September 2008 Contents
I. Scoring for the Olympic Gold
II. Energy Management: Translations from the Psych Research Lab, the Board Room, and the Shrink’s Couch
III. Friends in Print: When you feel like reading
IV. Creative Links
V. Newsletter and Info: Share this newsletter, subscribe, or unsubscribe

I. Scoring for the Olympic Gold
(Given some summer vacation time and my obsession with the Olympic gymnastics, I beg your indulgence for a shorter and later newsletter. Thanks to all. D.)

What if each piece that you make was your one chance to go for the gold in the Olympics?

For some of us that might build such pressure that we couldn’t actually create, hung up like an Olympic diver who bounces but can’t quite jump off that high board. For most of us, though, it could be a useful thought-exercise to identify what work of ours would merit a gold.

Part of that thinking is just deciding what event to qualify for. Is it the watercolor finals? The acrylic florals?  Or the all-round painter gold? At times of change, when your style is shifting, or when new at something, thinking in ‘event’ terms can clarify your intentions. Each event has its own implicit scoring system that can’t help but influence your work. Does your work use a simple scoring system like track races with their one measure of speed? Perhaps your one measure is selling your work. It could be as simple as the hundred yard dash – how many pieces made and sold in a short period of time. Or you can add difficulty like runners who go for speed while spraddling over those hurdles (not just how many pieces you sell but how many high-priced ones).

Even simple scoring systems have subtler elements as in the way track event runners adjust their strategies depending on the lane they’re assigned. The top athletes know how to handle different lane assignments depending on their particular body type, metabolism, stride, and arc of performance from start to finish. Pacing to leverage your particular strengths is crucial.

For example, in making my larger pieces, I can predictably expect to totally lose the initial vision and meet seemingly insurmountable ‘hurdles’ about ¾ of the way through. Knowing this, I handle the slump by either bearing down with a list of design problem-solving tools or shifting my attention to other work for a week or so. Either strategy works, but dithering back and forth doesn’t; I need to pick a lane and stick to it.

I can’t resist the chance, here, to whine about the change in Olympic gymnastics scoring while drawing out some parallel lessons for making art. The new gymnastic system starts the athlete off with a maximum score based on the sum of difficulty ratings for each element. Points are then subtracted for less than perfect execution. How depressing!

It used to be that points were accumulated upward for each element and its artistic execution reaching for that perfect 10! If you focus only on how well your work matches up to the original vision in your head, you could be doing the same as this new depressing system. Taking points off for missing the mark inherently saps energy when compared to getting point for what you do achieve. Learning to avoid that setup of perfectionism keeps you open to new creative options that were not in the original spark of a vision.

So, take a look at how you score your work, what events you think you’re in, and how the gold, silver, and bronze medals are appearing in your creative life these days. See if you’re using your initial creative vision as an absolute yardstick from which you lose points, as a starting point for racking up points, or, even better, an initial spark for igniting work that is more original than you expected.
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II. Creative Links   
http://artsedge.kennedy-center.org/content/3338/
Any art appreciation book will provide ideas for how to score one’s creative work. The site listed here gives a bare-bones outline that is commonly used for critiqueing art, one of several variations that separate out the descriptive steps from judging of the work’s value. (Notice that the scoring part only occurs after three other steps!)

1. Description: Pure nouns and adjectives giving the size, media (materials and procedures), design elements, and content or subject matter.

2. Analysis: Still descriptive but now describing the interplay of elements.

3. Interpretation: The emotional responses of the viewer are the focus here. Personal reactions may include feelings, associations to personal and worldly events, a sense of atmosphere created or message depicted.

4. Judgment: Here is the scoring part. Does the piece ‘work’? You can rate it pass-fail or on a curve, pulling out some elements that work well and others not so much. Comparisons to other work by the same artist and by others are helpful to convey the basis for judging. Unlike the formal Olympic scoring, originality is a core element here.

III. E-mail changes. To change your e-mail address, subscribe, or unsubscribe please e-mail connect@dianereardon.com. If you use a spam filter, please add this e-mail address to your list of approved senders. This material is included on the breakTHROUGH Creativity Coaching (website www.dianereardon.com) All material is copyrighted ©, September 4, 2008, Diane Reardon. All rights reserved. Visit the website for back issues and details on scheduling a complimentary one-hour coaching session.
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