You’re a liberal arts student, and you’re stumbling to figure out what subject you have to dedicate your life to. Math is fun, econ comes easily, but you’re actually a fantastic sketcher. When it comes to math homework, you allocate 3–5 hour sessions to figure out a handful of problems. For econ, you make sure your afternoon is left open to cram that paper. What about sketching? It’s something you absolutely excel at, but you only give it 20 minutes here and there. If you get frustrated with drawing something (let’s say a certain character’s eyes), you just sigh, put down your notebook, and get back to studying.

Imagine if you treated sketching the same way you treated Math or Econ, spending long nights studying it and conquering those little frustrated moments. That’s what this is all about. When you’re forced to sit down and have nothing else to do but face those frustrated moments, you get creative.

What are you talking about?

I’m talking about taking a boring class. Do you have to repeat English 101 or Introduction to Music Theory when you’re a fluent english speaker and played the saxophone for 7 years? Awesome. Don’t dread those classes. Use them to force you to be productive creatively. You’re going to sit down in one place with nothing but a pen and piece of paper for the next hour and a half, and that’s an overwhelmingly rare occasion.

Today, everything is asking for our attention. Facebook, sms, instagram, buzzfeed, twitter, reddit, etc. When you are faced with a problem and can’t figure it out right off the bat, it’s easy to get distracted and take a break. I know you purposefully hide your phone when you’re working on math or econ, but I’m talking about creative problems. These are problems that you are told to consider second to academics, so you allocate a secondary slot of your attention to them.

How do I design this so people will use it in this way? How can I make this musical arrangement grow here? What is that idea that I almost figured out last night? The problem is that creative problems require the most amount of brain bashing, trial & error, and brute force effort. Think of any artist that brings their creativity to the forefront. How do they approach it? They never let their problems out of their sight (which is why some of them go crazy).

So yea, take those boring easy A classes, make something, and go crazy.