252: Chase Jarvis | Cultivating Your Creative Calling

Creative Habits

Chase Jarvis emphasizes the importance of building creative habits to sustain innovation and creativity. He shares a personal story from his childhood, where a teacher's comment shifted his focus from art to sports, illustrating how societal pressures can stifle creativity 1. Jarvis argues that creativity is a habit, not a skill, and likens it to a pottery class experiment where students graded on volume produced better work through repetition 2. He also recounts his journey from pursuing a conventional career path to embracing photography, highlighting the courage needed to follow one's creative instincts despite societal expectations 3.

Creativity is a habit and the same thing is true with the pot in this experiment as with life, you started to experiment in lightweight ways.

--- Chase Jarvis

This approach to creativity involves small, consistent acts that build over time, allowing individuals to discover their unique style and voice.

   

DEAR Framework

The DEAR framework—Deconstruct, Emulate, Analyze, and Repeat—offers a structured approach to mastering creative skills. Jarvis explains how he used this framework to teach himself photography by analyzing successful works and emulating them, which eventually led to his own style 4. He highlights the importance of repetition in this process, as it allows individuals to refine their skills and incorporate personal elements into their work 5. This method is not unique to Jarvis; he cites examples like Avicii, who honed his craft by copying tracks before developing his own music 6.

The acronym is DEAR: deconstruct, emulate, analyze, and repeat.

--- Chase Jarvis

By systematically breaking down and replicating successful elements, creatives can accelerate their learning and achieve sustained success.