Inefficient creativity

In November, Adele’s Las Vegas residency comes to an end.

After two years of performing, she recently told fans that once the residency is over, they won’t see her “for an incredibly long time.”

This pattern is one she’s followed religiously. There was a six year gap between her albums 25, and 30. As one fan quoted by People magazine put it: "This is what Adele does. Disappears, then comes out with a banger."

Many great artists and writers follow a similar rhythm: they disappear for a period, re-emerge with something new, then retreat back into the shadows.

For these artists, consistency is death.

This weekend Paul Graham dropped another essay: founder mode.

You might be surprised to read that this essay is only his fourteenth since the beginning of 2022 - an average of one every two and a half months.

Marc Andreessen is the same: in the past year he’s written just two things: the Techno-optimist Manifesto; and the Little Tech Agenda.

This approach is at odds with the general advice given to people who want to create or write: consistency is everything. Queue, schedule, post. All day, every day.

That’s not, however, the approach of the greats. And I think it’s because it conflates consistency of output with consistency of craft.

If Paul Graham were here right now, he’d probably tell us that he’s written far more than he’s ever published. What we see is only the tip of an iceberg consisting of millions of failed sentences, rejected pieces, and thoughts that don’t quite make it over the line.

But when it comes to people who write to support whatever they’re building, it’s a question of speed. Idea, timebox, publish.

The reason for this is a fear of inefficiency. Bluntly, when you’re spinning a thousand plates, inefficiencies feel like luxuries you can’t afford.

But inefficiency is exactly what’s needed to produce great work.

Take Paul Graham’s own advice on writing:

“Write a bad version as fast as you can; rewrite it over and over; cut out everything unnecessary; write in a conversational tone; develop a nose for bad writing, so you can see and fix it in yours; imitate writers you like; if you can't get started, tell someone what you plan to write about, then write down what you said; expect 80% of the ideas in an essay to happen after you start writing it, and 50% of those you start with to be wrong.”

It’s a recipe for inefficiency, but it’s also the only way to produce something truly great.

The White Album originally had 100 songs - only 30 made the cut.

It's the same for writing too. Norwegian author Karl Ove Knausgaard writes three pages each morning, without fail, that are then sent to an editor for discussion each evening. Most are discarded.

The 20VC podcast takes a similarly rigorous approach: about 50% of the content is cut from an episode before its release, and 25% of the episodes recorded are never released at all.

Taking such a rigorous approach comes at the cost of casual engagement through the form of likes and shares. Instead, it generates the deep engagement you really want in order to get people to take a dip into uncertain waters and try your product for the first time.

Because, until quite late on in a startup’s journey, people are less buying the product, and more buying you. And at an early stage, people need a pretty compelling reason to believe in you.

So just as it’s better to have 100 people who love your product than 1,000 who think it’s merely okay, it’s probably better to have 100 people who deeply engage with your content than thousands of passive followers.

To work in this way - and find your 100 true content fans - unfortunately, you’re going to have to eat some things.

The first I’ve already mentioned: inefficiencies.

Be glad you’re not someone for whom content is everything, like some of the writers I’ve mentioned above. Murakami wrote 1Q84 twice from scratch. The first draft of Ishiguro’s The Buried Giant—all of it—went out the window as well.

The second is time. Paul Graham is prolific not because he publishes daily, but because he’s been doing this for twenty years.

This might be the hardest part. Warren Buffet said once that no one wants to get rich slowly. In the same way, no one wants to become influential slowly either.

The final thing to eat is having gaps in output. Obviously we probably can’t have the same level of gaps that great artists do - think of Kubrick’s 12-year gap between 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) and The Shining (1980) - but if something’s going to need to have time spent on it to make it good, make it good.

A trick to deal with this is to develop a “just-ship-it” valve, some other outlet that allows you to keep sharing and developing your thoughts while you work on your main projects.

Twitter serves this function for many, including Paul Graham himself. For writers it’s often events where they’re either interviewed, or interview others. And it’s podcasts that do the job for Marc Andreessen.

Even better, just do more. The Rest is History is, I think, one of only a few examples, alongside some of the people I've mentioned above, of a team managing to do both quality and consistency.

That isn’t from them taking a different approach to those mentioned above - they famously refuse to use researchers, and the notes for a single recent episode came in at 60+ pages - they just go faster.

This approach - of working mainly in private - isn't easier. It means taking bigger swings, making the misses feel even worse.

It also requires building other skills: how to build feelings of anticipation and exclusivity; as well as creating trusted circles to help decide when something is ready.

But the benefits are clear: more room for experimentation and risk-taking, as well as the luxury of time away from the public eye to refine your work.

As Jerry Seinfeld once said: "if you’re efficient, you’re doing it the wrong way."

To embrace inefficiency and our duty to not fill the internet up with more and more noise, means moving beyond autopilot, and taking writing seriously.

It’s harder. It’ll take more time. But as Paul and Marc will attest, the rewards are worth it.

aled@ashore.io