“If you want to become a great writer, write every day.”

The origins of this quote are so deeply shrouded in the past for me that I can’t remember where I first heard it. A cursory search suggests that Stephen King may be the source of it, but there’s no way for me to be sure that’s where I first heard it.

Many years ago, as I wound down my time in college I wanted to become a musician. Specifically, a songwriter. And not just a good songwriter, but a great one! I took the advice in that quote to heart and I devised a clever way to keep myself on the ball: there was a woman who lived down the hall from me in the dorms and I decided to make the commitment to leave one poem on her white board every day. That way, I had a commitment to keep not just to myself, but also to her and it absolutely worked! I never missed a day (even when I got home in the dead of night and grumbled about needing to go write a poem before hitting the hay).

This young woman was at turns bemused and perplexed by my insistence on following this ritual--the irony being that she never understood that what mattered was the commitment to write, not that it was necessarily writing a poem for her.

The good news: by the end of college my lyrics had switched over from sophomoric rants about the unfairness of the world to intricate stories weaving multiple characters, diverse vocabulary, and just enough easy hooks to keep them accessible.

I thought of this life hack as being something I referred to as a proxy goal: my real goal was to write every day to improve at it, not to write a poem for this woman. But, by setting this goal for myself it meant I had to fulfill my real goal in the process. Thus, a goal by proxy. It gave me a tangible cost to not writing, thus helping me push past whatever inertia I might have had not to take up my pen on a given day.

But I’m not a writer, you say, I’m a poi spinner--what good does that do me?

Creative cross training

Sometimes I think of creativity as being something like an octopus, with many tentacles that reach out through a variety of media to be expressed in surprising ways, and yet they all come from a common root. Because of this, I frequently find that skills that have served me in one artform will also serve me in another.

When I began recording my tech blogs in 2007, a big part of the reason was that I wanted to make sure I kept practicing. Without regular practice, I knew, I wasn’t likely to improve over time and I would find myself frustrated by my progress. Because writing a poem every day on this woman’s door had helped me keep writing, I endeavored to come up with a similar commitment for poi spinning so that I would make regular progress at it.

My solution? To record a video showing off whatever tricks I’d learned that week. It was never meant for anybody’s eyes but my own, but it was a commitment I made that ensured I had to practice in order to have something to show every week. Again, my real goal was to practice regularly, but my proxy goal was to upload a video a week. It didn’t matter if there wasn’t a real audience waiting for me to upload--all that mattered was that I acted like there was (in all honesty...eventually there was indeed an audience, but that’s a story for another time).

And it worked! It kept me spinning almost daily and ensured that I was always on the lookout for new ideas, new tricks, and new ways that I could expand my repertoire. I was not an exceptional spinner when I started at the age of 26, but that changed very rapidly with such diligent and regular practice.

I’m especially fond of using video as a proxy goal--it’s something I tell people even to this day to take up for multiple reasons. In addition to giving you a reason and motivation to practice every week, it also acts as a document showing your progression and evolution over time. You can go back to your first videos a year later and see how far you’ve come. You can watch videos you recorded a month before and see things you want to work on or get better at.

This was one of the biggest tools that helped me progress at my poi spinning in those first three years.

Setting a proxy goal that’s right for you

The question on the lips of everyone who starts spinning poi or any other tools is inevitably, “how do I get better at this?” and the shortest and most honest answer is regular and deliberate practice. That can be difficult to attain on your own--lots of people prefer spinning as a social activity or find the hours necessary to get ahead dull. How do you work around that?

Find something easy to deliver on a regular basis--something that you can at least come up with some kind of external consequence should you not be able to deliver it. That doesn’t mean you need to punish yourself if you don’t make this commitment. It’s much more constructive to come up with a positive incentive rather than a negative one, so see what fun ways you can come up with to deliver a reward for a regular proxy goal.

Some suggestions:

• Record a regular weekly video of whatever you’re working on, be it tricks, choreography, or flow (note: you don’t ever need to show this video to anybody--it can be something that exists solely for your own use)
• Keep a regular diary of the ground you cover. Make it a goal to write up one entry a week summarizing what you’ve worked on and completed.
• Set a regular spin date with a friend--make it a ritual that you show each other the tricks you’ve come up with that week. Two birds, one stone!

Without goals, it’s easy for our brains to get bored and wonder why we’re spending all this time on our spinning--it’s competing for attention with a multitude of other pursuits. This is an easy way to dangle a little carrot in front of you that can help you keep your eye on the ball and trick your brain into pushing through doldrums. Plus which, this is a skill that very easily translates over to other creative pursuits as well as everyday life!

Have a creative proxy goal? Let me know! Shoot me a reply to this email and let me know how you keep yourself engaged in your practice. I’d love to hear what great tricks you have for keeping your practice active.

Ghost Trails Series

Ever seen footage that features those cool trails over prop spinning footage? There are a lot of tools for achieving it! Seeing the trails you create allows you to see how clean your moves are, helps unlock more complicated patterns, and just plain look cool!

For the next five weeks I’ll be airing a series on my YouTube channel exploring different approaches to creating these trails in your footage--including the poi simulations that I’ve been posting video of lately!

The entire series is available for purchase as a digital download now at my website and includes extra full-length footage of me free spinning as well as my After Effects template for poi simulations with several of my favorite moves already plugged in!

Use the promo code “trailspromo” to get the series for 25% off!