Deciding to Decide
I’ve been doing a lot of personal projects lately and a huge part of that creative process is decision making. The complexities of a decision are varied and far reaching as illustrated in a new book by Jonah Lehrer titled “How We Decide.” I just picked up the book (after walking around Borders for 20 minutes trying to decide if I would buy it – Irony to the highest level) but have yet to dive too deeply into it.
What I hope to gain is a clearer sense for why I make the decisions I make. They are generally not bad decisions and I’m pretty happy overall with where they take me but I’d like to be more effective. When I am building a project, finishing up an edit, choosing a location, building a lighting setup, there is a string of decisions being made. Each one sets something in motion which then leads to another chance to make another decision to steer the end result in some way. It’s a fascinating process when you really think about it and I’m especially interested in how it effects artists. Artistic expression has no measurable outcome so how is it decided? I think the best artists have made many decisions about a new piece of work before they even start it. That is where I would like to be some day.
Pick up the book at Amazon here.
Leave a Reply