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A major shift in thinking about work is the shift from a ‘have to’ to ‘get to’. I learnt this from a productivity class I took recently.


A ‘have to’ task feels just by definition much more responsible and a ‘get to’ task feels more playful. We all start many endeavors in our lives that we enjoy doing. But when we make our dreams, our profession, we unfortunately move from our playful ‘get to‘ zone to a more responsible but dry ‘have to’ mode.


Eg: I get to draw 5 pages of comics today vs I have to draw 5 pages of comics

I get to travel and meet people vs I have to travel and meet people

I get to finish the story I’m writing vs I have to finish the story I’m writing

I get to try out a new recipe today vs I have to try out a new recipe today


Everything changes about the process intrinsically. To someone else, from the outset, you might still seem to be doing the thing that you have to. Just more enthusiastically.


The weight of memory keeps her from finding joy - Neil Gaiman (Fragile Things)

its next to impossible to not be weighed under memory. It is the source of what we can expect from life, our fears, our anxieties and our hopes. All deeply rooted in the past and not much to do with actuality. While life plays songs with the randomness of a radio, our minds think in planned playlists based on past knowledge. We see what we are looking for and only allow novel experiences to flow through the seams of our expectations.

In art school as beginners we had this philosophy driven into us. ‘Get the bad drawings out of your system’. And its such a great way to look at our everyday doings. We fear we might not be good and that fear paralyzes us from actually doing the work.


Be persistent! Get those 100 or 1000 bad pages of writing out of your system and good writing is just after it, get those bad dishes you cook out, get those blog pieces, bad films, bad music, bad dancing, bad anything out of your head into this world and let the world take care of it. Flow from creation to creation, you can only be bad for a certain number of times.


Not acting clogs the bad inside of your system. It constipates your flow and even if you do churn up a little good, it will be strenuous and not conducive for a long run. Do it, keep doing it! Its as simple as that.

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Images and Text © Rohit Karandadi unless stated otherwise.

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