Not a DNA of genius

“I don’t have enough time today to make progress on my creative project.” 

This thought reverberates in our minds any time we run up against a busy schedule. We have big ambitions to make movies and write books and record albums. The trouble is, we also have a lot of other things to do. We have work get to, a boss to keep happy, family to take care of, birthday parties to attend, and a lot of short videos to watch in between all of that. 

And of course, our ambitions are so big that fifteen or thirty minutes of work can’t really make a dent in them. Except, this line of thinking doesn’t make any sense. When we look at the stories of people who brought great creative work into the world, we see something peculiar…they were busy, too. 

Nobel Prize-winning author Alice Munro started small. Between her responsibilities as a homemaker and a mother, there wasn’t much time leftover to write novels. “I started with the idea of writing novels, and I wrote short stories because that was the only way I could get any time” Munro said in an interview in 2013. “I could take off house keeping and childrearing for a certain amount of time but never for the amount that you need to write a novel.” 

Do you know who else was busy? Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. In his book Daily Rituals, author Mason Currey describes Mozart’s life at the height of his career as “a frantic round of piano lessons, concert performances, and social visits with the city’s wealthy patrons.” One of history’s great composers had a laundry list of work and social obligations.

Don’t look down on your limitations. Don’t be disqualified by them or by your busy life. The time you have today is exactly the time you need to begin. To chip away. To slowly create something meaningful. 

Everyone is busy. Even great composers and Nobel Prize winning authors. The difference between you and people who create great work is not a clearer schedule or more resources or a DNA of genius. 

It’s the commitment to the work despite the busyness.