The power of chipping away at your work
“I could never do something that incredible.”
That’s a sentence I often used to say to myself. I used to see something someone had accomplished and be astonished that anyone could make something so incredible. However, (at the risk of tooting my own horn) if I could show the photography I produce today to 25 year old me, I’d have said the exact same thing. In the years I’ve been doing photography, I’ve realised that becoming talented at a certain skill or craft is not about expensive courses, or grand adventures, or even huge amounts of sacrificed time. It’s about chipping away at it.
Let me explain.
Llynnau Cregannan, Eryri
The “hustle culture” Myth
Hustle culture has been popular for a couple of decades now; the idea that the only way to get ahead is to work yourself to the bone. The only things you have to sacrifice to achieve something with your life are your health, social life, family, friends, mental stability, sleep, and happiness. A small price to pay (sarcasm).
In recent times, we’re seeing these obvious negative results of living just to work at something, but for a long time, a lot of people have bought into this idea. Don’t get me wrong, hard work is a necessity for accomplishment. If something was easy to accomplish, then it will probably be easily forgotten. However, the idea that the only way of succeeding is by hustling to the top, I think, is a fool’s errand. Much like a sleazy pyramid scheme salesman, the hustle culture serves those selling the idea, not the ones buying into it.
The real difficulty is, though, that hustle culture does work. To a degree. If you are spending every waking hour working on something, whether that’s photography, or a business, or some other pursuit, then in all likelihood you will become extremely good at it. But, that’s also an unsustainable approach.
When I was being sold the idea of hustle culture as a young man, I was being told that I had to give up everything in my life to accomplish something with it. The problem was, I was unwilling to give up the things that actually made me happy. Like my family for example. As I was working on my landscape photography business, it was becoming increasingly obvious that I was going to have to give up time with my growing family if I wanted to advance my career. It was going to require more travel, more days and even weeks away from them, and more time missing some really important things. Once I realised this, I thought that my photography journey was over, that because I wasn’t willing to make this sacrifice, that I was doomed to fail.
Doomed to fail, that was, until I read the book “Atomic Habits” by James Clear.
Mid Wales
The “Chipping Away” method
In the book “Atomic Habits”, James Clear argues that success is accomplished, not through massive leaps, but by tiny increments. I recommend reading the book to gain a better understanding of this idea. I think, like a lot of advice books, much of it is subjective and doesn’t apply to most normal people. However, the overall premise is that anyone can work towards something by doing a little bit at a time.
When you have a big project ahead of you, the amount of work needed to get from nothing to completed can seem daunting, if not completely overwhelming. So, Clear suggests the method of improving in small, regular increments. Like a sculptor chipping away at a giant piece of marble, we can take a huge, impossible tasks, and tackle them one chisel at a time.
The great thing about this method is that it can be squeezed into any life schedule, with minimal disruption. Got 5 minutes during breakfast? Research photography locations. Got 2 weeks of holiday somewhere unusual? Take a camera on the trip.
Now, I’m off to buy a chisel…
