Maybe He’s No Romeo, But He’s My Loving One Man Show

Nametagscott
Metric Musings
Published in
3 min readJul 14, 2021

--

What makes us so reluctant to abandon what we can clearly see isn’t working?

It’s usually ego, which hates change more than anything else in the world. Even when our present iteration of a project is mediocre or terrible, there is an arrogant part of our brain that insists on staying the course.

Because it’s validation that it was right all along. Nothing makes the ego happier than that.

But the problem with this misguided persistence is, it cherishes consistency over condition. It’s all head, no heart. And that’s a dangerous approach to the creative process.

If we don’t rely on our own internal assessments of our work, then we’ll never feel satisfied with the outcome. If we don’t have a pivot subroutine when it becomes clear that our plan is not working, then we’ll never create anything that blows our own socks off.

There is no one right way to do this, either. Every creator learns how to talk themselves back from the edge of mediocrity.

When something you’re making seems like it’s not becoming what it needs to be, there’s a mechanic inside of you that steps in and tries to recalibrate.

My recommendation is, listen loudly that voice. Instead of trying to do more with what’s not working, try stepping back, taking a breath and figuring out a new approach.

Here’s a case study of this pivoting subroutine from a famous film.

Footloose, in my opinion the greatest eighties dance movie of all time, had numerous number one hits on its soundtrack. But one song in particular has an interesting story behind it.

Remember the scene when the city boy (Kevin Bacon) teaches the country bumpkin (Chris Penn) how to dance? Allow me to refresh your memory if you weren’t born when this was film was, like, totally radical dude….

Interesting piece of trivia, the original screenplay suggested a sad, minor key song in the background, illustrating just how frustrating it is to learn how to dance.

But as production continued, the director Herbert Ross felt the first song wasn’t working with the scene. Then the music producer decided to write another tune specifically for the moment.

And this time, they went for an uplifting song with a female vocalist, Deniece Williams, singing about her wonderful boyfriend, even though he was far from perfect.

They came up with the catch phrase, let’s hear it for the boy.

Once they had that line, the rest of the song lined up around it like iron filings to a magnet. And the rest was history. That song went to number one and led to one of the most memorable scenes in film history. If you know and love that film, you can’t imagine another song being played in the background of that scene.

Talk about cutting your foot loose!

Lesson learned, don’t double down on what doesn’t work in the hopes of pushing through to the other side by sheer force of will.

Figure out your pivot subroutine, value your creative condition over your consistency, and see if your can blow your own socks off.

What makes us so reluctant to abandon what we can clearly see isn’t working?

--

--

Author. Speaker. Songwriter. Filmmaker. Inventor. CEO/Founder of getprolific.io. Pioneer of Personal Creativity Management (PCM). I also wear a nametag 24/7.