
Manage expectations of the people you exchange emails and texts with. If you are answering all personal communications immediately. it will eat into your creative flow state.
Source: Reclaiming Creativity
💎 Just Make the Fucking Thing!
The amazing Mike Monteiro is back with a weekly Q&A series for creatives and I’m here for it.
What is the role (and value) of “quality” when often simply having something in the first place is so much of the battle?
The subjective idea of quality in our art or creative efforts can become an obstacle to getting things done and completed. Perfection is the enemy of progress and once we start questioning the quality of our work we put an end to experimenting and learning and eventually we get stuck, unable to move forward waiting for perfection to arrive.
As Mike shares his own experience:
Decades ago I asked an art teacher a very similar question and his answer has stuck with me to this day: Just make the fucking thing and let history decide if it was worth a damn.
The last line needs repeating and perhaps for myself I need to get it tattooed under my eyelids.
The solution to this problem of overthinking and worrying about quality is to get out of our heads and make more, create more, write more, do more. The value lies in the creation and not in the quality. Quality may come but that is secondary to the value the creation brings to you.
💎 Gem of Wisdom
💎 A Gem of a Tune
This week’s exciting new tune Parking Lot by Stimming
This is a fascinating song which can only be truly appreciated in the car or if you have surround sound. It is a delight to the senses. Moving from left to right, front to back. Purely Amazing!
Enjoy!
That’s it for this week’s gems. Do you have a gem you would like to share? Press reply and share or DM me.
I’m thankful that you read this far.
Have a fantastic weekend!
I remember Design Is a Job was quite an enjoyable little book.
Thanks for the recommendation Rizwan.