040: Small Steps

Starving Artist No More

Mark Twain once said, “The secret to getting ahead is getting started.” Sometimes, taking those first few tiny little steps can be the hardest part of getting a new project off the ground. If you’re embarking on a new artistic venture, how do you decide where to begin? If you’re preparing to tackle something unfamiliar on the administrative side of your creative business, how do you figure out what’s the most important thing to do first? Often, we find ourselves waiting to even begin a new thing until we know we can jump in with 1,000% commitment and total confidence, but that feeling of complete commitment and absolute confidence might never come, leaving you stuck and paralyzed instead. What do you do then? Today, we’re going to look at how you can use small steps to move you past any feelings of stuckness or paralysis. Today, we’re going to learn how to add together lots of small steps so you can create the change you’re looking for.

In this episode, you will learn:

• What small steps are and how you can use them to motivate yourself in your artistic work.
• What social science research around “small steps” can teach us about how to shape our daily work processes as creative entrepreneurs.
• How to “Video Game” your big, overwhelming tasks so that they are approachable.
• Why small steps have the power to enable and enhance your entire creative process.
• How (and why!) to celebrate every small win in your creative entrepreneurship journey.

In this episode, I discuss the motivation research done by Harvard professor Teresa Amabile. You can learn more about her work here:

• Progress Principle Research
• Diary Study on the Harvard Dataverse
• The Progress Principle: Using Small Wins to Ignite Joy, Engagement, and Creativity at Work by Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer
• "The Big Power of Small Wins" by Jude King

I mention the book Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman and refer to this edition of his newsletter.

I also refer one previous episode of this podcast, 004: An Attitude of Gratitude.

A full transcript of this episode can be found here. Full transcripts of every episode will always be available at the Starving Artist No More Blog.

Thank you for listening. Please feel free to reach out to me at www.StarvingArtistNoMore.com, with any questions, comments, or feedback. I'd love to hear from you.