Meet Jason McGathey

Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Jason McGathey. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Jason, so excited to have you with us today. So much we can chat about, but one of the questions we are most interested in is how you have managed to keep your creativity alive.

I think it’s important to have more projects going than you can ever actually finish. Or at least, that works for me, anyway. Finishing things should be your primary consideration, of course – that whole “real artists ship” comment by Steve Jobs comes to mind – but you can’t overlook the process for getting there, and how you stay inspired.

For me, if you’re talking about my writing projects, the basic operating procedure you might say is to promote the book I just released, edit the next one, and write the one after that, I try to do all 3 of those things in some capacity every day. But at the same time, I feel like it’s extremely important to switch gears if there’s something else you’re really excited about on that particular day. Don’t just robotically adhere to the schedule. Definitely chase down those hot leads, so to speak, even if it means setting aside your main project for the time being.

You do better work when you’re inspired, obviously, but I feel like this approach also helps forge these strange connections you wouldn’t arrive at otherwise, that this bouncing around is itself generating ideas and fresh insights. It also keeps your from repeating yourself, to some extent, if you’re ever worried about that.

Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?

I’ve self published all my own books, stretching clear back to 2001, and have also issued a handful of others. Additionally I also spend my quote unquote free time tinkering around with a few different blogs – one where I detail humorous anecdotes of my family’s history (A Known History), another where I document the sprawling history of Columbus Ohio (Love Letter To Columbus) and a third which becomes a catch-all for my other assorted shorter work (the Jason McGathey site). My next published book will be the latest installment of my “Stop Rewind Fast Forward” series, which examines popular music on a year by year basis.

Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?

1) The most important advice I could possibly impart is that simply sitting down and working on this stuff, day after day after day, matters more than anything else. As the saying goes, 80% of success is just showing up. You’ll find that by and large “overnight success” is a myth, and the people who do anything of substance that lasts, they’re typically the ones who did the most work, period. They probably also had the most duds out of anyone, but nobody remembers those.

2) Let go of perfectionism. This ties in with point #1 to some extent, but you need to get to a place where you’re saying “eh, good enough,” and getting your project out there in the world, and moving on. A related tip is something else I realized along the way: a lot of people you run into who are playing some “perfectionist” card are just using that as an excuse to not do anything.

3) Embrace the meandering path. Just let your interests take you where they may, and over time, you’ll most likely begin to forge these weird connections that you wouldn’t have otherwise, between seemingly unrelated topics. My favorite writers for example often make strange references that are completely unique to them, and the reason they are able to do this – which likely comes to them without even thinking much about it – is because they are well-versed in a broad range of topics and interests, and bring all of that to the table at once.

How would you spend the next decade if you somehow knew that it was your last?

That would be an even 50/50 split between spending every possible moment with the people I love, but then also trying to knock out as many of the most meaningful projects left, which I still have on my plate even after about three decades working on this stuff.

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