✏️ Inspiration, Fast and Slow (Part 2: Slow)

March Madness, Day 14

(Welcome to Day 14 of our March Madness series and continuing celebration of Mardi Gras, with love from Genevieve & Ali & the Ally Show)

Yesterday we talked about Thinking, Fast and Slow, and discussed the idea that we each have two Systems of thinking that sit side by side in our precious little minds, one Fast and one Slow:

Thinking, fast and slow. Image borrowed from the Decision Lab.

Then we talked about the fact that inspiration sometimes comes in super-fast, like System 1, as it did for artist Amy Sherald when she was in sixth grade and saw a single painting that altered the course of her life:

Today, we are gonna swing that pendulum all the way over to the other side and talk about the times when inspiration is really, really slow, like System 2, and possibly even slower.

This way of thinking about inspiration as something slow goes against all our automatic conditioning.

Think about it. Almost every metaphor we use for inspiration is binary, black/white, on/off:

• lightbulb (on/off)

• lightning (either struck you or it didn’t)

• apple (hit you in the head like it did for Isaac Newton or it didn’t)

• struck gold (either you found a vein or you are still in the mine with nothing to show for it)

• the scales fell from your eyes (either they did or they didn’t)

• wake-up moment or spiritual awakening (either you are awake or you’re asleep)

• “a-ha” moment (you either said, “a-ha” or you were like, “duhhh”)

Even the metaphors that are a little more gradual, like building something piece by piece or brick by brick, are pretty black and white. Like, you either added another brick, or you didn’t. Your brick wall or little brick house is done, or it’s not.

I call this tendency to think about inspiration as something that happens very fast “the accidental tyranny of ideas.” Like, you either had an idea or you didn’t. If you didn’t have an idea, you are are stalled or stuck or even stupid; if you had an idea, bully for you and now you can finally make something (your art, your writing, your project, etc.).

But based on my own experience, inspiration can sometimes creep up on you. It may arrive slowly over the course of a day or a week or a month or a year or multiple years.

When inspiration creeps in at this slow rate, you might not even recognize it as inspiration. No apple hit you on the head, ergo you are not inspired and have nothing to work with. But I’m here to tell you that there is zero need to have a lightbulb moment, take an apple to the head, get struck by lightning, strike gold, cast the scales from your eyes, or say, “a-ha” in order to be inspired and do your creative work.

My favorite maxim representing this side of the pendulum swing is, “Like most overnight success, it took ten years.”

Remember Our Friend Alex?

Yeah, you remember Alex W., he was our archetype for actually starting and sticking with a project back on Day 2 of March Madness:

Alex Witkowski and his brainchild, Spin This, the weekly music connection newsletter. Photos courtesy Alex - thank you again!

You’ll recall that so far in 2025, every Sunday Alex has published a newsletter discussing five songs and asking his readers one question. Here at Cherry Red Coaching, we celebrated this project as an amazing example of a personal Project 2025 and as a strong response to the call to action in Meditations for Mortals: Four Weeks to Embrace Your Limitations and Make Time for What Counts.

Now, Alex did have an inciting incident for this project that he recognized in hindsight as a “wake-up” moment:

Q. Please tell us the backstory of how you came to start Spin This.

A. I've been very, very in love with music for a very long time, obviously, my entire life. I'm super close with my sister, and we listen to music together, and so much of what we bond around is music.

She and I came across this article that was like, at age 30, you basically stop finding new music.

That was a lot - it hit us really hard, and we spent a lot of time talking about it. We were discussing, Why do we think that is? Are we afraid that that's going to happen to us?

For me, it was very much a “wake up” moment. And I was like, okay, I need to be very intentional and invested in my love for music. I don't want to look back in the future and be like, I can't believe I used to love this, and I gave up on it. So I started doing this song-a-day playlist… that was back in 2019.

But waking up is not the same thing as following through

Here’s the thing, though - the newly awakened Alex did not immediately turn around and execute on the perfect idea to address his concern about not finding new music after age 30.

Rather, he explored lots of alternatives for fulfilling his vision:

• started song-a-day playlist in 2019

• considered but discarded the idea of writing music reviews, for the same reason that some newspapers only publish reviews of restaurants they recommend

• posting interesting songs on Instagram with prompts for others to share their favorite songs

• started listening to every single song anyone posted, and sharing back about that song with his own comment, perhaps with a clip

  • when he first started posting on Instagram, he got maybe one or two comments per song

  • and later this grew to 30-50 comments per song

• realized that doing this on Instagram created too much friction for him (making slides, doing things in Canva, “all this stuff”)

• decided to pivot towards making a weekly newsletter using Substack rather than continuing this project on Instagram. That was the inception of Spin This.

In the end, almost six years passed between Alex’s initial “wake up” moment and the launch of Spin This on January 5, 2025.

Like most overnight success, it took six years.

Another word we can apply to this process is the vaunted word “iteration.” Designers live and die by iteration, but so do many other blankers, from writers to filmmakers to composers to engineers to scientists and more.

And here’s the thing about iteration - you can start the process with the tiniest, most amorphous little redwood seed of a thought or a feeling. You do not need to have a Big Idea, or even a small idea. You do not need a concrete hypothesis like hey, that apple hit me in the head, gravity is a thing!

An oyster starts a pearl with a teeny-tiny grain of sand (or does it? More below). And it takes anywhere from six months to several years from one oyster to form one pearl.

No one would call a “piece of sand” an “idea,” but everyone can see the beauty of a pearl. It works for the oyster, and it can work for you.

In fact, one more thing I learned from this video is that the notion that all pearls start as grains of sand is a myth. Oysters can start forming a pearl “when some tiny organism invades the creature and disrupts the cells in the mantle. And then, something miraculous happens. The oyster begins to secrete a smooth crystalline substance known as nacre [mother-of-pearl]… [Nacre] is lighter and stronger than concrete. It takes several years for thousands layers of nacre to build up and form a smooth, iridescent gem.”

That’s right, ladies, gentlemen, everyone: you don’t even need a piece of sand to start your iteration process. You can even suffer a blow, like a tiny organism invading you and disrupting the cells in your mantle - that could be writer’s block, depression, getting laid off, getting harmed physically, getting harmed spiritually, fighting with your family, arguing with your boss - and use that as the tiny little trigger for starting to make something.

So that brings us to our March Madness activity for today. Actually we have two suggestions for today:

1. Find an Itty-Bitty Piece of Sand or Other Irritant

Something is bothering you! Something is always bothering you. It’s okay. It’s part of being a person.

For this suggestion, we harness our irritation and use it to instigate a teeny-tiny moment of expression or creativity.

I recommend that you give yourself five minutes tops just to sit and allow yourself to think about all the little (and big!) stuff that is getting under your skin right now. Your gears! It is grinding them! Let yourself feel it!

Then, either free write to get all those irritants out of you and down on paper, or grab the nearest art implement and just do some little tiny little mark-making on a piece of paper while you are feeling that irritated feeling.

Remember The Dot? This is another moment for The Dot.

Please stop what you are doing and go read The Dot by Peter H. Reynolds.

The little artist in this book, Vashti, is *p*ssed* when she makes her first dot. It’s okay.

2. Think Back to Find An Overnight Success that Took X Years

As well or instead, give yourself another five minutes to cast your mind back over your life. Can you find any story, maybe even a small one, that reminds you of that overnight success quote?

Did you study something in high school that recently allowed you to effortlessly start recording two podcasts, like our friend Ali Eslamifar?

Did you write two songs like 100 years ago and then finally record the rest of your album last year?

Did you always want to be an athlete, and over multiple years did you run your first 5k and then your first 10k and then your first marathon?

If you can think of a story like that, relish it. Celebrate that this happened to you. Allow yourself to imagine that it could happen again, and acknowledge that it might already be happening - you might be in the fifth year of your ten-year journey.

If you can’t think of anything, take a break. When you are burned out or depressed, it can be super hard to identify a story like this in your own life. Don’t drive yourself crazy if the well is empty. It doesn’t mean there isn’t a story in there somewhere.

If you are willing to talk it out, consider asking a friend to reflect on what they know about your life and tell you about an overnight success of yours that took X years - they probably have a story about you that they can share. Sometimes it can even be easier for folks who are not us to recognize these stories in our lives with their external perspective.

If you don’t have a friend to chat it out with, consider chatting with me. I do this for a living. I may not know you at all but you can tell me some things and I bet I can find a story like this in your life experience too.

Whatever you do, don’t go it alone.

Genevieve