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540 - Why the Creative Path Has to Be Twisty and Turny with Nishant Jain

Creative Pep Talk

Wed Jan 28 2026

Summary

Creative Pep Talk: Episode 540

Why the Creative Path Has to Be Twisty and Turny with Nishant Jain
Release Date: January 28, 2026
Host: Andy J. Pizza | Guest: Nishant Jain (Author of Make Sneaky Art)

Overview

This episode dives into the unpredictable, spiraling journey of creativity, featuring a lively and reflective conversation between host Andy J. Pizza and Nishant Jain, author of Make Sneaky Art. Together, they explore how embracing curiosity, chaos, and imperfection leads to more authentic, joyful, and sustainable creative practices. Through stories, practical exercises, and philosophical insights, Nishant and Andy hash out why the “creative path” is rarely linear—and how that’s actually a gift.

Key Discussion Points

1. Rekindling Your Creative Relationship (00:00–05:10)

The Creative Disconnect:
Andy opens by sharing how adults often lose touch with their creative selves amidst adult life, capitalism, and external pressures.

"If you don't stay in relationship to [your creative self], you don't have a prayer at having a practice, or a profession around your creativity, or even just a consistent creative habit." (00:14)
Introducing Nishant Jain:
Nishant's book, Make Sneaky Art, is introduced as a guide to reconnecting with curiosity through playful drawing and observation.

2. Contrarian Origins & Rethinking the ‘How-To’ (05:10–07:00)

Nishant’s Reluctant Authorship:
Nishant shares that he initially refused to write a how-to art book, feeling unsuited to giving prescriptive advice:

"I am, fortunately / unfortunately, a contrarian. I don't listen to good advice. If somebody has good advice for me, I'm definitely not doing that thing." (05:54)
He accepted the challenge by writing the kind of book he'd actually enjoy—one that prompts readers to find their own way.

3. Presence, Perfection, and Your Unique Line (07:01–10:59)

Drawing the Long Line:
Nishant explains the power of embracing one’s unique “imperfect” line:

"A long line is instantly your line. Nobody can fake your long line quite the way you drew it... it carries the signature of that emotion." (07:03)
Rejecting Perfection:
Both speakers unpack how the pursuit of perfection is antithetical to authentic art.

"If you ask anybody what art they like, they don't like art from perfect people. The art they love is not perfect art." – Nishant (09:09)
Connection Over Impressing:
Andy adds,

"The main thing we think we could do with art is impress someone. It's one of the least interesting feelings... Art is so much more about connecting to another person." (09:42)

4. Social Media, External Validation, and Creative Freedom (10:17–11:42)

On Social Media’s Influence:
Nishant laments how external validation and comparative thinking disrupt the creative process:

"Now before the moment of creation, the first instinct in our heads is, what is so-and-so person going to think about it?... This whole business... takes you out of your creativity." (10:17)

5. The Nonlinear Creative Journey (11:43–24:31)

Life Story Detours:
Nishant details an unexpected path from Indian engineer to novelist, political satirist, stand-up comic, and finally artist.

"Straight line journeys would be so boring... I am so glad it didn’t happen that way for me." (11:59)
Influence of Place:
Chicago’s creative energy inspires Nishant to pursue his passions.

"Because of this country, because of the culture of this brilliant, amazing city, I gave myself the permission to chase my dreams." (19:28)
Quitting the PhD and Struggling with Words:
Nishant opens up about quitting academia to write a novel (which didn’t quite happen), political burnout, and eventually falling into observational drawing as a solace and source of joy.

6. Art as Observation, Connection, and Acceptance (24:32–29:23)

Finding Joy in Process:
Drawing strangers in cafés and public spaces became a way of engaging with the world and finding commonality beyond surface differences.

"[Drawing] is not because the drawings are good, but because I’m finding something that's making me truly at peace with my world." (26:46)
Curiosity as the Guiding Thread:
Andy notes:

"I do see one straight line and that's the line of curiosity from the beginning to the end." (28:06)

7. Curiosity vs. Strategy in Creative Practice (29:24–34:35)

Two Modes of Creativity:
Andy and Nishant discuss the creative tension between starting with an end in mind (strategy) versus following curiosity with no set outcome.
Drawing as Nonverbal Curiosity:
Nishant emphasizes how drawing can fulfill curiosity outside of words:

"What drawing has shown me is that so much curiosity we have for the world does not exist in words." (29:24)

8. The Curiosity Spiral Exercise (34:36–41:25)

Practical Exercise:
To combat intimidation by the blank page and tap into true interests, Nishant prescribes the “curiosity spiral”:
- Start a drawing with whatever catches your eye, without overthinking.
- Spiral outwards, giving less attention to less interesting areas.
- Let both what you love and what you ignore shape the image—“your taste is not just the stuff you love...allow yourself to hate certain things.” (40:28)
- This builds authentic voice and habit, sidestepping standards of perfection or completeness.

9. Leaving Room for Magic (43:38–47:27)

Letting Serendipity In:
Nishant tells the story behind a drawing where a father and son entered the scene unexpectedly—reminding us why it’s vital to leave empty spaces, both in art and in life:

"If you leave room for magic on your page, sometimes that magic appears—but you have to be in the business of leaving some room for it." (43:48)
Wider Application:
Andy connects this to making room for serendipity in our calendars and daily lives, noting that strategy and control usually dominate.

10. Embracing Chaos, Relinquishing Control (47:28–54:32)

Against the Optimization Fetish:
Nishant criticizes culture’s obsession with productivity and efficiency:

"The process of art for me was the process of becoming a child again... From process-oriented people, we become results-oriented people." (48:06)
Living with Uncertainty:
Quitting academia for art meant letting go of measurable progress:

"Learning to embrace this situation was so important, and learning to not quantify it, to not struggle to put productivity measures into it." (66:38)

11. The Best and Weirdest Time to Be an Artist (68:18–71:59)

Context of the Times:
Nishant contends there's never been a better time to be an artist, given access to materials, audiences, and autonomy.

"This is the best time in human history to be an artist. Leonardo da Vinci would kill to be in your place." (68:22)
Curiosity Makes You an Artist; Strategy Keeps You There:
It’s the combination of sustained curiosity and strategic adaptation that makes a sustainable professional creative life.

12. Style Is About Precision, Not Perfection (54:33–59:11)

Lessons from Engineering:
Nishant introduces the concepts of accuracy (getting it “right”) vs. precision (being consistent).

"As an artist, we don't have to be accurate...What brings style, what brings you out is your consistency." (55:20)
- Cites Miles Davis:
  
  "Once is a mistake, twice is an idea, three times is style." (57:30)
Example:
Nishant's signature “feetless” people drawings emerged from a “mistake” he made his own through repetition.

13. Infinite Games and Lasting Creative Joy (72:19–73:11)

Finite vs. Infinite Games:
The creative life is an infinite game—there are no ultimate winners, just the ongoing pleasure of playing.

"Life is an infinite game...the practice of art is also an infinite game...the doing it is the joy of it." (72:28)

14. Sneaky Art: Dual Definitions (62:20–63:50)

The Art and the Process Are Both Sneaky:

"I was trying to be sneaky to begin...And I realized that the art is sneaky, too. It's right there, but you can't see it until you're willing to give it time and attention." (62:20)

15. The “No Point B” Call to Adventure (81:08–81:37)

Weekly Creative Challenge:
Andy closes with a challenge inspired by Nishant—to begin at Point A (an action, destination, or drawing) without predefining Point B. This is an exercise in presence, curiosity, and openness to unplanned outcomes.

"Go pick a point A. Don't have a point B...Your whole life in this era...is encouraging you to be in your strategic brain, to get the right outcome. So let's do one where you just go and see what happens." (80:19)

Notable Quotes & Moments

On Authenticity and Process:

"The more you do this, it gets us to appreciate how beautiful our everyday world is...There is incredible beauty everywhere, and it’s waiting for us to see it."
– Nishant Jain (46:24)
On Art’s Role:

"Art is not about making pretty drawings...Why do we do it? Because the doing it is the joy of it." – Nishant Jain (60:46, 73:11)
On Creative Permission:

"This is something I love to give credit to. America and Chicago. No other place in the world could I have done it."
– Nishant Jain (19:28)
On Mistakes as Style:

"Style comes from staying with the things you think of as your mistakes. Staying with those things until they give you some kind of bright idea."
– Nishant Jain (57:30)
On the Double-Edged Sword of Strategy:

"When we over index on strategy, we over index on outcome. And the more we over index on results...the narrower we make our worldview and our experience."
– Nishant Jain (47:58)
On Infinite Games:

"Life, your life is an infinite game. And the practice of art is also an infinite game...the doing it is the joy of it."
– Nishant Jain (72:28)

Key Timestamps & Segments

00:00–05:10: Setting the stage—why creativity needs rekindling
07:03–09:09: The philosophy of long lines and imperfection
11:43–24:31: Nishant’s winding path from engineering to art
29:24–34:35: Curiosity vs. strategy and the limits of words
34:36–41:25: The curiosity spiral drawing exercise
43:38–47:27: Leaving room for magic—serendipity in art and life
54:33–59:11: Precision vs. accuracy and the making of style
62:20–63:50: Dual definition of “sneaky art”
72:28–73:11: Infinite games—why the creative journey never ends
81:08–81:37: The "No Point B" creative challenge

Resources & Recommendations

Nishant Jain:
- Sneaky Art Podcast (audio-only, longform art and creativity conversations)
- Make Sneaky Art (book)
- Substack Newsletter
Andy J. Pizza:

Action Step: Call to Adventure

“No Point B”
Go somewhere, begin a drawing, or start a creative act with no predetermined Point B. Let curiosity (not results or expectations) guide what happens next. Notice what magic—large or small—sneaks in along the way.

Episode Tone & Final Takeaways

The conversation is warm, philosophical, irreverent, and practical—full of both deep encouragement and sly humor. Both Andy and Nishant invite listeners to embrace the twisty, turny, frustratingly nonlinear path of creative work; to value curiosity over optimization, process over product, and unique perspective over perfection.
As Nishant says, “You have to find a way to keep doing it and to keep doing it and to keep doing it, because the doing it is the joy of it.”

For more on the practice of making sneaky art, curiosity-driven living, and creative encouragement, check out the resources above and "stay pepped up, y'all!"

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Transcript

Andy J. Pizza (0:00)

You know what's hard to do? It's hard to stay in relationship to your creative self as an adult in this economy and in this world, it's so hard to remember why you love making stuff, how you find that curious part of yourself that wants to do stuff for the sake of doing it. But if you don't stay in relationship to that, you don't have a prayer at having a practice or a profession around your creativity or even just a consistent creative habit, because it's hard to remember why it's worth it when you don't have that relationship. And so this episode is about rekindling your creative brain. How are we going to do that? We're going to do it by chatting with Nishant Jain, who wrote this book, Make Sneaky Art. It is about how you go out into the world and sneak around and draw things and people and tap into your curiosity. Had a fricking blast talking with Nishant. This thing is just littered with so much inspiration. I was. I left this conversation feeling on fire. At the end, we're gonna. I'm gonna come back. Well, no, at the end of the conversation, we actually get into the cta, the call to adventure. It's called no Point B. And it is a practice, a thing you could go do today to help rekindle and get back in touch with that curiosity. I was very inspired by this. I want to do this myself. So, yeah, go nowhere and listen to this. Chat with Nishant Jain, author of the Make Sneaky Art book. And have fun. Bye all.

Nishant Jain (1:51)

On the creative journey. It's easy to get lost, but don't worry, you'll lift off. You just need a creative pep talk.

Andy J. Pizza (2:10)

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Nishant Jain (12:13)

I am so glad, almost so glad that it didn't happen that way for me. So, like, I grew up in India and I grew up in a generation where mostly you do not think about what you really, really want to do when it comes to your work. You're supposed to be more pragmatic about it. So you study the thing that will get you ahead. You take the job that will pay you well and safely. So you make these pragmatic decisions for life, and that's what's drilled into you. And that was my environment. And this is despite being in a family, an extended family of very creative people with creative, like, artisan businesses. Still, the idea of being creative full time is kind of like it doesn't even occur to you. Nobody in my circle was doing that. So I was cursed with being good at math and science, which meant that my decisions have been made for me. You are going to be an engineer. You're going to study Science. And I was always curious, so I just went with it. And I studied to be a mechanical engineer. I worked with race cars. I worked in car engines. I studied, like, it made me very curious about things, and I wanted to keep studying more. And I did a master's degree in biomechanics working on robots and human body mechanics and how to integrate the two and how to understand the human body as if it's a mechanical system that needs certain care. So these things made me very curious. But all my life, ever since I knew that this is something a person does, the books that I read are written by a human being. Ever since I came to that realization, all I wanted to be was a writer. Like, all I wanted to do was tell stories, make people laugh. Humor was always my thing because I grew up reading very funny writers, and that's what I wanted to do with my life. I have been enamored by words always. And I believe in the power of words. And I wanted to have the best words. I wanted to have the best words to do all the things that I wanted to. All the change I wanted to affect in the world. So through my bachelor's studies, undergrad studies, and my master's, I kept writing like I had a blog when Blogspot was a blogger was a big thing. I started drawing comics on a whim with stick figures because I was bored with too much time on my hands in my last semester, and I wanted to make fun of my friends. So I just started making comics, making fun of them. Isn't it so. Or could. Orkut was a social media thingy then. I don't know if you know about Orkut at all.

Nishant Jain (22:24)

Yeah. So I thought that the reason to do this was that with humor, you can share bitter truths, and it makes it easier to swallow. And that's the great goal. That's the great goal beyond just the laughter. And that's why I idolize these people. And I saw them fail, and I saw them shrug it off and just continue with the next day with their work as if it wasn't such a big deal. And it just felt like I thought completely differently. And I started thinking, so all of this collided at once. Failing with words, seeing words fail to do what I thought they were supposed to do, and then thinking, what else? And I am trying at the same time. After getting a lot of pushback for a lot of my comics in India, online, getting a lot of pushback from people I knew who I thought would get it, but they've been sort of taken. The red is the red pill. Yeah, I think red pill. So early. Red pill. And they like, I'm getting so much pushback from people I know and trust and love. And I started thinking, what is it that I can do? How do we get to a truth that nobody can deny? And these are thoughts in my head. This is not overt. This is not something I know I'm doing with intentionality. But I think these are the forces that moved me towards. With frustration. Picking up that notebook, picking up that fountain pen, going to a cafe, sitting down in Starbucks, looking at some people and thinking, I just don't want to deal with words for a while. What can I do? Maybe I'll just draw what's in front of me. And one of the things I thought then was that if I draw from what I see, maybe I'll be able to draw a little better. And maybe my comics don't need to be stick figures anymore. That's what I thought. I'll just draw better environments. And I started doing this, and I just loved it. I made a shitty drawing this day, next day, next day after that. And I thought, these drawings aren't very good. They're not as good as I want them to be. But I love this time that I spent doing this. I want to push. So I started doing that every day. I would go to a cafe in this great city of Chicago. New neighborhood every day, look at new people every day. These fantastic, dramatic people of America. Everybody's a main character. And so much, so much to see.

Nishant Jain (24:34)

It's just fascinating to me, you know, you don't. Again, I can't keep saying this enough. You don't get this anywhere else. People who are absolutely convinced the sitcom is going, the cameras are on them, and they're right. This is the shot. Say the thing. Say the line on the phone on the bus. Saying the line for the whole bus to listen. They're like, unbelievable. So much courage, and I needed that. I needed to see it. So I wanted to chase these people, and I wanted just. I want to draw this guy. I want to draw this guy. Want to draw that Guy. And that's what I started doing. And I started the. The way this worked. And that's why the book is about this. To find joy in the process. To find joy out of something that has nothing to do with the result of the drawing. The business of finding these people was fun. The business of observing them was fun. The sketchbook in an unfamiliar country where I feel out of place, gave me a permission slip that you're allowed to sit in this cafe. Another unique American thing. Nowhere else do people use cafes like this. Just sit all day with one cup of coffee and you're allowed to do that. You're allowed to use the cafe this way. And so you can watch other people using the cafe this way. And I did it because I saw other people do it. And I thought a sketchbook gave me the permission to do the same. And I started drawing. And I started taking this joy from the process of observation. From the process of observation as a way to better understand people without necessarily intruding in their lives, in their personal space. Observing people as a way to strip away the surface differences and then arrive at something that is similar to me. These people. That guy who looks very different from me is not that different because he ordered the same coffee as me. That person. Soon after Chicago, we moved to north central Wisconsin. So a little town in Wisconsin called Eau Claire, completely out of, you know, anything I've seen. The only image I had of Wisconsin in my life was that 70s show. Yeah, that's it. That's the only thing I knew. And this was it. Nobody's doing anything. People are just add up.

Nishant Jain (29:24)

Yeah. So absolutely. So curiosity is the thing that is unspoken inside you. You can't always put words to it. And we are a very text heavy society. Like from the moment we wake up, whether it's a tweet or messages or emails or headlines, everything is words all around us. And so, you know, very quickly this becomes a way of understanding the world or the way of expressing the world, the way of sharing thoughts and emotions. And if you can't put it in words, Maybe it's not even a real thing. So for me, what it's done is, as a person who loved words their whole life, drawing showed me how much of the world exists outside of language. The process of drawing was a way of fulfilling curiosity. Because I see something, and that thing that I see, I know it. But the more you see it, the more you translate it, the more you get into the business of only seeing the lines and the shapes and the colors and the shadows and. And then I do this job of translating it on the page. And the more you do it, the more you get into the zone of it. You can do this entire cycle without words getting in the way. I didn't put it into words. I just saw it. And then I translated it with my pen, with my brush, and it's here now. And this is what it is. And if you ask me to describe it, why would I do that? This is what it is. We keep trying to put things into words. And what drawing has shown me is that there is so much curiosity we have for the world that does not exist in words. It is not meant to be put into words. It cannot be expressed that way. It's so much greater than language. And the more you draw, the more you allow that side of you, that massive, big amount of curiosity, well inside you, to express itself. And it's stopped by the need for words, by the need to put it into a text message, the need to put it into a fancy post somewhere on some platform or the other, which is a reduction into words. So drawing and curiosity are, you know, curiosity is what shows you something. Drawing is what shows you a way to translate it. And this, this. These two things combined. Sight, senses, absorption, filtering. Curiosity is a filter. So you see so much of the world, but what do you care about? What do you focus on? What do you blur out? That's your curiosity. So it's this filter that takes away a lot of noise, a lot of data, a lot of information, and then it leaves out certain things that you really care about. And then based on what you're using, whether it's a pen or a brush or colors or just ink, you translate it and you reduce it further. So you filter it more and more and more. And then the final filter is your skill level at depicting it and the style that you choose to draw with. And then you have all these filters that are your body and your mind, and then it's on the page and no words entered. This whole process.

Nishant Jain (35:52)

What I'm right, what do other people want? Always, what do other people want? And we devalue our own curiosity. So this exercise that I've got in the book is about how to tap into your curiosity. And you can't do that, you know, again, too many words will not work. I don't want to give you a treatise on it. So the exercise is to now tap into the thing without letting words get in the way. No hesitations, no second thoughts, screw all of these thoughts, just get into the drawing of it and start getting into that non verbal image based curiosity inside you. So how it goes is people are afraid of the blank page. And I am an impatient person and I am very curious about certain things and I don't care about other things. And that's how my art has evolved. So this lesson comes from all of those factors of me expressing themselves honestly. You start with anything that makes you curious. You look in front of you and whatever it is that catches your eye, don't overthink it. Don't ask yourself why, don't ask if it's profound, don't let words get in the way. Just pick the damn thing and draw the first thing that catches your eye. It looks like something and it looks, it stopped you for some moments, so you drew that first. And since that is now the start of your curiosity, you spiral out. And this advice is particularly useful because people don't always have a lot of time to draw and they feel like if I can't give it two hours, should I even start? And this is me giving them permission to not think like that. You spiral out. And then the curiosity spiral constructs itself. What it does, what it says to you is that as you move away from that element of first curiosity by, by default, you are less curious. As you trail away, you Spiral away. And you allow yourself to be less curious, allow yourself to be not interested, allow yourself to not care. As you move away from your point of curiosity, you give less attention to the things there. You give fewer lines to them. You give fewer details. You give them less time. And the thing that made you curious and the things around it are the things that get all of your attention because it made you curious. What this does is it immediately gives you a way to start. You get over, like, for me, the longest time, you know, that blank page was. Is always fearful. But the moment you put pen to page, that fear decreases. And the moment you get into it more and more and more, it's gone. As soon as the process begins, those outside thoughts are gone. So the fastest way that you can close that gap is good for you. So I would get into it, and then immediately I would allow myself to tap into my impatience. If I'm impatient, if I don't care, if I think that thing doesn't matter, I am allowed to go with that feeling. And what that means is that without really, really consciously thinking of it, I am expressing my curiosity both for the things I care about and the things I don't care about. So I'm navigating this beautiful scene in front of me in this interesting way that is directly related to my personality. I like what people are doing. I am always curious about those people at the bus stop. So that's where my drawing starts. But drawing windows is super tedious. I don't want to draw windows, so the building behind them just gets very quick lines, and I don't want to draw the windows. This drawing, therefore, for most of, like, pretty much all of the drawing, stays within the zone of my joy. These are the things I enjoy, so I'm spending time with them. And then when it's done and you look at it, it tells you what I was curious about, and it tells you what I didn't care for. So this, you know, whether my lines are good, whether my skill is great. This drawing is my drawing. It can never be anybody else's because this is an authentic representation of what I care for and what I don't care for.

Nishant Jain (43:48)

This is the drawing. And what happened on this page is that I drew this because I wanted to draw this bridge. This is in Seattle, and I wanted to draw this fun bridge. And I started drawing it, and I drew the background and I drew the sky, and then I came down this way for the foreground. And just as I was here, that's when this father and son walked into the page. They walked into the page and they had this little exchange where the son asks the father, what is with that thing, that drawbridge? And the father explains how it works. And it goes up and down and the child is fascinated. And they occupied the spot that was empty on my page in that moment, and I put them in. And now if you look at this drawing, it seems like as if the whole drawing is constructed around them. So when you draw on location, and this is part of my argument for why more people should draw on location and not always only out of photographs. When you draw on location, you spend a half hour or an hour at that spot. So what you do is you're giving this space, this scene, your time and your attention, and it's a constantly shifting tableau. This is not a still image. People come in and out, things change, ships come in, whatever stuff happens. And sometimes stuff happens that irritates you, like this car comes and blocks your view. But sometimes something magical will just come into that space in the last five minutes of your time there and completely own the scene now. And you needed them to do that, and they're right here. So the idea is at a very General philosophical level that if you leave room for magic in your page, sometimes that magic appears, but you have to be in the business of leaving some room for it, which means giving time, waiting faithfully, which means watching and observing, which means going out there day after day after day, looking in your regular ordinary world, in ordinary places for magical stuff to happen. And if we start doing this, this also happens in the way you draw. This happens in the process by which you draw. This happens in the process by which you see. The more you do this, it gets us to appreciate how beautiful our everyday world is. Like, you don't have to be in remarkable Instagram worthy places, big cities of the world. There is incredible beauty everywhere and it's waiting for us to see it. And some of it is that magical thing that happens when you give from your end the gift of time and attention.

Nishant Jain (48:06)

So the strategy has its place. But when we over index on strategy, we over index on outcome. And the more we over index on results and outcomes, the, the narrower we make our worldview and our experience. So this is something that's very important to me because the process of art for me was the process of becoming a child again. Children draw because they take joy in putting that crayon on the page and making big marks. Look at the color coming out on the page. If I add green to it, look at what happens. They're taking joy in that process once they're done. And I have a near 2 year old at this point, once he's done, he literally tears it apart. He's done with it, he doesn't care. We want to save it. I keep begging him to not tear it so I can frame it. And he just, he doesn't care. He'll tear it because that's fun now and then he'll draw again. The more we grow up, we forget to take joy from process. We only care if it's good enough, Quote unquote good enough. The return on investment is worth it if so. And so people are impressed. I'll only do it if the result is worth it. So from process oriented people, we become results oriented people. And how this manifests a lot, especially in men, is our world shrinks because we'll only do the things we are good at doing because the process, the result is good enough. And of course every year that field shrinks. So you get older and older and older and eventually you reach that age. I'm not there yet, luckily, where your world is basically just news and sports and that's it, that's all you talk about, that's all you know and nothing outside. It's. It's the opposite. As I see, at least in my experience with women, the older women get, the more they're eager to explore their world and do things and just enjoy things and be curious and do things for the fun of it. And I feel like for me it's been understanding that. And as a person who loves to plan things, I have three, I have four notebooks and I have notion that is full of all my plans. Google Calendar also I digitally analog every way I plan in 100 million ways. And I have tried and rejected dozens of tools before this as well. I think what I'm really taking from it is that when you fixate on Destinations, you're only. You're postponing joy until you reach that destination. That's one part. So 90% of the journey, which is 90% of life, you are sacrificing joy so that at the end, hopefully, you will be happy. Secondly, it presupposes that you are fit to decide the destination. You know, what the best destination would be. And so you go through this life on an optimized path, not going left or right. And I ask what you're on this planet to do. Were you here just to get to that destination, or were you here to explore this mad, beautiful world we live in? You're supposed to take every detour. You're supposed to stop at every scenic vista. You're supposed to get lost. These things have come to me from trying to be an artist. These things have not made me an artist, but these things are gifts that my art practice has given me because I trusted my curiosity, which showed me there is so much more to be happy about. You said something wonderful. You said, leaving room for magic in your calendar, which is such a rich thing to do. Like, the biggest thing that I've gotten this year has come from saying no to a bunch of things. Last year, I let go of the kind of commissions I was doing. I let go of a lot of things that were making me money, but I didn't want to be doing that. And I left room in my calendar, basically, and things would drop in and I have space for them. And now things that happened two years ago that I did just because I had space and nothing to do, are circling back and becoming bigger things that I really want to do. Not knowing destination, just following curiosity, makes for such a rich, wonderful life in which you, like, who cares where you end up? Like, destinations, straight lines, all of these things, like, they're part of $300 courses with marketers and growth gurus. And, like, those are words that work for them because they don't care. They don't care about the everyday. But if you want to be happy today, I don't think strategy is the way to do it.

Nishant Jain (55:20)

So this applies to designing very small systems that move very little, little micrometers or millimeters and have to do exactly that every time. So, you know, CD players and chips that have little moving parts, all of that. Precision control devices. But it applies to being an artist also. And it came to me when I was trying to be an artist. Accuracy is when you always hit the bullseye. So you're always correct. If you never hit the bullseye, you're not accurate. If you always miss the bullseye, but you always hit the ring just outside it, you're not accurate, but you're precise. Precision is not how correct you are. Precision is how consistent you are. A lot of devices, when designed for precision control, don't have to be accurate. They do have to be precise. They have to do the same thing every time, even if they're offset a little bit from the right point. That's okay as long as it's precise and consistent. As an artist, we don't have to be accurate. This is the most common misconception people have, the idea that there is an accurate, perfect solution that you have to reach. Engineers think like this. Very often there is an optimized solution. We have to get to a lot of people coding for AI, therefore, think this way. Also. There is a perfect art that we will optimize towards. Yeah. The point of this is to not be accurate. The point is to be what brings style, what brings you out is your consistency. Are you always you. Are you always honest? Are you never faking it? If you do this consistently, if your perspective is always off just a little bit, always like that, if your heads are always just a little larger than the rest of the body, that becomes your style. Just do it consistently. Just stay with those things that are part of you. Stay with the quote, unquote. Mistakes that are part of you, that are your personality. All of those things add up to become your style. All of those things add up to become your honest representation. And that is what we want to get to. That brings us that joy. There's this quote I always share by my favorite musician, Miles Davis. Miles Davis said, once is a mistake, twice is an idea. Three times his style.