Why do we fear the blank page?
It’s not for a lack of ideas. Frequently, it’s the opposite! The blank page invites all the wonderful ideas that we just don’t have the skill to transpose precisely the way we want. It’s the type of perfectionism that stops you before you even get started, because once you do, you invite the possibility that…
It doesn’t work.
Someone else did it better.
You’re doing it wrong.
Lately I’ve been ignoring the blank page, turning my attention to work instead, and I kept circling back to the idea that business valuation is an art.
And so it is! In a wonderful example of how your career can support your creative practice, I realized that there really are some great parallels between this line of work and art.
It’s theory put into practice. It’s subjective. It’s communication. If you’re very good at it, then much like in art, you’ll be able to turn complex ideas into simple, tangible concepts that someone else out there can connect with and understand while your fellow technicians nod in approval.
One key difference about work and art? You actually have to show up for work. You’re required to get uncomfortable and put pen to paper if you want to keep it (and your current lifestyle). Art as a hobby, on the other hand, will give you some grace. You can ignore the blank page, shut it in a drawer, and you’ll still have a roof over your head.
Something will be missing, though, and your creative practice won’t grow.
Not to worry, though — if you can show up for work, you can show up for play!
So in the spirit of returning to the blank page, here are three of my favourite valuation quotes and how they’re helping me tackle the blank page!
“In theory, practice and theory are the same, but in practice, they’re not.”
You’ve got a framework in your head, you’ve got all your theory down, and now you’re ready to see your vision come to life!
That is, until it’s time to put paintbrush to paper (or cursor to Excel spreadsheet).
There’s this confidence that fills the time and space between learning something new and applying it to a blank page, and it’s fed by an expectation of how things will go and what the end-product will look like. Once we get to work, though, we discover that it’s not as simple as taking everything we’ve learned and just applying it. Things hardly ever go the way we think in practice, and our end product tends to deviate from our original vision.
This is frustrating.
Theory is great for constructing a mental framework, but it can’t possibly account for every real-life nuance, whether it’s the special sauce that makes a business uniquely successful, or the subtle emotion that your brushstrokes are intended to evoke.
So what do we do?
We make concessions, we find efficiencies, and we roll with the surprises (all within reason, of course). We sit back and appreciate the neatly packaged theory in our minds while finding better ways to “get the gist” down in practice. Sometimes that involves problem-solving, and other times it involves accepting that there really isn’t a problem needing to be solved.
Theory sometimes equates to technical precision, but practice brings an element of practicality. How many times have you heard, “technically we should do it this way, but in practice we just do it that way”? We deviate from theory in order to be practical. As with the 80/20 rule, 80% of the impact comes from the most impactful 20% of the work anyway.
As for reconciling expectation and reality, I don’t think this is necessarily a problem! The one expectation you have to drop is expecting all the learning is finished. It’s never finished.
Okay, I can accept that practice and theory are different, but then how do I know if I’m doing it right?
“Put five valuators in a room, and you’ll get five different values.”
You don’t.
Here’s the trick, though: you do not necessarily have a room with four wrong valuators.
If you can describe your work as having an “art” to it, then you’re probably in a profession like mine where there’s a lot of professional judgment required. There’s probably also a world of different opinions based on different frameworks formed through different experiences.
As with the valuators, practitioners in these professions can at least agree on the most foundational theory and principles, but beyond that there are plenty of methodologies and practical pivots and nuances to navigate. Typically, the variety of results would be within a reasonable range of each other (what even is a “reasonable range”?), but they won’t be identical, and we all accept this.
This is of some comfort to my creative side. Let’s say I’m on a plein-air painting date with some other artists, and we’re all painting the same tree, right there in front of us. Would you be surprised if we did not all produce identical visual representations of that tree? You might be able to look at each one and agree that this is, in fact, the tree in front of us, but they won’t be identical representations. More likely they’ll be wildly different, while still conveying the same tree. (Impressive!)
Especially as a beginner, sometimes we fall into traps by comparison. We look at the other creatives, we admire what they’re doing, and we trick ourselves into thinking, this is the way.
Then we beat ourselves up a bit because it’s not our way right now.
That’s hard, so we ignore the blank page.
We shouldn’t, though! The key is recognizing that was their way, and we’re free to be inspired by it, borrow from it, and build upon it. But if we don’t, or we simply can’t right now, that doesn’t make our work wrong. It makes it ours. It makes it the best we can do with the skill and resources we have, right now. We should feel good about that.
Putting something on paper is far better than putting nothing on paper!
Okay, we’re all special and that’s wonderful. But seriously, if there has to be a winner, who is it?
“I’d rather be approximately right than precisely wrong.”
Here’s a classic example using business valuators as experts in court. Picture two sides, one with bountiful resources, and the other; well, less-so. I love a good underdog story.
For this case, the judge was relying on the findings from either side to prove damages.
As you’d imagine, the bountiful side was able to pull from its large team of brilliant minds to come up with a big, beautiful, technically precise regression analysis calculation that I like to imagine was akin to mathematical poetry.
The underdogs beat them out with a scatter plot.
How could that be!?
It was easy to understand. These valuators used the visual of a scatter plot to illustrate a complex concept in a simple way, enough that the judge could follow and understand it*, and that was the key that led to their victory.
*I should add, a judge is not expected to immediately follow a complicated and detailed regression analysis. When we go to court, our job is to assist the court, and that means you need to know your theory, but you also need to know your audience and write for them.
To be approximately right is to keep things simple enough that we can still follow and understand.
To be precisely wrong is to add so much detail and complexity that the meaning is practically lost and we’ve missed the point.
I think this applies to art as well.
It’s not necessarily the literal detail that makes for great work (depending on your style). But we get stuck in the trap of technical perfection and applying all the elements and teachings we have to create a “perfect” product. In doing so, we forget that we’re trying to convey something to the viewer.
These self-imposed requirements make facing the blank page a monumental task.
A beginner’s perspective: When I’m painting from reference, I’ve found that suggestion is more important than capturing every detail. (The same is probably true in writing, it’s hard to pare it down, I’m working on it!) I circle back to the 80/20 rule: To suggest is to glean 80% of the meaning from 20% of the detail, and the way you suggest is where the artistic voice comes through (probably, I’m just theorizing).
Parting words
It does work, just not the way I thought.
Someone else did it well, and I’m inspired, but I’ll also appreciate my own unique experience.
There’s no wrong way of doing it, as long as I can convey my message.
Above all else, if it matters to you, you just have to do it.
Maybe it’s uncomfortable, maybe your perfectionism is already judging you, maybe you won’t like it, but you have to do it anyway!
It’s funny — you’d think at work the stakes are higher. Your job and reputation are on the line, you’re working with bosses and clients who depend on you, and yet when faced with the blank page, we just tackle it. (After all, it’s in our job description.)
We’re free to do whatever we like with our personal blank page, so why does it feel even more daunting? It could be because there’s no safety net. Nobody is going to catch your mistakes and tell you how to fix it and encourage your growth and development as you go (unless you’ve arranged for it). It could be that we’re not required to face it, and so we do it a lot less frequently. It’s too easy to walk away from — nobody has to know!
I think the biggest factor is just how important that blank page really is to you. That’s not just an assignment coming to you from the outside — it’s a calling from within.
I can’t fill your blank page for you, but I can cheer you on from your inbox while you tackle it! Sign up for the monthly newsletter here. Let’s connect!
