The Artist’s Gap

The Artist Gap is the difference between your skill level today and the skills needed to create your desired output.

The wider the gap, the more frustrated you’ll become and the harder you’ll have to work to keep yourself in the game (because the harder it will be to live with mediocrity).

The narrower the gap, the closer you become to your desired state, and the happier you’ll be with your process.

This applies to all creative mediums, from writing and photography to coding and shoe design.

Here’s a more tactical example (using my journey)…

My goal is to be able to use my videos to make a ton of money, unlock priceless access, work with my favorite brands, and meet amazing people. Sounds simple enough.

So naturally, I think about people who have used videos to do that. There are lots, but let’s take Sam Kolder or Peter McKinnon.

When I first watched Sam and Peter’s videos, my first thought was, ”those are sick, but I could eventually learn how to do that.”

So then I tried making a video.

Their skills were 99/100. My skills were 1/100. That’s a huge gap.

When my video turned out super lame (because of course it did), I got sad/frustrated/angry/etc.

Most people quit right here because they look at this huge skill gap and assume they’ll never be able to close it. It’s like looking at Everest from the base. Holy shit that’s gonna be hard to climb.

But in this example, I kept going.

Over time I slowly unlocked more skills. I started to climb up. First 5/100, then 8/100.

I’m still not anywhere close to 99/100, but I’m getting better.

My “Artist Gap” is shrinking, and I’m starting to feel better about my work.

Here’s the truth…

The only way to close that gap is to build real skills.

There is no cheat code. There is no shortcut.

If there was a 1,000 hour course you could take to become Peter McKinnon, hundreds of thousands of people would have taken it and we’d have hundreds of thousands of Peter McKinnon’s running around.

That course doesn’t exist and we only have one Peter McKinnon because there is no shortcut to developing those skills.

You develop skills by biting off a tiny bit more than you’re able to chew, struggling through it, learning, developing scar tissue, and repeating.

If you’re a 2/100 today, do a 4/100 project. Struggle to do it, but do it. Learn. Become a 4/100 and then keep going.

But know that you’re not going to like the 4/100. Because in your mind, “good” is 88/100.

The true winners build the patience to keep grinding until their skills catch up to their vision.

As soon as you understand it’s unreasonable to expect beginner skills to produce master output, you’ll be less emotional about your current state and more willing to keep going.

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