Stick to the Rules

I haven't broken out one of my "poker as an analogy for the arts" posts in while.  I figure I'm due for one.  Here it is:

Poker, like most things, has certain fundamental rules.  There are hands you should play, hands you shouldn't play, etc.

When I was just getting started learning the game, I tried really hard to understand the rules and stick to them.

I had some quick success, won a little bit of money.

Then things started going off the rails.

Remember, I said I won a little bit of money.  That wasn't good enough for me.  I wanted bigger paydays.

My understanding was that the poker players who got to the big paydays got there by breaking the rules.  They did tricky, unorthodox things.

So that's what I did.  I went away from the fundamentals of the game and started breaking the rules.

I quickly got crushed, losing most of the money I had won.

I talked to my friend about it and he gave me words of wisdom I apply to damn near everything now:

"Adam, you're not good enough to break the rules yet."

He was right.

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In the arts we love to talk about our need to be creative, think outside the box, blah, blah, blah

But we never talk about how it takes a pretty high level of skill and experience to be able to pull off such things.

Most of us don't have that level of skill yet.

Most of us would be better served learning and mastering the rules of our particular craft before we start blowing those rules up.

There's a role for innovation in both the artistic process and the business of art.

But some rules . . . some fundamentals . . . exist for a reason.

You should know and understand the reasons before you journey too far out the box.

 

Comments

[Tony]

I think some of the best advice I've come across was: sometimes you just need to take five minutes out of your busy day of thinking outside the box and just fix the damn box.

The older I get, the more true it becomes.