8 Clicks from Nowhere Productions

Category: [26] Iteration & Epics

Iteration and the simple practices of routine that can have with profound compounding effects.

Chapter List

  • Navel Gazing 

    I don’t think I’ll ever stop being fascinated by the simple idea that iterative work can lead to huge accomplishments.

    I was sitting down to write this post, pondering a topic, and I noticed that at some point last week I’d passed the one hundred post milestone on this blog.

    Navel gazing could have easily followed, and maybe that’s all this post is. But I’d like to think that it is a self-referential example of my point, too.

    A few times per week for the last five months I’ve sat down with a hot tea and my keyboard and written out a few words on a topic related to the mission of this blog: to talk about the fun and frustration of creative exploration, to poke at the obvious and pry into the obscure, and to generally reflect on the thousands upon thousands of aspects of what it takes to bootstrap oneself into a creative professional life no matter your career stage—the first person perspective version of that.

    And so I write, and often I’ve preached upon the simplest of simple topics: just putting in the work. Doing it. Actually writing, making, or creating—no matter how small or incremental it might seem.

    By example, one of the things I create incrementally is this blog, writing oft disconnected thoughts about the process itself: navel gazing upon navel gazing.

    One hundred posts later my incremental effort sits around forty thousand words: a short book worth of text and ideas posted here for people to read and enjoy. If that’s not something huge from a hundred little iterative efforts I don’t know what is.

  • Baby Steps

    I have a piece of advice that I’m writing mostly for myself here: stop thinking so big. 

    Start small.

    Start with the achievable and work your way up.

    I have been planning this novel-length audio production, writing words, making scripts, composing music, mixing sounds, and—nothing firm has been done yet.

    The big project is simply too overwhelming.

    Oh sure, I see the forest, but I can’t seem to plant the trees. It all feels like I’m jumping into a new plan, a new skill, a new concept without knowing if any of it will even work—and more importantly if something critical will fail. And the result is paralysis incarnate.  

    Something smaller has to come first.

    In my case, maybe instead of trying to make a novel, I record some audio blogs first. Then maybe after I do that, I work on making a few one-pager short stories into encapsulated one-off samples of what I’m hoping to create on a larger scale. And then, maybe something else, and something else after that, and maybe… eventually, the real thing will fall into place.

    I’m sure many great people have achieved great things in one fell swoop… but the rest of us may need to build up our stamina first.

  • Month Incremental

    So, yeah. It’s been a month. Can you believe it?

    Oh, right. I didn’t mention it before today.

    Thing is, I haven’t really been promoting or sharing this blog yet as I built up something of both a back-catalogue of posts and some project momentum, but I thought it worth calling out that after one month of posting every weekday I have… tada! One month worth of posts!

    If you keep reading, you will learn one big theme from me: I am a big proponent of a common idea called incrementalism, the notion that big things don’t happen all at once, but rather by chipping away at a problem with steadfast effort and persistence.

    Writing a little bit each day.

    Mastering a new talent by honing one new skill at a time. 

    Practice, repetition, and patience. 

    Incrementally, bit by bit, line by line, word by word, anything can be done. Well, probably anything… within reason, y’know.

    The steady drip of water can wear away a stone after a long enough time. A person can wear away at a problem with the same incremental effort and patience. 

    And if nothing else, writing every day can build a pretty solid collection of blog posts, even after just one month. Check. Mate.

  • Impossible Summit

    It’s easy to aim too high when we start a new project. It’s easy to think that anything we create should be a final, salable product to hold up to the whole world for judgement. It’s actually pretty tough to recognize that almost everything we make should start off as something just for our own selves and maybe never become more than that.

    I am just starting out on this project and I have not only accepted that every new post is not going to be a gem of enlightenment and a spark of insight. 

    I have decades of writing experience, but even so, the idea of generating something interesting to say five times a week is daunting and seems as though an endless mountain is rising in front of me.

    Yet.

    The climb is the point. 

    I may never reach that impossible summit.

    And anyone who creates needs to be okay with that idea.

    Nothing here is meant to be a final, salable product held up for judgement because most of it is just for myself, yes, shared with the world but nothing more than that.

    January 13 – Audio Version

  • Creative Routine

    Last October I decided I was going to sketch every single day of the month.

    I broke out a fresh sketch book, I gave myself a few basic constraints, and I drew one sketch for each day in October.

    Can you guess how many of those sketches were amazing?

    Basically none.

    Sure, there were a few solid works and I even shared a half dozen of them. But if I was seeking perfectionism—or worse, waiting for it to even get started on my artist journey—I would have drawn one thing on October first …and then very likely given up.

    Instead, I embraced it as an incremental effort of modest improvement.  The goal wasn’t to create thirty-one great sketches, no, the goal was to sketch thirty-one times.

    The goal wasn’t fame or a viral drawing or something I could sell. The goal was creating on a routine.

    It’s easy to aim too high. It’s easy to think that anything and everything we create should be a final, salable product to hold up to the whole world for judgement.

    It’s actually pretty tough to recognize that almost everything we make should start off as something just for our own selves and maybe never become more than that.

    January 12, 2026 – Audio Version