Frame Your Mind

Hey past-me 👋

So, did you make something cool this week?

Did I?

This is it.

This letter is ‘the thing cool this week’. (I hope)

BUT, I’m still figuring it out. It’s scary.

But we do it anyway.

And that’s why it’s cool.

Hope you made something cool too. 👍️

(Just a reminder: These letters are to help you get to where I’m at now, but faster! New Game +)

Last week we learned to: Start making things before you’re ready 🏃
​This week: How to make making things easier 🧰

Flow is one of our super powers.

It’s like entering the Avatar State.

You’re locked in a zone of almost supernatural focus, bursting with energy, with access to all your powers for a limited time.

​Flow is that state you’re in when you’re lost in what you’re making and hours feel like minutes. It’s an almost ‘effortless state of effort, as if all your decisions become intuitive, with just enough skill to pull it off, but still challenging.

​Friction on the other hand, is everything that slows flow down.

Sometimes to a halt, whether it’s an internal struggle or an external block.

So wouldn’t be great to be able to reduce friction as much as possible and activate flow whenever you wanted?

Steps to frame your mind for flow, not friction:

The best way I’ve found to facilitate my flow is configure how I think and make decisions.

Here’s how I do it:

1. Know yourself, so you can better yourself

It’s your character sheet.

​It’s your story. It’s your stats. It’s your skill tree.

It’s a map to who you are right now and what you’re currently capable of.

And if you’re not looking at the map, you can’t be sure to know where you are or where you might end up.

When I’m feeling lost and not quite sure how to move forward, I ask myself some questions (and if you did the homework last week, you’ve answered some of these already!)

• What are my greatest dreams/nightmares?

• What problems am I trying to solve right now?

• What’s my greatest wish/fantasy?

• What are my strengths/weaknesses?

• What are my habits?

• Who/what am I inspired by?

• What am I capable of right now?

• What do I want to be capable of in the future?

Use those questions to ground yourself so you can decide where you should go next.

“Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become.” -James Clear

Friction: Didn’t read the manual
​Flow: Made a strategy guide

2. Cultivate a growth mindset

There are two basic mindsets that frame how we act in the world: Fixed and Growth.

Fixed mindset says people are born with innate talent and you can’t change that. That’s just how things are.

Growth mindset says everything is ‘figureoutable’ and it’s only a matter of time.

You’re just starting out right now and not everything you make will be a masterpiece, but that’s okay. As an artist, that’s the mountain we climb. Most start with the fundamentals and work their way up, gathering specific skills to make the specific types of things they want to make.

Especially in my first gig in animation, I had no idea what I was doing most of the time, and had to learn on the spot, assignment after assignment because it would be the first time I’d ever done something like paint an alien jellyfish queen or the cross section anatomy of a mummy. I still had much to learn.

But you’re never gonna fully make the climb if you don’t believe you can change.

Friction: I can’t
​Flow: I can’t yet

3. Think from first principles

When I first started taking art ‘seriously’, drawing was fun but difficult, in that I could never really draw exactly I saw in my head, because I was just copying what other people did instead of understanding how they did it.

For instance, you can break anything down into basic shapes like squares, circles, or triangles. Knowing that, with enough observation and practice, you can draw anything.

​First principles are like those shapes.

By knowing the fundamental pieces, how they work, and how they fit together, you’re able to understand things from a deeper level, and be able to creatively problem solve when roadblocks hit.

Friction: I don’t know how it works
​Flow: I know how it works

4. Use mental models to help make decisions

Art is about making choices.

And since you’re the artist, your art is a representation of your choices.

​Mental models are tools to help us make more informed choices when we’re aiming for a specific result.

Often we might be on autopilot, make decisions on a whim, or just give in to circumstances laid out before us. But mental models provide us a framework to understand something on a deeper level.

One mental model that’s helped me along my journey is the 80/20 rule or the Pareto Principle, which recognizes that “most things in life are not distributed evenly—some contribute more than others.”

For example: 20% of the input creates 80% of the result.

Say you need to design a full character and you’ve got 5 days to do it, but before you commit to finalizing anything, it makes sense to spend the 1st day exploring different options incase the one you chose doesn’t fit the needs or story of the project you’re creating it for. You’ll spend 20% of your time that will set the course for remaining 80% that’s left to finish.

You’ll come across mental models throughout your life, be sure to jot it down when one resonates with you.

Tip: Keep a list of these handy to refer to easily at any time, I use Notion to organize mine so they’re just one click away on my phone. But any notes app or a simple pocket notebook works too!

Friction: I don’t know why I did it that way
​Flow: I know exactly why I did it that way

5. Define your default state

When you first setup your phone, notifications are turned on by default.

In turn, every time you get a notification, a sound goes off and a bubble pops into your screen letting you know something happened.

That can get real annoying real fast if you have a lot of notifications everyday. So what do you do? You turn off the ones that aren’t that important or shut them off completely. From then on, that is now the current default state of your phone.

But what about us? What are our default states?

When you’re bored and have nothing to do, what do you do?

Most people just pull out their phone and start consuming something. YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc. Then an hour goes by. Sometimes two. And that repeats every single day.

Now imagine your default action wasn’t consuming, but creating.

What if instead of pulling out your phone you:

• Wrote a note or a story

• Made a collage

• Designed a poster

• Drew from imagination

• Painted a still life

How much better would you be at making things if that’s literally what you did by default every single day?

Create more than you consume to develop a solid creative habits.

Friction: Standard
​Flow: Customized

6. Get out of your own way and bet on yourself

And here’s the toughest lesson I’ve learned in 11+ years of creative work:

Sometimes the thing that stops us from progressing, is ourselves.

• “I’m not good enough.”

• “It’ll take too much time.”

• “There’s no way I can do that.”

• “No one believes in me.”

I’ve said those things countless times. All because of a thought. A brief moment where I felt that I couldn’t pull it off. I would let the doubt creep in and my creative flow would run dry.

I was thinking far more than I was doing.

I would spend all that time in my head and not on the page. I’d be paralyzed.

I wasn’t learning by doing, I was stagnant from overthinking.

Not everyone has that friend or mentor that can boost you up when you’re down.

We always root for the protagonists to win. Why can’t we do that for ourselves?

Do yourself the favor, when you set out to get somewhere—get out of the way.

Friction: no I can’t
​Flow: YES I CAN

🎮 Training Mode

Establish a growth mindset and reduce your points of friction to facilitate your flow:

1. Answer personal research questions above

2. Decide on a focus for the next week/month/quarter/year

   1. Character Design

   2. Background Paint

   3. Vis Dev

   4. Etc.

3. Research and list what you know and don't know about the subject (Ex: Character Design)

   1. Know:

      1. How to draw basic forms

      2. How to design interesting shapes

      3. How to capture likeness

   2. Don't know:

      1. How to draw hands

4. Define your default state

   1. Drawing characters

   2. Painting backgrounds

   3. Studying things you want to make

5. Write a list of reminders to yourself of what's important to you

   1. I want to be able to create the things I see in my head

   2. I want to draw like Kim Jung Gi​

   3. I want to people to connect with my stories

6. Write a list of what's stopping you from doing those things

   1. I don't have enough time

   2. I'm not skilled enough

   3. I don't know what to do

7. Write a list of how you're going to overcome them

   1. I don't have enough time

      1. I will wake up 1 hour earlier so I can practice

      2. I will set aside 30 min every night to draw

      3. I will make time everyday to draw for at least 20 minutes

   2. I'm not skilled enough

      1. I will research and study what it is I don't know

      2. I will find mentors to help me recognize where I'm lacking

      3. I will practice regularly until I get it

   3. I don't know what to do

      1. I will figure out what inspires me and strive towards it

      2. I will create a list of things I wish I could make

      3. I will spend time dreaming and making plans to make them come true

8. Start a small project this week and review how you do.

   1. What is it?

   2. Why this?

   3. What went well?

   4. What went wrong?

   5. How could you improve it?

You got this.

TL;DR

Give yourself a head start,

Frame your mind for flow, not friction.

Here’s how:

1. Know yourself, so you can better yourself

2. Cultivate a growth mindset

3. See the world from first principles

4. Use mental models to help make decisions

5. Define your default state

6. Get out of your own way and bet on yourself

And that’s it. Hope that helps.

Now go make something cool; can’t wait to see it.

-You