Thirty Days Project

Thirty Days Project is a practical way to fight Option Paralysis.

Creative people often have the luxury of being able to do anything but just as often end up doing nothing. Thirty Days Project is thirty deadlines; finish a piece of creative work by then end of each day.

Tasks expand to fill the time allotted to them, and this is especially true of the tasks of every-day life. For too many of us minor necessities expand to fill the hours of the day at the expense of creative endeavours.

Creativity, however, often responds well to a little external pressure. More precisely, the pressure of a deadline “encourages” decisions to be made which in turn allow creativity to flow unimpeded.

Thirty Days turns on the pressure with thirty daily deadlines. Each deadline forces the artist to choose a subject, an approach and a tool and create something by the end of the day.

By establishing deadlines, even artificial ones, the act of creation is given a higher priority in the hierarchy of everyday activities. Re-prioritizing daily tasks is often difficult at first, but becomes easier over the Thirty Days. The aim is to get something made by the end of the day. It may not be your best work, but it will give you experience with re-organizing your life to make creating art a priority. Something you are accustomed to doing may end up being squeezed out in order to make room for your creative work. This may be for the better.

Some people will not understand the need for this kind of project. To those who can and do create every day we tip our hat. You have our respect. We desire to be more like you and this is a way to accomplish that.

Others will recognize in this their own frustrations and see Thirty Days as an opportunity to work around them.

If you have ever wanted to make changes we encourage you to try Thirty Days. You may end up with thirty new pieces from which to expand, or even enough for a show, an album or a book of poetry. At the very least it will have you organizing your time in order to create. Whatever the cost of making art every day may be, you will know it by the end of the Thirty Days.

How it works:

You create something before the end of the day every day for thirty days.

When it starts:

June 01, 2011

What you could do:

• Complete thirty software tutorials.
• Record thirty pieces of music in various genres.
• Photograph subjects that have always intimidated you.
• Record thirty monologues.
• Write thirty poems from a new point of view.
• Draw thirty versions of the same object.
• Write thirty short stories.
• Sculpt thirty maquettes.
• Copy thirty pen drawings from the Masters.
• Animate thirty walk-cycles.
• Thirty comic strips.
• Develop abandoned ideas from old sketchbooks.
• Experiment in a style the interests you.

Sharing Your Work:

• Start a blog or arrange a way of uploading your work to the Internet.
• Register for Thirty Days Project.
• Log in every day and post links to your work.
• Tell people about it.

When we will have the next one:

This is the one that matters now.

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Tags: announcement, how to

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 16th, 2010 at 11:52 pm and is filed under Announcements. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.