Justyna Dorsz

Mindset

We are bad at judging our own work

I made a lot of designs, and sometimes I hesitated before publishing some of them. I never know how something is going to be received. Sometimes I think, “no one is going to buy it, what’s the point”. But by now, I also know that it’s impossible to predict how well a design is going to sell.

Take this Space design as an example:

I think I first submitted it to my Threadless store, where I sent most of my designs. It wasn’t very popular. But I knew that sometimes different websites have different audiences — what might sell well on Threadless might not sell on, say, TeePublic or Redbubble, and vice versa. So I added this design to my Redbubble store. And it has been selling very well there. It’s my most popular design on Redbubble, and I often get messages from customers when they buy it. Here are some of them:

  • This is going in my husband’s space-themed reading nook for his birthday. Wonderful job guys!
  • Thank you. My future space travel buddy will love this 😉
  • Perfect for my next astronomy courses.
  • Love the simplistic design!!
  • Absolutely love this design, can’t wait to receive my phone case – thank you for your creativity!

Those are all comments from people who loved the design. And there are many more. Whenever I read the messages I am always surprised — they not only liked my art enough to buy it but they also took the time to write to me! Just imagine — had I listened to my inner voice telling me not to publish it, those people would not have an opportunity to see the design and get something they liked so much. They sometimes even thank me for creating the design, when it should be me thanking them for supporting me.

We artist notoriusly doubt ourselves. This is maybe the most accurate visualization of all this:

image
Artist: stuffman Source: the-artist-putting-a-simple-cake-next-to-a-much

Stop that

The other day I was at a hairdresser’s, and a woman sitting next to me was complaining about everything, and I mean everything. That she had to cook dinners and it took a lot of time and she hated it. That it rained too much. That these were difficult times. That it was too hot on sunny days. That women were shallow and cared too much about their looks. That men preferred those kinds of women.

Real-life situations often inspire my designs. I had to suffer listening to all that, but at least I knew what I wanted to draw when I got home:

“Stop That” in my TRUFFLEPIG store

That reminds me of an article I once read: “How Complaining Rewires Your Brain for Negativity”. It’s worth reading, but in case you don’t read it, here’s a relevant quote:

Repeated complaining rewires your brain to make future complaining more likely. Over time, you find it’s easier to be negative than to be positive, regardless of what’s happening around you. Complaining becomes your default behavior, which changes how people perceive you.

Bad output

I stumbled upon an interesting tweet by Julian Shapiro. I know it’s a few months old but I liked it so I am sharing it here in case you find it useful too:

To finally start creating good stuff you need to create a lot of bad stuff first. It applies to writing, but also to drawing —a drawing usually needs a few tries too. You draw your first idea, see that it doesn’t quite work, iterate on it, until you arrive at something good.

Personal Monopoly

My approach to work has always been: find an interesting project, work on it, then work on another interesting project. Sometimes it meant making apparel designs, sometimes it meant creating games. The most recent project is a cat book that I am making with my brother.

It has occurred to me recently that I have never really planned my career, I don’t even have any projects planned in advance. I focus on one or two projects at a time, but I have no idea what I will work on in 3 months.

I’ve recently watched “How to build a Personal Monopoly” where David Perell and Jack Butcher talk about defining a path to a successful career. They are both writers but what they talked about applies to other professions too.

Watch the video and get inspired:

I made notes while listening:

  • A Personal Monopoly is a combination of Curiosity, Competence, Character.
  • To find your Personal Monopoly answer these questions:
    • Curiosity: What do you care about?
    • Competence: What are you good at?
    • Character: Who are you? What are your unique traits?
  • When you define and combine these things, you can then package them into a product.
  • Dice methodology:
    • First, you collect everything you are interested in.
    • Then you connect the dots — all your interests and experiences come together.
    • And then it all combines and emerges into a final form.
  • Strip away all things that don’t drive you towards the outcome.
  • Listen to feedback. Talk about what you are interested in. Attract like-minded people and find out what they need. Based on that, create a product.
  • “The greatest source of wealth will be the ideas you have in your head.” — a quote from “Sovereign Individual”.
  • Thanks to globalization we get to become citizens of the Internet.
  • If you want to create a Personal Monopoly you need to find skills that are:
    • Complementary — skills that reinforce each other,
    • Specific — find a niche,
    • Unusual,
    • Experiential — gained through experience.
  • Path to Personal Monopoly
    • Write what you are interested in. Have conversations about it. Get Feedback. Share it. Create articles and content. Repeat. This way you find your niche.

The Strangest Secret

You know, I have never really thought about my goals. And I know now that to be successful you should have clearly defined goals. But it certainly wasn’t something obvious to me for a very long time.

I’ve just read “The Strangest Secret” by Earl Nightingale. It’s very short, you can get it for $1 on Amazon or listen to it for free. Don’t be surprised by the quality, it’s from the year 1956:

“People with goals succeed because they know where they’re going,” says Earl Nightingale. And then, “Plant your goal in your mind. It’s the most important decision you’ll ever make in your entire life.”

I know a lot of people hate these kinds of motivational speeches or so-called self-help books. Maybe because this is all obvious to them. To me, however, a lot of that stuff feels new. My family has never talked about settings goals. When I was in high school, and then at university, no teacher ever said anything about goals. I don’t remember my friends talking about it either. I didn’t even know that I was going through my life without any direction — I wasn’t thinking about it at all. I only found out about it later, from books, and YouTube, and blogs. I wish I had access to all those things years ago.

Conformity — people acting like everyone else, without knowing why or where they are going.

—Earl Nightingale

If you don’t have a goal, if you feel aimless — “The Strangest Secret” might be good for you.

Newsletter overload

I used to like reading newsletters. Not anymore. There are just too many of them. At any given moment I have emails waiting in my inbox. I can’t keep up with them all.

Oliver Burkeman wrote recently about this feeling of being owerwhelmed by all those podcasts to listen to, all the books and blogs to read. There’s a neverending pile of things requiring our attention. The solution is to accept the inevitable — there’s always going to be an overload of information, and we need to realize that just because something is on our “to-read” list, it doesn’t mean that it needs to be read.

For the past week, I have been unsubscribing from most of the newsletters. I definitely have the feeling of missing out on something interesting. But if I want to create things, then I need more undistracted time. I can’t keep thinking about all the emails and articles I still need to do read.

I don’t want to spend my time consuming what others have created instead of creating my own things.

16 Personalities

A friend sent me a link to a personality test that assigns you one of 16 personality types. I took it for fun, but the test surprised me — it was more thoughtful than I expected.

The questions were easy to answer. What I mean by that is I knew immediately what the correct answer for me was. One of my problems with most quizzes is that questions are often so vague that the only correct answer seems to be: “it depends”. However, the 16 Personalities test is well done and the questions are unambiguous. I didn’t have any problem choosing my answers.

Some questions were so obvious that it was strange to me that anyone could answer differently. For example, there was: “You enjoy watching people argue”, and you had to choose how strongly you agree or disagree on a 7 point scale. It hadn’t occurred to me that watching people argue might be enjoyable. There must be a significant percentage of people who enjoy that, or it wouldn’t have been a question in the test.

Another question that stood out was: “You feel confident that things will work out for you”. I agree. It’s not a belief that by some external force things will work out. Rather, it’s: whatever happens, I can handle it, and I will be fine. This is not only my approach to work. It’s one of my most strongly held beliefs about my life in general.

The result was that I was an INTJ-A type, which is called an Assertive Architect.

You can take the test here: 16 Personalities Test.

Awesome t-shirt advertisement

Check out this video:

It’s of course an advertisement. But so well done! The key point is not the t-shirt but the idea that thinking of yourself as the Main Character can impact your life and mental health.

I like both the video and the concept that I am a central character in my story. I would buy the shirt if not for the fact that I already have too many t-shirts — being a designer means that you get A LOT of free t-shirts.

Here’s the link to the t-shirt: Be A Main Character. I am not affiliated with them, I just really like it and I think it might even be helpful to see the reminder that you are the Main Character every time you see yourself in the mirror.

This has been a difficult week

There’s a game, Undertale, where you play as a human who falls underground into the world of monsters. My favorite thing about the game is that it gently — every few minutes — encourages you to be determined.

Undertale

This past week my brother and I worked on a bug with gamepads in one of our games. That took a lot of time, we spent most days reading on possible issues and trying different solutions. It was difficult to feel motivated when we weren’t seeing any progress. And it wasn’t even our bug but a bug in the game engine that we were building our game in. So we weren’t looking so much for a solution as for a walkaround. We kept at it and now it’s fixed.

I suspect that this kind of attitude is what made it possible for me to have a successful store on Threadless. I know how it is in the beginning: you submit your designs and not sell anything. It is discouraging. I know many people give up. I wish they knew that if only they kept drawing they too could have a profitable store.

I’ve been thinking, maybe every now and then we all could use a reminder to stay determined.

Daily vs. Dailyish

It’s much easier to stick to a habit if you make it a daily habit.

For my whole adult life, I’ve been trying to make a habit out of going to the gym and exercising regularly. I had always assumed that exercising 3 or 4 times a week was enough, so I set rules for myself like: go to the gym at least 3 times a week, or go for a run once every two days. And sure, sometimes I managed to stick to it for a few weeks. But, inevitably, I would be too lazy to exercise on Monday, and Tuesday, and Wednesday, and Thursday. And then I would have needed to go every day for the rest of the week — it seemed too much, it wasn’t the plan to have to exercise every day. I would get discouraged and abandon the whole idea. And then try again a few weeks later.

It wasn’t until I decided to go to the gym every day that I managed to make it a habit and stick to it. Only when a task is non-negotiable, a habit can be built.