It’s easier than ever to collect information, but at what point do we decide to stop collecting and start to apply it in a meaningful way? The stream of self-help content, for example, will never run out, but that doesn’t necessarily make it helpful.
Central to this problem is the art of decisiveness, which we can easily forget is a skill in and of itself.
Wisdom is largely in knowing what to take on board and what to ignore; to be able to tell the difference between signal and noise.
The very best artists are often doing a similar dance.
The option to keep adding is always there, but to get to the end they make the decision to start taking away instead. Over time, they develop a better sense of what to throw out, when to change direction, what to abandon, and, ultimately, when a piece of work is complete.
It’s worth noting that ‘complete’ is simply a decision made by an artist. The best artists are correct in their judgement of this more often than they are wrong. But that’s all it is; a matter of judgement that manifests itself as a decision.
Honing one’s courage and ability to decide might be the most vital and overlooked part of the artistic process.
The Thoughts of Others
“I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn’t make up my mind which of the 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 and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.” – Sylvia Plath
