Discipline

I’ve been taking a course called “Manufractured”, taught by Steven Skov Holt and Mara Holt Skov, the authors of their book with the same title. Each and every lecture has been a mind-blowing experience, with discussions that dive deep into my cognitive understanding of what design is and what design can become.

Recently, Steven provided a quote that I will forever cherish – “To be multi-disciplinary, one must by disciplined.” My heart raced at the profundity of such a statement.

As he proceeded to share his notebooks and journals with the rest of the class, books that date back all the way to the 70′s, I couldn’t help but be inspired by how each and every book is filled to the spine with notes, clippings, drawings, and daily dairy entries. Seeing such rigor in action brings up questions about the limitless possibilities one can achieve if they simply had the discipline of doing it, every single day. His talents are supplement by perseverance, as evident in his long list of achievements. This also brings in a great post from gapingvoid.com called “Put the hours in,” and Elizabeth Gilbert’s TED talk on nurturing creativity.

We often think that time is our worst enemy. In the case of continuously improving myself as a designer, I feel that there simply is never enough time in the world to learn and do so much. That line of thinking has only impeded on my growth. One shouldn’t question how much time there is, but rather, simply take the time given and put it to use – for achieving results and excellence takes time, hard work, and patience.

Image from Wikimedia Commons