The Power of the First Pancake

Welcome to Creatives Anonymous, a weekly newsletter about navigating creativity in the 21st century. It inspires, encourages, and empowers readers to take back their creative power.

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With creativity, we should expect to fail. A lot. Especially when trying something new.

As we build new creative muscles, we will have content that flops, cringe-worthy art, and ideas that have us go, “What was I thinking?”

Over the years, I’ve built several creative muscles through various content projects: blogging, podcasting, and a short-lived stint on YouTube. Through these creative endeavors, I’ve learned that it’s not enough to just have have the skills—we need a mindset to match.

Whenever I start a new creative project, especially one that requires building a new creative muscle, I always go in with a beginner mindset (shoshin in Japanese).

In a beginner’s mindset, we go into the project with zero expectations and embrace being a student. It’s all about play and experimentation. A beginner’s mindset encourages us to lean into the process, make mistakes, and learn. It invites us to approach any new project with a new perspective and open mind. It also means accepting that failure is part of the creative process.

Otherwise known as the power of the first pancake. 

The first pancake gets burnt as we figure out the correct temperature and time to cook it. The same principle applies when we build new creative muscles; we'll be producing "first pancakes" until we can figure out the "time" and "temperature" (aka strategy) for success. 

The first time we try anything new, it will be bad and cringe-worthy. There’s no way around it—it’s just part of the process. We can’t expect ourselves to be experts the very first time we try to create something we’ve never done before. We need to be bad so we can get good.

The faster we accept that, the faster we can build these new creative muscles. We also can’t stay in Tinker Town, waiting to perfect our skills before creating anything. We just need to put something out, no matter how bad it might be. In other words, we need to keep putting out first pancakes.

The more we create, the more we learn and the better we get. It’s the only way to truly master a new creative skill. Eventually, we transition from skill acquisition to skill optimization. Our work will shift from being the "first pancake" to being the best of the batch. 

I've been thinking about this a lot while experimenting with Reels on Instagram for my business. Video, especially short-form video, is definitely out of my wheelhouse (I'm a long-form written content girlie for life). But instead of putting all this pressure on myself to master and succeed at creating videos from the get-go, I'm just allowing myself to have fun and experiment with this new-to-me form of content creation.

Having a beginner's mindset allows us to enjoy the process of creating without putting pressure on ourselves to succeed from the get-go. Sometimes, we get so caught up in performance and success that we forget how to just have fun and follow our curiosity, which is what creativity is all about.  

And let me tell you, not having that pressure is so freeing. There are no rules. I can just create. I can try different methods to see what works and what doesn't and how I can adjust along the way. That's what's been different so far with my Reels experiment compared to my previous content endeavors. This time, I'm focusing on the process rather than the results. And I think it will make me want to stick with it for the long haul. 

The more we approach our creative projects with a beginner mindset, the more we enjoy the process. Only then will we be able to find true success. 

And don't be afraid to burn a few pancakes along the way 🥞

CREATIVE CORNER

• 🎞️ What I’m consuming: I’ve been binging Ted Lasso (I know, super late to the train). I can see why everyone loved it; it’s a great, feel-good show and one of the best character-driven shows I’ve seen.

• 💡 What I’m loving: I went to this super cool exhibit at the Bellevue Arts Museum called “Washi Transformed” that showcased how Japanese artists are transforming washi (Japanese paper). 10/10 recommend.

• 🎨 What I’m working on: I did a few more writing sprints on my book last week and got through another ~2,500 words.  

• 💭 Weekly musing:

Thank you 💕

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