Gavin Baker

The solution [for more successful projects] isn’t necessarily for me to become a better shot.  I mean, there are goalies in the world, and sometimes they stop pucks. What’s really needed is more shots.  More potential projects= more completed projects= more paid projects. 

My brilliant brother, Kyle J. Baker wrote the quotes above and below on his blog Thinking Creator. He’s talking about how a change in viewpoint is crucial. I was arrested by the visual of goalies stopping shots.  

In an earlier part of this post, Kyle makes another great observation about himself. When he wants something to take off, and it doesn’t, he immediately ties it to something he said on his blog.  In all reality he has just succumbed to the cum hoc ergo propter hoc logical fallacy aka assuming causation because of correlation.  

Like most amateur artists, I get excited by every new possible project and depressed when one doesn’t work out, convinced I scared them off by something I said on my blog.  The reality is more likely that they lost their funding, or their boss said no. 

But he isn’t alone in his logical fallacy (if he were a Wikipedia article wouldn’t exist for it).  No, everyone falls into this trap, unintentionally of course but we still do it. We shouldn’t stop trying to understand the world around you, or why things failed…no that is still very important.  But we should take a step back and if the failed scenario were a painting, take a good hard look at it.  Critique it, realize that yes we have helped paint some brush stokes that don’t fit, or are in the wrong palette but that overall we didn’t ruin the painting.  Perhaps the canvas was too big, or too small.  Maybe the style was wrong. And maybe, just maybe, we aren’t as important as we’d like to think we are.  Some projects falter.  Some projects fail. Some projects fly.  If we get “more shots” in, we’ll see more projects fly.